Quote:
Originally Posted by Luke Bunyip
Now with link to Arstechnica article
It occurs to me that this would also prevent any undead from disinterring the cremated. |
Thank you for that, the first link was stuck behind a paywall for me. Honestly, I found the brief account of the Polish woman who was found buried with a sickle around her neck and a padlock on her toe even more interesting. That implies to me that the circumstances of her death made people fear her rising from the dead, but someone with enough influence to make a difference - possibly even the village as a whole if she were a generally-adored person - couldn't bear to see her corpse mutilated in the typical way (staked through the heart, head chopped off, etc), and so there was a compromise: the body was left intact, but a symbolic padlock to hold her down, and a sickle that would either restrain or decapitate her if that failed and she attempted to rise, were put in place.