Vampire Found in Venice

Matteo Borrini of the University of Florence found a skeleton of a female in mass graves of plague victims from the Middle Ages on Lazzaretto Nuovo Island in Venice with a brick placed in the mouth. Grave diggers once placed bricks in the mouths of suspected vampires.

Borrini presented the findings at a meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in Denver, Colorado and claims this might be the first such vampire to have been forensically examined.

This is an interesting claim and got immediate attention from Peer Moore-Jansen of Wichita State University in Kansas. He has found similar skeletons in Poland, “claiming it as the first vampire is a little ridiculous”.

I’m sure J. Gordon Melton, one of the foremost experts on Vampires and author of The Vampire Book: An Encyclopedia of the Undead, would agree with Moore-Jansen, but it is exciting Borrin was able to find archaeological evidence of how vampires were disposed of in plague ridden 1576 Italy.