Medieval Revenants
-
At Wharram Percy, ten people were cut, broken and burned after death. Forensic anthropology reveals what happened to their bodies – but can it tell us what their community feared?
-
A wicked man dies unshriven, rises from his grave and brings pestilence with him. When villagers exhume his swollen, blood-filled corpse, medieval England gets disturbingly close to a vampire.
-
Long before Dracula gave Britain its elegant, aristocratic vampire, our dead were considerably less sophisticated. They got out of the grave, lumbered around frightening the neighbours, spread disease and occasionally required somebody to hit them with a spade..
-
There are few things that humanity has been quite so consistently afraid of as a dead person who refuses to behave like one.