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Comment by TheAlchemist | Hacker News Reader

They mention the coin placed in mouths - but as far as I know, this has nothing to do with protection against vampires. It's to pay Charon to cross the river :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charon%27s_obol

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Not that I know the details of medieval vampire lore, but doesn't it sort of follow that if the deceased has crossed to far side of Styx they'd be much less eligible for walking/flying/crawling/whatever around as one of the restless dead?

It seems like the practice could well share inheritance with ancient Greece, but I'd be surprised if the motivating mythology would be quite the same. Wonder what the story was in ancient Poland..

You probably want to cover your bases, IMO. If they're a vampire, ok no worries we have the little sickle over their neck. If they're not - a couple of złoty to help them on their journey in the afterlife.

It's like anticonception; more measures means a lower chance of the undead running amok. I mean they're already consecrated and buried, it won't hurt to also add padlocks, stakes, coins, sickles, and (another thing I haven't seen in the article) a cage around the grave.

> a cage around the grave

I suspect this one may have more to do with countering external threats.

As far as I'm aware, the common understanding is that a vampire doesn't have a soul anymore, they are undead. This is why they supposedly can't see themselves in mirrors.

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/a/38468

This would imply that helping the soul cross the river doesn't prevent "vampirification".

Addressing a vampire as "they" may be in fact dangerous, for most of the vampires are from the pre-internet age.

What are you trying to say here? Can you elaborate? As far as I'm aware English predates the internet.

I think it’s alluding to “they” being non binary/woke to refer to a single person

Using "they" to denote genderless singular has been common in English for more than a century.

I'm not agreeing or disagreeing, just answering the question as I saw it :)

The singular "they" is in fact about as old as the singular "you" (which was also strictly a plural before then).

I just want you to know, you’re not getting downvoted by the “woke mob”, you’re getting down voted for making an idiotic joke and insisting on making some random conversation on history about “woke politics”.

What's the use of karma points if not spending them to make fun of the dogma? Those points don't buy bread, and you can't even put them on your resume.

I feel bad for you.

We can discuss your feelings, if you want.

Some vampires may even be as old as the 14th century, which is when people first started using "they" as a gender neutral third person pronoun.

Some 18th century people didn't like it because they thought it was too colloquial but its been a part of English for a fairly long time, roughly 10 times as long as the "Internet age".

Another common thought for how the not-seeing-in-mirrors thing came about is that silver was seen as something that harmed or warded off evil, hence its use against werewolf and such in many myths. Way-back-when, the reflective backing of mirrors, at least those owned by the rich or well-to-do, was often achieved with a thin coat of silver. Of course that doesn't explain other evil creatures having a reflection in the same mirrors, but as the various mythologies have different mixed sources we can't expect an awful lot of consistency.

I heard its due to the silver. vampires are weak to silver and silver was used in both in the reflective backing of old mirrors and photographic emulsion.

Bear in mind that prior to Bram Stoker and Universal Studios basically codifying the modern vampire archetype, what "vampires" were (vaguely, any demonic or malevolent spirit that drank blood) and how they behaved was a matter of folklore and might differ greatly from place to place. All of these beliefs and more were probably true at the same time.

It seems that this practice didn't spread to Slavic Europe, with the possible exception of Ukraine around the Black Sea. This region had been under Greek/Byzantine influences for millennia. Also, back then this area was partly Turkish, for example Crimea was controlled by the Crimean Khanate. The wild steppes of Zaporizhia separated it from "proper Slavic civilization". Ironically this is exactly where the current ruso-ukrainian frontline is.

Not sure if it was really practiced, but I definitely heard about it when I was a kid (in Poland).

> Ironically this is exactly where the current ruso-ukrainian frontline is.

I think it's quite common to see front lines and new borders form around ethnic or cultural borders, instead of existing / established country borders. Or that there's clear cultural differences on old borders, like for example where the Roman empire's borders were, or the borders between England, Wales and Scotland in the UK.

Wallsend (where Hadrian's Wall stopped) is about 100km South-East of Berwick-upon-Tweed where the border between England and Scotland has been for a long time.

There has been a lot of history since the days Roman empire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nachzehrer

Charon didn't get as far north, his jurisdiction was mostly in the Mediterranean

If you haven't already, listen to Chris de Burgh's sublime Don't Pay the Ferryman: 3 minutes and 44 seconds of sublime high-octane pop-rock music which conjures up images of this very nugget of folklore.

To bring it full circle, that low-spoken bit from The Tempest? Some of that is Anthony Head, of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

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