archaelogical vamp find...

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Permalink Reply by Victor Lovecraft on March 31, 2009 at 11:22am

This story was sensationalized.
During the plague of 1576 in Venice(bubonic,not vampire induced) mass graves (used for epidemics) were often reopened to bury fresh bodies, and diggers would chance upon older bodies that were bloated, with blood seeping out of their mouths and with an inexplicable hole in the shroud used to cover their face. Hence the term "shroudeaters."
“These characteristics are all tied to the decomposition of bodies.” “But they saw a fat, dead person, full of blood and with a hole in the shroud, so they would say: ‘This person is alive, they're drinking blood and eating their shroud.’”

Modern forensic science shows that the bloating is caused by a buildup of gases, and that the fluid that seeped from the mouth is pushed up by decomposing organs. The shroud would have been consumed by bacteria found in the mouth area.

At the time however, what passed for scientific texts taught that “shroud-eaters” were vampires who fed on the cloth and cast a spell that would spread the plague in order to increase their ranks.

To kill the undead creatures, the stake-in-the-heart method popularized by later literature was not enough: A stone or brick had to be pushed into the vampire’s mouth so that it would starve to death.

That is what is believed to have happened to the woman found on the Lazzaretto island, which was used by Venice as a quarantine zone. She died of the plague during the epidemic that also killed the painter Titian.
No vampire no slayer sorry :(

Victor

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