Death is something everyone is afraid of and it’s the only thing that is certain in life. The problem with death is that people often believe that there is a life after death. In each culture from ancient to modern times various believes of the afterlife could be seen. But what about dying and returning to the same world to haunt the living?
Zombies are very popular lately, various movie and series franchises are doing very well because of the zombies. The problem is that people didn’t invent these creatures in the modern period, they sprung fear into the people of medieval period. Archeologists from England believe that they have found signs of people mutilating the corpses of their dead ones so they wouldn’t rise and kill them.
A rib bone showing knife marks:
A huge pit has been dug up in Wharram Percy, this is an old and abandoned village in today’s England, North Yorkshire. The village is believed to be around 1000 years old. The corpses that had been found were burned and mutilated after they died. They know that the corpses weren’t killed and harmed while they were alive and have two explanations for this event: 1. The corpses were from cannibalism, it might have been a bad year or something else, 2. They killed them in order for them not to rise back as zombies. The reason for this is because in that period people were religious and were faithful Christians. But sometimes the priest might have a different understanding and lead the people to his own believes and a tradition could be born.
People at the time believed that reanimation could occur when individuals who had a strong life force committed evil deeds before death, or when individuals experienced a sudden or violent death, Mays and his colleagues wrote. To stop these corpses from haunting the living, English medieval texts suggest that bodies would be dug up and subjected to mutilation and burning.
This is an image of a burned skull:
