A woman says her Transylvanian grandmother chose to be buried with a silver needle in her heart because she didn’t want to become a vampire

Shortly after Halloween, Paris-based content creator Ana Petcu (anaapetcu) took to Instagram to explain the superstitions her family in Transylvania still follows. In a video with hundreds of thousands of views, Petcu told her viewers, “My grandmother had a silver needle put in her heart after her death, and it was her wish. So, welcome to worryingly contemporary stuff that is still taking place in Transylvania, Romania, from a person that’s actually born there.”

Petcu explained that people who meet certain criteria are believed to become vampires after death. She said, “If you are the seventh or the ninth born in a family. If you were conceived on a sacred Orthodox day. If your mom stopped breastfeeding you and then she started again. If you were born with a placenta on your head, which was my grandmother’s case, 100% you become a blood-sucking creature of the night, according to us.”

To prevent this, Petcu said, her family follows rituals to this day. For instance, the family supervises “the dead 24/7 for three days,” and ties the hands and legs with red thread, which she said witches consider powerful and might try to steal from the body. Thorns are also placed around the coffin to stop any movement, and in some cases, a machete is placed across the throat. As Petcu put it, “There’s no f***ing way you’re coming back to us, okay?”

Viewers wanted to know who placed the needle

Many viewers latched onto one detail Petcu hadn’t explained: who placed the needle. In a follow-up post, she said a family friend did it, and that her grandmother had made the request to protect her family.

Others were simply fascinated by the story, with one user writing, “I don’t know whether to be concerned or intrigued.” Some had a personal stake in the superstitions. One user wrote, “As a 7th child, I’m interested lmao.”

Another user shared, “There a super cool archeological burial where they buried a woman with a scythe over her neck!” According to Smithsonian Magazine, a study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports examined a 17th-century burial in Pień, Poland. Researchers led by Dariusz Poliński of Nicolaus Copernicus University studied the remains of a woman, nicknamed Zosia, who was buried with a sickle across her neck and a padlock on her big toe.

Per the magazine, the padlock was fastened when she was first buried, and the grave was later reopened to add the sickle, measures meant to keep her from rising from the dead. The team suggests locals may have seen her as an outsider. In Slovakia, archaeologists have also found dozens of headless Neolithic skeletons at a 7,000-year-old settlement.