Ah, archeology! Though tragically devoid of whips and Nazi-punching in real life, this unassuming scientific field never fails to provide when it comes to balls-out terror. Trying to decipher what our ancestors got up to just by looking at bones and some broken pieces of pottery can be daunting at best -- but sometimes, as we've pointed out before, what they've found wouldn't be out of place in a horror movie.
#5. The Ychsma Ring Of Dead Babies
University Libre de Bruxelles
What's the most depressing thing you could find as an archeologist? A puppy cemetery? The mummy of your own father, carbon dated to be at least 2,000 years old somehow? A literal bag of dicks?
How about 12 dead babies arranged in a circle around a bunch of mummies?
University Libre de Bruxelles
A bunch of sad, empty mummies.
In 2012, archeologists at the ancient Peruvian site of Pachacamac opened a small, hitherto undiscovered 3,000-year-old burial chamber of the pre-Incan Ychsma people. It was packed with the skeletal remains of no less than 80 mummies. The oval-shaped, 66-foot-long chamber was separated into two nested sections, full of mummies laid out in a fetal position and accompanied with strange, wooden fake heads that researchers assume were death-masks that showed the identity of the deceased.
University Libre de Bruxelles
Or ping-pong was surprisingly popular in the Ychsma afterlife.
All of this was surrounded by the remains of, yes, a dozen babies, arranged in a neat circle around the mummies. The Ychsma are not a well-known folk, so researchers are not certain what the purpose of all this was, beyond the obvious summoning of cacodemons to devour the dreams of whoever opens it.
Their best guess is that the people inside suffered from diseases, and were drawn to the site with promises of a miracle cure. When this didn't work and they passed away, they were laid to rest in this peculiar setup. It is still unclear whether the babies were also victims of the disease, or some sort of a ritual sacrifice that was supposed to ease the mummies' passage to afterlife. And to be honest, if it's the latter, we're pretty cool not knowing.
University Libre de Bruxelles
"You know what? Let's just re-bury this shit."
#4. Zombie And Vampire Burials
NIKOLAY DOYCHINOV/AFP/Getty Images
Way before we started stocking up on ammo in preparation for the zombie apocalypse, our European ancestors were shitting their pants at the thought of undead creatures known as revenants, which were basically the same thing but with more room for quaint folklore and absurd protection rituals.
Ireland, in particular, didn't mess around when it came to the fine art of revenant warfare: When they suspected someone of possible life-after-death shenanigans, they made sure that said someone damn well stayed buried. Take these two gentlemen from the 8th century, whose mortal remains were recently unearthed in Kilteasheen -- a move that may or may not be a precursor to a horror movie trilogy. The two skeletons were found buried side by side, with large black stones shoved into their mouths:
Chris Read
Apologies if you found this page Googling "interracial necrophilia."
The evidence makes it clear they weren't buried together -- they were moved from different locations and placed together on purpose. This form of burial is called "deviant burial," and was most likely done to people who were considered a threat to society, such as rapists, murderers, victims of murderers (which seems a bit unfair), and people who died from unexplained diseases. Why? Well, these were the folks that were considered most likely to go undead on the living community's ass, and as such, they received a mouthful of rock so their reanimated revenant remains could not bite its way through the burial shrouds.
Speaking of biting: A few centuries down the line, revenants started falling out of fashion. Enter the vampire, and with it -- you guessed it -- people who goddamn staked each other in the heart, hopefully post-mortem:
Natural History Museum/HO/EPA
Well, hopefully the staker wasn't post-mortem. You never know.
That's a dig from Bulgaria, believed to be the grave of a vampire. The remains are those of a male in his mid-40s, staked through the heart with a metal spike. His left leg has also been amputated and placed beside him in the grave, presumably because Dracula is considerably less scary when he comes after you hopscotch style.
And that dude got it light. The body of another "vampire" was straight-up decapitated, and his severed head was placed between his legs, thus condemning him to an eternity of teabagging himself.
Andrzej Grygiel/EPA via theguardian.com
"Dude, I know you beat me in Halo, but this is just overkill."
#3. The Mystery Massacre Of Sandby Fort
Kalmar Lans Museum
Archeologists on an island off the coast of Sweden were digging up old pieces of clay on the site of an old fort, when they stumbled on a scene straight out of the unseen aftermath of a scaled-down Roland Emmerich movie: An ancient 5th century ringfort littered with dozens of bodies, almost all of them in positions that suggested they died suddenly. The site, formally known as Sandby fort, is eerily similar to the ruins of Pompeii: The entire scene is frozen in time, with everything left exactly as it was on the day of whatever the hell happened there.
Kalmar County Museum
This guy died with a remote control in hand, which raises further questions.
Wait a second; Sweden is not particularly well known for its volcanoes. So what could have caused such a perfectly preserved historic panorama?
Us, that's what. Well, our Scandinavian ancestors, anyway. In fact, the whole thing is not so much an aftermath to a natural disaster as it is an ancient crime scene of such grittiness that the residents of the area were afraid to set foot in the place for ages after the incident.
Kalmar County Museum
As opposed to today, where it looks like a wonderland of whimsey.
From the evidence gathered, the residents of the fort-town were taken entirely by surprise, and barely had time to blink before they were struck down where they stood. Some were found at the doorway of their hut, trying in vain to make a hasty escape. An older man was cut down in the middle of a hall. An adult and a small child were ruthlessly killed and their bodies fell/were tossed into a burning fireplace.
via IslandCrisis.net
The second-most terrifying story about fireplaces, after "Baby, It's Cold Outside."
Now, the peculiar thing about the find is this: Not only were the denizens of the fort-town surprised to the point of barely having time to react, but the archeologists have found several valuable artifacts (jewelry boxes, beads, intricate gilded brooches, etc.) that seem to indicate the people of the fort were either wealthy as hell, or specialized in making jewelry.
Why would someone organize a super-efficient raid in a fortified town and not take all the treasure? Was the town hiding an even larger treasure, and the raiders couldn't be bothered to carry all of it away? And if Sandby fort was carrying the era's equivalent of Smaug's hoard, what in the everlasting shit could have kept all the inevitable thieves and scavengers from cleaning the place from valuables after the dust had settled?
Max Jahrehorn
And if it was a curse, how fucked now is everyone reading this?
The questions are endless. Hell, we don't even have a clue about who the historical supervillain behind the attack could have been (although since we're talking about a proto-Viking-filled, 5th-century Scandinavia, the suspects probably include every single person who lived in Sweden at the time). Luckily, science is just as curious about Sandby fort as we are. In fact, researchers are going full CSI on the case: Through the magic of modern, 3D-mapping technology, they are trying to recreate the entire scene (they removed the skeletons as they found them, as archaeologists are wont to do), hoping to better understand what happened.
Kalmar Lans Museum
"They're finally on to you, Grimvald Skullpooper."
And speaking of nightmarish ancient crimes ...
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