22MOON.COM
You can see the whole Earth from the Moon!

‘Vampire’ Discovered

In Mass Grave

NEWSCIENTIST.COM

March 6th, 2009

A SKELETON exhumed 

from a grave in Venice is 

being claimed as the first 

known example of the 

“vampires” widely referred 

to in contemporary documents.

Matteo Borrini of the University of 

Florence in Italy found the skeleton 

of a woman with a small brick in 

her mouth while excavating mass 

graves of plague victims from the 

Middle Ages on Lazzaretto Nuovo 

Island in Venice.

.

At the time the woman died, 

many people believed that the 

plague was spread by “vampires” 

which, 

rather than drinking people’s blood, 

spread disease by chewing on 

their shrouds after dying. 

Grave-diggers put bricks in the 

mouths of suspected vampires 

to stop them doing this, 

Borrini says.

The belief in vampires probably 

arose because blood is sometimes 

expelled from the mouths of the dead, 

causing the shroud to sink 

inwards and tear. 

Borrini, who presented his findings 

at a meeting of the American Academy 

of Forensic Sciences in Denver, 

Colorado, last week, 

claims this might be the first such 

vampire to have been forensically 

examined. 

The skeleton was removed from 

a mass grave of victims of the 

Venetian plague of 1576.

However, 

Peer Moore-Jansen of Wichita 

State University in Kansas says he 

has found similar skeletons in 

Poland and that while Borrini’s 

finding is exciting, 

“claiming it as the first vampire 

is a little ridiculous”.

Borrini says his study details 

the earliest grave to show 

archaeological “exorcism evidence 

against vampires”.

.

____________________________________________________________

.

 ‘Vampire’ Skeleton     

    

Found In Venice

LIFEINITALY.COM

March 6th, 2009
    

The remains of a `vampire` have
been found in a grave in Venice lagoon, 

an Italian forensic
anthropologist has claimed.

Matteo Borrini of Florence University 

said he and his team discovered the 

skeleton of a woman dating to the Middle
Ages whose skull had been impaled 

through the mouth with a brick – 

a traditional method of ensuring 

undead bloodsuckers
could no longer feed.

.
Borrini told a meeting of the 

American Academy of
Forensic Sciences in Denver that 

when Europe was in the grips
of the plague there was a widespread 

belief that the disease
was spread by female vampires.

This idea probably originated from 

the dribble of blood
that often came from the mouths of 

plague victims when they
died, Borrini said.

It was thought that these vampires, 

who were buried next
to the bodies of plague victims, 

fed on their dead neighbours

until they felt strong enough to 

rise from the grave and
begin feeding on the living, 

perpetuating the cycle of
contamination.

.

Gravediggers were therefore 

responsible for identifying
possible vampire women among 

the dead by signs of shroud-chewing 

around the mouth and impaling them 

with a brick to stop them feeding, 

according to Borrini.

The woman`s skeleton was found 

in mass grave of victims
of the Venetian plague of 1576 – 

in which the artist Titian
also died – 

on the small island of 

Lazzaretto Nuovo.

Venice authorities had designated 

the island a quarantine hospital in 

1468 following an earlier plague
epidemic.

Borrini said gravediggers had 

shoved the brick into the
woman`s mouth with such force 

that it had broken some of her
teeth.

When a later wave of the Black Death 

swept through
Venice between 1630 and 1631, 

the epidemic claimed 50,000 of
the cosmopolitan city`s 

150,000 inhabitants – 

or one in three people.

Legends of vampirism has existed 

for millennia in various civilisations 

but the modern figure of the vampire
originates with stories from the early 

18th century Balkans
and Eastern Europe.

After a spate of alleged sightings, 

vampire frenzy
spread to Western Europe and 

was later popularised in Bram
Stoker`s 1897 novel Dracula.

.

.