The decapitation ritual shown in Netflix’s new Polish thriller isn’t just movie fiction: we unpack the true story of the “łopi“—the real-life vampire panic that terrified the Kashubian region for centuries.
A film like Colors of Evil: Black naturally sparks a wide range of questions. The most immediate onesare about the plot, of course: the characters from Małgorzata Oliwia Sobczak’s novels always have a complex psychology, where human wickedness spreads and infects the people around them. In the Colors of Evil universe, there is never just a single villain, and the final twist almost always reveals a dark way in which evil overflows, dragging in new people and moving in different directions.
Yet, there are even more intriguing layers to explore, especially in Colors of Evil: Black. Since the novels are deeply rooted in the folklore and social dynamics of some of Europe’s oldest regions, you can discover fascinating elements that belong to the real traditions of those people. In the 2026 film, the repeated deaths of children in Trulocz raise suspicions among the locals, and someone even connects it to an ancient legend from Kashubian folklore—one where certain deaths are caused by vampires who return to life to kill the people close to them. The characters in Colors of Evil: Black call this creature a łopi—and surprisingly, this legend is deeply rooted in the true story and folklore of the Kashubian area in north-central Poland.
Once again, a modern thriller movie (and book) helps us discover a new, fascinating piece of history from a little-known culture.
The True Story of Kashubian Vampires in Colors of Evil: Black
What happens in Colors of Evil: Black is that many children continue to disappear. In particular, the last body found, Adam Poznanski’s, has a detail that catches the attention of many: the body was decapitated before being buried, and his head was placed between the child’s legs. As we discover in the movie through its characters, this is a practice that local people used for centuries in response to a mysterious legend, according to which the dead sometimes came back to life as vampires to kill again. The interesting thing is that this legend portrayed in Colors of Evil: Black belongs to the true story of those people’s traditions.
“Łopi” (or òpi) is the word used in the Kashubian language that comes from the Slavic term upiór, which means vampire. In the tradition of these people, however, one did not become a vampire because of another creature’s bite: a łopi’s destiny was marked from birth. Individuals destined to transform into vampires after death were recognized by specific physical signs: the most explicit clue was being born wrapped in a part of the amniotic sac on their head, as mentioned by the characters in Colors of Evil: Black, or, in the most terrifying case for the villagers, being born with teeth already visible.
Beliefs around this figure arose mainly to explain sudden and tragic events, like epidemics or a series of deaths within a community. According to the legend, after the funeral, the łopi did not find peace. It woke up at midnight inside the coffin, started to devour its burial clothes and its own flesh, and then left the grave. The most disturbing detail is that its first victims were not strangers: the vampire returned to its old home to consume the life force of its own family members, leading to their death.
This is why, as we see in the movie, a series of sudden and unexplained deaths within the same circle of people who knew each other (like the children in Colors of Evil: Black) sounds to the locals like a possible confirmation of a łopi’s existence. These superstitions have roots in pre-Christian Slavic folklore, but remained incredibly widespread and documented between the 17th and 19th centuries in the Pomerania region. When suspicious deaths occurred in quick succession in a village, the population panicked and decided to exhume the last deceased person to check if they were a łopi.
If the exhumed body still appeared flexible or showed traces of blood on its lips, the ritual to stop it began. The most common practice was decapitation: the corpse’s head was cut off with a spade and placed between its legs or near its feet. The popular logic was simple: if the vampire woke up, it would not be able to find its own head and could never leave the grave to kill again. It is exactly the same macabre ritual scene that the characters of Colors of Evil: Black discover on little Adam’s body.
The 2023 Archaeological Discovery: The Luzino Vampire Cemetery
The most chilling part is that the detail of finding corpses with severed heads is not just movie fiction—it actually happened. As told in this article on All That’s Interesting, in June 2023, during road expansion work in the Polish village of Luzino—located right in the heart of the Kashubian region—workers unearthed a huge mass grave dating back to the 18th and 19th centuries. Archaeologists exhumed around 450 bodies, and the analysis of the remains confirmed that a significant portion of those burials followed the exact anti-vampire rituals linked to the myth of the łopi: numerous skeletons had their heads completely separated from the torso, with the skull carefully placed between the legs or at the feet, just like what happens to little Adam in the movie.
Coins were also found inside the mouths of many skulls. According to Slavic tradition, the coin served to seal the soul inside the body, offering the deceased a payment to pass into the afterlife and preventing them from returning to haunt the living. Additionally, in about a third of the graves, archaeologists found bricks and heavy stones strategically placed around the head, arms, and legs—a physical method used by villages to weigh the body down and prevent it from digging its way out of the earth.
In short, the fear of the łopi was not a legend confined to small, isolated communities. In certain historical periods, it turned into a real collective psychosis that shaped the lives and funeral rituals of Kashubia for centuries.
When Reality Exceeds Horror
As often happens, discovering that the details of a thriller or horror movie are rooted in a true story makes the viewing experience even scarier. This is something that has happened frequently in the world of cinema: in the past, we have explored the real events that inspired some of the greatest horror movies of the past and present, such as Veronica, Annabelle, A Nightmare on Elm Street, or The Conjuring.
Knowing that behind the screen there are not just the inventions of a screenwriter, but centuries of real fears and collective superstitions, adds a completely different layer to the work. In Colors of Evil: Black, we witness a story of extreme human wickedness involving child abuse, police corruption, and even vampires who can come back to life. And the real surprise is that this time, everything we have seen belongs to the real world we live in.
