In Oppin, Germany, the discovery of zombie tombs that have been unearthed suggests people believed that the bodies might come back.

To prevent this, the tradition was to bury these bodies with large rocks over the legs of the body to make sure they could not get back up, and securing the neck using rods or piercing the body with a lance to keep them pinned down. The stones were measured to be about three feet in length, one and a half feet in width, and a thickness of four inches.

“It must be assumed that the stone was placed there for a reason. Possibly to hold the dead in the grave and preventing it from coming back,” said Tim Newcomb via Yahoo News. 

This tradition was supposedly carried out culturally during the Neolithic period going into the Bronze Age by relatively higher class people.

“They are not a people, but a ruling class. It’s like people who own a Ferrari today,” said Charis McGowan via Atlas Obscura.

Pena goes on to say that these practices may not be for zombies returning to life, but against criminals. It isn’t clear whether they were buried alive as a punishment as some practices have been seen where they only halfway bury the body with just the upper body uncovered.

“Back then, people believed that dead people sometimes tried to free themselves from their graves. Sometimes the dead were laid on their stomachs. If the dead lies on his stomach, he burrows deeper and deeper instead of reaching the surface,” said Susanne Friederich, a project manager for the excavations. 

From these discoveries found in Germany, it can be concluded that history has long been afraid of the dead coming back to life. These practices show the imagination had no limits as to how they would restrain what they believed to be zombies.