Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

Last Zombie Burial in Western Europe? July 15, 2014

At least twice a year there are news stories about zombie-proof burials. Archaeologists dig up a body that has been given special treatment by gravediggers: we have enjoyed some of these stories at StrangeHistory in the past including a particularly haunting one from Ireland. Sometimes corpses are decapitated and the head placed between the legs; sometimes heavy stones are placed on top; sometimes the mouth is sealed; sometimes the body is flipped and buried face down (what wonks call ‘prone burials’ pictured). The community of the living evidently had problems with said corpse and these strategies were to prevent the body returning to haunt those left behind: the dead were to stay out of sunlight. Consider now this rare zombie-proofing tale (usually we only have the end result): in a battle a ‘huge, scowling man’ was one of a number of attackers on a fortified position and in melee with a young soldier he received a fatal blade wound, dying with a grimace; in fact, he looked as if ‘he might have been asleep dreaming of some wickedness’. After the attack the defenders buried the huge man with great care face downwards. Why? ‘If he began digging his way out he would only go deeper’.

Now in itself there is nothing remarkable here save the year of the burial. The attacker was a German, the blade was a bayonet and the defenders were British infantry in 1915 in the Great War! I find it almost inconceivable that anybody in Britain in 1915 would have been buried face down; not even some caustic old hag in North Devon who was reckoned to be a bit witchy. Yet here a group of young British soldiers had returned to customs that dated back to Romano-British times and beyond: perhaps a granddad’s story from the mid nineteenth century became tinder in the brutal and claustrophic world of the trenches? What customs would we rediscover in similar situations today?

The report appeared in The Times 29 July 1915. It was picked up by Folklore in 1916 (where Beach found it). The nameless Folklore editor claimed that as recently as 1887, a similar burial had taken place at Portmahomack in Ross-shire (Scotland): the Tommies trumped that by some thirty years though. Is 1915 the latest zombie-proofed burial recorded for Western Europe? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com Beach is going to go out on a limb and guess that it is. Moving into Eastern Europe different rules will apply.

24 July 2014: Chris from Haunted Ohio Books writes ‘Not as late as your example, but it just occurred to me that this might be an example of burial face downward–the article says “for luck,” but the Eastern European origin of the principals suggests an anti-vampire precaution, especially since the dead wife is threatening a child. HAUNTED, He Says, By His Dead Wife’s Spirit Basso Wants the Body Turned Over For Luck Conneaut, Ohio, March 1. Steve Basso, a local Hungarian, has requested an undertaker to turn the body of his first wife over in its coffin. Basso says her spirit has haunted him since she died three years ago, and that he can stand it no longer. Basso has remarried and now has a child. He says the spirit always appears with outstretched arms, as if endeavoring to tear the child away from the second union. The Cincinnati [OH] Enquirer 2 March 1907: p. 1’ Thanks, Chris!