Venetian Vampires On the Venetian island of Nouvo Lazzaretto, a 16th century mass grave of plague victims contained a burial of a shrouded woman who’s mouth was forced open by a brick. This was an exorcism technique used on suspected vampires in Europe at this time. Plague was running rampant in Venice in 1576, killing up to 50,000, nearly a third of the cities population. Gravediggers reopening mass graves for further burials would sometimes come across bodies where hair would appear to be still growing, blood seeping from their mouths and bloated by gas. The shrouds covering their faces would be decayed by bacteria in the mouth, revealing the corpses and thus identified as vampires or shroud eaters. The discovery marked the first time that archaeological remains had been interpreted as those of an alleged vampire. DNA analysis of the burial revealed that the woman was European and aged between 61-71 at time of death. Vampires were thought to be the cause of plagues, with superstition taking root that shroud-eating was a way of identifying vampire infected people. Inserting objects, such as bricks and stones into the mouths of alleged vampires was thought to halt the spread of disease. While legends about blood-drinking ghouls date back thousands of years, the modern figure of the vampire was encapsulated in the Irish author Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel ‘Dracula,’ based on 18th century eastern European folktales. heritagedaily/2013/09/gruesome-deaths-discovered-by-archaeologists/98998
Posted on: Sun, 22 Sep 2013 14:09:26 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015