Archaeologists in Gliwice, southern Poland have discovered a burial ground where the dead were laid to rest in accordance with practices for alleged vampires.

Four skeletons were found at the site, where mandatory digs were being carried out prior to the construction of a ring road. In each case, the deceased had been buried with the head between the legs.

According to folk beliefs, this prevented a possible vampire from finding his or her way back to the land of the living.

The last burial of this sort occurred in 1914 in Masovia, Poland.

It is unclear exactly when this burial occurred given that no grave goods were buried with the bodies. Speculation exists that the bodies may have been interred as early as the 16th century.

In Bulgaria, archaeologists working on a monastery near the city of Sozopol uncovered 700 year old remains of two men who had been stabbed through the heart with iron, an indication of suspicions of vampirism. More than a hundred similar graves have been uncovered in Bulgaria, all of them male aristocrats or clerics with signs of anti-vampirism methods on the body.

Photo and quoted text via Polskie Radio.
Additional info on the Bulgarian graves via News Feed.