Clodagh Finn: When dead women tell tales of vampires and sorcery

The pardoning of so-called witches burned at the stake in the 15th to 18th centuries reminds us that some kind of retrospective justice for people wronged by Irish State institutions is possible

A three-dimensional reconstruction of Zosia's face, a woman buried as a vampire. Picture: Oscar Nilsson — Project Pien

When they buried her, they thought they were burying her malign forces too. They padlocked her foot and pinned her down with an iron sickle — failsafe ways to protect the world from this 17th-century ‘vampire’.

Now, with a kind of irony that fits the season, the young Polish woman once believed to be a force of evil has reemerged into the light of the 21st century. Using the marvels of modern technology, scientists have not only reconstructed her centuries-old face, but they have rendered this poor mistreated soul human again.