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Vampire Graves Dug Up In Bulgaria
Bulgarian archaeologists have discovered two vampire graves in the city of Sozopol on the Black Sea. The burials, which are about 700 years old, were each held down with a massive iron stake through the chest. One vampire was buried in the apse of a church – a spot usually reserved for aristocrats – and showed evidence of multiple stab wounds.
Bozhidar Dimitrov, head of the Bulgarian National Museum of History, says more than a hundred vampire graves have been found in Bulgaria. He says that most suspected vampires were aristocrats or clergy. Interestingly, none were women.
One possible explanation for the vampire myth comes from anthropologist Paul Barber in his book "Vampires, Burial, and Death." He posits the vampire legend started because people didn't know how bodies decomposed. Rigor mortis is only temporary. After a few days the muscles ease up and expanding gases in the body will actually shift it within the coffin. Blood seeps out of the mouth and the face and belly get a flushed and puffy look. So. . .a guy dies, they bury him, and shortly thereafter several more people die. The villagers decide the first guy is a vampire, and when they open up his grave they find he's moved, looks fat and flush with life, and has bloody teeth. When you drive a stake through a body filled with corpse gas it lets out a shriek.
There are several good vampire attractions in Europe, such as Dracula's Castle in Romania, the Vampire Museum in Paris and Highgate Cemetery in London, scene of a wave of vampire sightings in the 1970s.
Vampires have long captured the imagination. Vampire stories were popular in the nineteenth century and some of the best early horror films are vampire tales. "Nosferatu" (1922), a still of which is shown here in the Wikimedia Commons image, sticks close to the Bram Stoker novel. A different take can be found in the film "Vampyr" (1932). Both monsters are spooky, kick-ass killers, not the angsty pretty-boy teens of today's vampire craze. As Bart Simpson once said, "Girls ruin everything, even vampires!"
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
ailidh Apr 28th 2013 7:31PM
This kinds of burials are not rare they even occurred in the United States.
It was thought at that time, that what we now know as tuberculosis, was a strange disease caused by vampires, so if members of a family died of tuberculosis, neighbors advised the remaining family members to exhume their relatives bodies, and burn their heart, among other measures.
They though that the reason for the sick people to have such white features and cough up blood, was that a dead relative turned vampire was sucking their blood at night.
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