Vampires   haven’t always inspired teen romances, TV shows, or rock band names. In the 17th century, they were genuinely feared, especially in  Eastern Europe ,  where belief in their existence was strong. This was particularly true in the Polish village of Pień, where a team of archaeologists unearthed a “vampire grave” in 2022. It contained the body of a young girl, to whom Swedish forensic artist Oscar Nilsson decided to give a face, as reported by  LiveScience .

Such special burials

There are two reasons why researchers consider this grave to be that of a “vampire.” First, the young woman’s body was found with a once-sharp sickle blade around her neck and a padlock around her left big toe. According to Polish tradition, dangerous people have two souls—one good and one bad—and can return to her, guided by the second, if the first departs. The padlock, therefore, served to retain the good soul, while the blade could have been used to slit the vampire’s throat if she rose again.

Archaeologists then   discovered that a third of the  cemetery ‘s 100 graves  contained unusual burials. Some had been filled with large stones, padlocks, and various objects intended to prevent the dead from returning to life or rising again. This treatment was generally reserved for babies who died without being baptized, suspected or proven criminals, or certain sick and disabled people.

A life of suffering

The young “vampire” from Pień fell into the latter category. In addition to revealing that she was blonde with blue eyes, of Nordic descent, and 1.62 meters tall, the numerous tests performed on her body highlighted a lifetime of pain. She suffered from a non-fatal but very painful cancer of the sternum as well as a vertebral abnormality that could cause migraines, fainting, and even strokes. Added to this were signs of malnutrition or childhood trauma.

The life of this young woman, barely 18 or 20 years old, was anything but easy. Did the influence of her suffering on her mental health or physical state lead her neighbors to think she was a vampire? Was she the target of an unfair or malicious smear campaign? It’s impossible to reconstruct this part of her life. That’s why Oscar Nilsson decided to reconstruct her face using methods generally used for police investigations.

See the young woman, not the monster

So he created a plastic cast of her skull, calculated the depth of her tissues based on data from a sample of young women from Northern Europe, reconstructed her facial muscles, and established the shape of her nose, mouth, and eyes. Then he pigmented her skin and added real human hair.