Joy Adalia
The skeleton of a person with an iron stake driven to the place where the heart would have been was unearthed from an ancient city’s ruins in southern Bulgaria, sparkling speculations that this skeleton once belonged to a man suspected of being a vampire. This ‘vampire’ is believed to be a man.
Aside from the ‘vampire’ discovered in the ancient city of Perperikon, another suspected vampire was found in another ancient city in Italy. This time, it was a woman, judging from the bone structure. Aside from the stake where her heart would have been, a brick was also jammed inside her jaw.
Are vampires real?
The existence of vampires had always been a fascinating topic that has gotten traction even in modern times, thanks to countless literary materials and books on the topic. But do they really exist?
For people who haven’t really seen, it would be hard to believe they do exist. After all, vampires bite the neck of their victims and draw their blood – surely, in this modern age, forensic exams can determine whether a person was supposedly bitten by a vampire or not. Now, have you ever heard of a case like that in the news these days? None!
Of course, if covens and individual vampires were as clever as the ones in the movies, then they would not drink blood directly from a human but drink from goblets filled with blood from, where else but the blood bank?
The vampires of ancient times
Let’s take for example the man discovered in Bulgaria. Why would the people drive a stake to his heart if they did not suspect he was a vampire or something? It is said that there are people who have a blood disease that causes symptoms similar to that of vampirism – or is science just trying to cover up the matter with scientific jargon because they refuse to believe such an abominable creature exists?
The man’s skeletons were intact though his left leg was removed but was buried alongside his body. He didn’t appear to have any fangs. He was found in a grave just some miles away from where the skeletons of ‘twin vampires’ were found back in 2012 and 2013 in Sozopol, also in Bulgaria.
As for the woman, she didn’t fangs as well but a brick was jammed hard inside her jaws. Were they trying to stop her from eating her burial shrouds and rising from the grave to victimize the other corpses in the mass grave she was dug from?
During this period, epidemics would cause hundreds of deaths per day, so that the dead are often buried in mass graves. At times, fresh graves are dug so that more bodies can be added.
Historical accounts have shown that some bodies in these graves show signs of ‘eating other corpses’ because they appear to have bloated stomachs and blood would be oozing from their mouth. Grave diggers believed these were vampires, so they would drive a metal stake to the heart and jam the mouths with bricks or stones to prevent them from rising.
If folklore and vampire stories were to be believed, vampires only die when you drive a stake to their heart, hit them with a silver bullet, or they are exposed to the sun (they would turn to ash then). So, were these bodies really that of vampires? Creepy! Especially because they were dug from places which are popular settings for vampire stories.
Do you think they were vampires?
