"Vampire Burials" Unearthed in Bulgaria
Experts say a medieval practice of shoving iron rods through "bad" corpses endured until the early 1900s.
| Posted Wednesday, June 6, 2012, at 4:27 PM
Photo by Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images.
Looks like vampires aren't ready to cede the slow summer news cycle to zombies without a fight.
Archaeologists working off of Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast have reportedly unearthed two corpses from the Middle Ages buried with iron rods shoved through their chests, the latest bizarre examples of a medieval practice designed to quell the rise of vampires.
An expert explains to BBC News that Balkan villagers nailed down corpses of the dead believed to be "bad" to prevent them from rising from their graves and attacking locals, a burial practice that endured in some regions until the early 1900s. The Associated Press notes that such cases typically involved people who committed murder or other such acts in their lifetimes. Archaeologists have uncovered about 100 such "vampire burials" in Bulgaria alone.
Vampire lore has pervaded the Balkan region for centuries, popularized internationally with the publication of Bram Stoker’s Gothic classic Dracula in 1897.
