According to this Reuters Oddly enough news story “Italians unearth “vampire” in Venice plague grave”
Italian researchers believe they have found the remains of a female “vampire” in Venice, buried with a brick jammed between her jaws to prevent her feeding on victims of a plague which swept the city in the 16th century.
Matteo Borrini, an anthropologist from the University of Florence, said the discovery on the small island of Lazzaretto Nuovo in the Venice lagoon supported the medieval belief that vampires were behind the spread of plagues like the Black Death.
“This is the first time that archaeology has succeeded in reconstructing the ritual of exorcism of a vampire,” Borrini told Reuters by telephone. “This helps … authenticate how the myth of vampires was born.”
LINK to the rest of the story!!
I think this shows that people can think up some strange things. It’s interesting to know some of the origins of some of our most well known myths.
Yeah it’s always interesting to see where the first known myth of a Vampire and things like that came from.