Zalozhnye pokoiniki

Also called: заложные покойники, unclean dead, zalozhny dead

Folklore and mythUndeadA bad death or burial

Zalozhnye pokoiniki is the ethnographic term for the East Slavic 'unclean dead', those whose manner of death bars them from rest. They were not given normal burial, and in times of drought or plague villagers dug up such bodies and moved or drowned them, a practice churchmen denounced for centuries. The category underlies most Russian and Ukrainian undead, including the upyr and the rusalka. It is a clear statement of the idea, common to zombie folklore worldwide, that a bad death produces a dangerous corpse.1

⚔️ Battle it

Origin

East Slavic (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian)

Russia, Ukraine, Belarus

What causes it

A bad death or burial

People who die before their time or outside the Church cannot pass on, and the earth is said to refuse their bodies.

How you become one

Suicides, the drowned, the murdered, drunkards, unbaptised children, sorcerers and witches.

Weak spots

burial away from the community: at crossroads, field boundaries, in forests, swamps or ravines
covering the grave with stones and branches
exhuming the body and throwing it into a swamp to end a drought

field notes