A woman’s blood-drained corpse is found in an Italian church where she had been searching for ghosts: the 22-year-old victim was earlier seen “dressed like a vampire” and looking like “a walking corpse.”

A young woman whose body was found in an abandoned church in Italy had been ghost hunting and looked like a “walking corpse” before her gruesome death, police said.

The victim, a 22-year-old French woman identified as Auriane Nathalie Laisne, he could have been the victim of a “consensual murder” or sacrifice – theories that investigators in the Aosta Valley town of La Salle are reportedly investigating.

A witness described seeing Laisne nearby with a friend in the days before her death late last month, and claimed the pair were dressed in dark clothing “like vampires.”

Her decomposing body was later discovered by a hiker on April 6, and it is believed that she had been dead for some days, with her clothes soaked in blood. Some of the blood at the scene had been scraped from the ground and removed, police told CNN.

An autopsy revealed that Laisne had been stabbed multiple times in the neck and abdomen, and also received gunshot wounds to the neck and body that police said could have been inflicted after her death.

Investigators launched a search for the man who was seen with her and finally located the suspect in France last night.

The 21-year-old Italian, Teima Sohaib, was arrested in Lyon on suspicion of murder. He now faces trial in the French city of Grenoble.

A witness described how Laisne and a young man, now identified by police as Sohaib, were seen together in the area in the previous days.

They reportedly said Laisne looked “very beautiful, but suffering and emaciated.”

They described the man as having “black curls and an olive complexion,” said he looked “much younger,” and added that he “didn’t seem like a violent guy, far from it.”

Laisne is from Saint-Priest, a town near Lyon, and his family is said to have traveled to Italy to identify his body.

The young woman was found with a package of pink marshmallows and edibles near her body, according to police, and was wearing leggings, a sweater and a dark coat.

The footage shows the crime scene: an abandoned church where police suggest Laisne may have been searching for ghosts.

Investigators in the Aosta Valley town of La Salle are reportedly investigating several theories (file image)

Sohaib is said to be from the Marche region of Italy and is the son of Egyptian immigrants. He had been living in Grenoble, in Val d’Isére, in the south-east of France.

Sohaib had been wanted in France and Italy since the end of March for “violation of judicial control”, reports Sky Italia.

Police reportedly said Laisne’s death could be linked to a ghost hunting competition on TikTok, which has become popular among young people in France.