We started digging around in the lore regarding revenants of all sorts, not just your classic zombie. How the hell do you keep them in their coffins? Here’s what we found: the lore says everything. It all overlaps or conflicts. You can be told to cut out the heart, soak it in wine, and put it back; or drive needles into the feet; or cut off the head, hands, and feet before burying everything at a crossroads; burn the body and throw the ashes in running water; or—our personal favorite—rely on the local population of wolves or wild dogs to dig the revenant out of its grave and tear it apart. But these are the most common ones:
Cut the Head Off and Put It Between the Feet
You find this one all over, but the best story is from the Icelandic tale Grettir’s saga, after Grettir kills the draugr called Glam.
When the thrall had spoken the faintness which had come over Grettir left him. He drew his short sword, cut off Glam’s head, and laid it between his thighs. Then the bondi came out, having put on his clothes while Glam was speaking, but he did not venture to come near until he was dead. Thorhall praised God and thanked Grettir warmly for having laid this unclean spirit. Then they set to work and burned Glam to cold cinders, bound the ashes in a skin, and buried them in a place far away from the haunts of man or beast.
Other cases of this treatment of revenants are reported as recently as 1913, which probably means it’s still happening.
Burn the Body
At the mouth of the river Tweed, and in the jurisdiction of the king of Scotland, there stands a noble city which is called Berwick. In this town a certain man, very wealthy, but as it afterwards appeared a great rogue, having been buried, after his death sallied forth (by the contrivance, as it is believed, of Satan) out of his grave by night, and was borne hither and thither, pursued by a pack of dogs with loud barkings; thus striking great terror into the neighbors, and returning to his tomb before daylight. After this had continued for several days, and no one dared to be found out of doors after dusk—for each dreaded an encounter with this deadly monster—the higher and middle classes of the people held a necessary investigation into what was requisite to be done; the more simple among them fearing, in the event of negligence, to be soundly beaten by this prodigy of the grave; but the wiser shrewdly concluding that were a remedy further delayed, the atmosphere, infected and corrupted by the constant whirlings through it of the pestiferous corpse, would engender disease and death to a great extent; the necessity of providing against which was shown by frequent examples in similar cases. They, therefore, procured ten young men renowned for boldness, who were to dig up the horrible carcass, and, having cut it limb from limb, reduce it into food and fuel for the flames. When this was done, the commotion ceased. Moreover, it is stated that the monster, while it was being borne about (as it is said) by Satan, had told certain persons whom it had by chance encountered, that as long as it remained unburned the people should have no peace. Being burnt, tranquility appeared to be restored to them; but a pestilence, which arose in consequence, carried off the greater portion of them: for never did it so furiously rage elsewhere, though it was at that time general throughout all the borders of England, as shall be more fully explained in its proper place. (William of Newburgh, circa 1200)
Cut Out and Burn the Heart
Here’s William of Newburgh again, although we’ve seen similar reports in maybe a hundred other chronicles, from the Dark Ages up through last Wednesday:
A Christian burial, indeed, he received, though unworthy of it; but it did not much benefit him: for issuing, by the handiwork of Satan, from his grave at night-time, and pursued by a pack of dogs with horrible barkings, he wandered through the courts and around the houses while all men made fast their doors, and did not dare to go abroad on any errand whatever from the beginning of the night until the sunrise, for fear of meeting and being beaten black and blue by this vagrant monster.
Thereupon snatching up a spade of but indifferent sharpness of edge, and hastening to the cemetery, they began to dig; and whilst they were thinking that they would have to dig to a greater depth, they suddenly, before much of the earth had been removed, laid bare the corpse, swollen to an enormous corpulence, with its countenance beyond measure turgid and suffused with blood; while the napkin in which it had been wrapped appeared nearly torn to pieces. The young men, however, spurred on by wrath, feared not, and inflicted a wound upon the senseless carcass, out of which incontinently flowed such a stream of blood, that it might have been taken for a leech filled with the blood of many persons. Then, dragging it beyond the village, they speedily constructed a funeral pile; and upon one of them saying that the pestilential body would not burn unless its heart were torn out, the other laid open its side by repeated blows of the blunted spade, and, thrusting in his hand, dragged out the accursed heart. This being torn piecemeal, and the body now consigned to the flames.
And an account from the magazine American Anthropologist, in 1896, demonstrates that this practice is alive and well:
The body of the brother last dead was accordingly exhumed, and “living” blood being found in the heart and in circulation, it was cremated, and the sufferer began immediately to mend and stood before me a hale, hearty and vigorous man of fifty years.
Cut Off the Head and Remove the Heart
Maybe not quite as drastic as burning the heart, and an odd thing about these accounts is that they tend not to mention what happens to the heart. Fed to wolves, maybe? Thrown in the river? We don’t know. Anyway, decapitation and radical heart-ectomy was the procedure for the shoemaker of Silesia, and also to the revenant in this account from the abbot of Burton, England, in 1090:
The very same day in which they were interred they appeared at evening, while the sun was still up, carrying on their shoulders the wooden coffins in which they had been buried. The whole following night they walked through the paths and fields of the village, now in the shape of men carrying wooden coffins on their shoulders, now in the likeness of bears or dogs or other animals. They spoke to the other peasants, banging on the walls of their houses and shouting, “Move quickly, move! Get going! Come!” The villagers became sick and started dying, but eventually the bodies of the revenants were exhumed, the heads cut off and their hearts removed, which put an end to the spread of the sickness.
A Drive a Stake Through the Head/Mouth/Heart/Stomach
Almost universal. Usually the corpse has to be staked into its coffin, but sometimes it’s enough to stake the revenant/vampire and then return it to the coffin. The wood of the stake should be hawthorn, oak, or ash, if possible—although certain groups of Gypsies swear by the wood of the wild rose tree.
Actually, if you add in the various traditions of needles and knives and thorns stuck into a corpse’s head and feet—while it’s in the coffin—you start to see that your historical vampire hunters had arrived at a consensus. The other stuff might have worked on certain occasions, but there’s nothing that beats a good old stake to the heart.
So that’s what we tried. We used Sam as bait, suckered the zombie girl back to her coffin, and staked her into it. With a silver stake. End of story.
Well, not really.