Back in 1704, in Torryburn on the south west Fife coast, they had a problem disposing of toxic material – it was what you might call a toxic witch problem.
I knew that in centuries past suicides were often interred at crossroads, the reason for this being the fear that the dead would return as a vampire and, if buried at a crossroads, would get confused and not be able to find its way to the nearest village to cause mischief. Vampires, it must have been believed in those days, were not all that bright. I had never heard of the custom of burying someone feared as a possible vampire-waiting-to-happen on the beach, though, in the area between the high tide and low tide mark, which is what happened to a poor old woman named Lily Adie. Having “confessed” (probably under torture) to witchcraft and been sentenced to death, Lily died while incarcerated, possibly by her own hand. Thus she constituted a perfect candidate for potential vampirism.
Burying her in the sand wasn’t sufficient to safeguard against her return, though, so locals also laid a heavy stone slab on top of her (they hoped) final resting place. The stone and the tide seemed to have worked, keeping poor Lily in place until vandals exhumed her in the 1800s. Someone must have put the slab back in place, though, after they were done, because it’s still there, as is, presumably, the rest of Lily.
