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I'm a PhD student researching the role of the archaeological dead in contemporary British society. Think of this as a scrapbook of all the interesting links, snippets of information and random bits and bobs I come across pertaining to death, dying and the dead. Enjoy?!

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    Vampires: there will always be blood

    Vampires have never been so ubiquitous. This is thanks partly to the continuing popularity of television shows such as Dark Shadows (the cult Sixties supernatural soap opera, recently filmed by Tim Burton) and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but also bestselling novels such as Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles and Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga.

    These days, bloodsuckers are even considered suitable for children – we’ve already had Count Duckula, Sesame Street’s The Count and the breakfast cereal Count Chocula, and now, just in time for half-term and Hallowe’en, we have Hotel Transylvania, a cartoon comedy in which Adam Sandler provides the voice of Dracula.

    Nor is the stage immune to the vampire’s sinister charms. Next week, the Polish production Nosferatu opens at the Barbican. The latest offering from acclaimed theatre company T R Warszawa (whose 2008: Macbeth was one of the hits of this year’s Edinburgh Festival) and director Grzegorz Jarzyna, it was inspired by one of the most famous novels in the English language, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, even if it does put a modern spin on the tale. As the Barbican warns, “This production contains nudity, smoke effects, strobe lighting and scenes that some may find disturbing.” That, and also quite a lot of blood.

    It is at the cinema, however, that vampires have recently had the highest profile. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2, the final film adaptation from Meyer’s tetralogy, opens in a fortnight. There is no question that it will be a monster hit with its target audience of young women who project themselves into the persona of Kristen Stewart’s heroine, Bella Swan.

    They, too, yearn for a boyfriend just like 100-year-old, but still incredibly good-looking, Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), on to whom they can project fantasies of being swept off their feet by a guy who broods like a bad boy but who isn’t really very bad at all.

    You wonder, though, if Twilight fans realise that vampires haven’t always been ideal boyfriend material. They used to steal your soul, which in less godless times was considered a fate worse than death. When I was growing up in the Sixties, they were bloodsucking fiends to be feared, even if, like Christopher Lee in Hammer’s Dracula, they could also be dangerously attractive. Not for nothing do so many of the Count’s victims seem to welcome his deadly embrace.

    He doesn’t just sink his fangs into women’s necks: he also liberates their libido from the strictures of Victorian-style repression. It’s a marked contrast to Twilight’s Edward, born six months after the end of the Victorian age, but applying a sort of neo-Victorian self-denial to his relationship with Bella.

    The traditional vampire as we know it had its origins in the superstitions of peasants alarmed by the grotesque manifestations of disease, death and decomposition; gases within the body, skin slippage or the emission of bloodstained fluids could all give an impression of post-mortem movement, or physical renewal.

    Most mythologies include a form of demonic succubus; in some translations, the Jewish mythological figure Lilith, Adam’s first wife, is called a vampire, while real-life historical figures such as the 15th-century Balkan prince Vlad Tepes (known as Vlad the Impaler due to his habit of skewering enemies), Hungarian countess Erzsébet Báthory (who preserved her looks by bathing in virgins’ blood) and Breton knight and child-killer Gilles de Rais have had vampire legends spring up around them.

    Stoker wasn’t even the first to write vampire fiction – the first in English was John Polidori’s The Vampyre, published in 1819. But it was Stoker’s Dracula, published in 1897, that caught the public imagination. The Irishman was best known in his lifetime as personal assistant to Henry Irving, and is said to have incorporated many of the actor’s mannerisms into his creation, as well as drawing on the history of Vlad the Impaler (whose patronymic name was Dracula), and Emily Gerard’s 1885 essay, “Transylvanian Superstitions”.

    Film buffs will already have noticed that T R Warszawa’s production shares its title not with Stoker’s novel, but with Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens, the 1922 silent film by German Expressionist director F W Murnau (remade in 1979, rather well, by Werner Herzog) and the first film to feature the vampire as we know it. The word “nosferatu” is cited twice in Stoker’s book, both times by Van Helsing as a synonym for vampire, or undead. “I like the sound of Nosferatu,” says Jarzyna. “It’s a little bit more poetic, more Slavonic… like someone coming from the moon.”

    Graf von Orlok, as the Dracula character has been renamed in Murnau’s film, is a hideous walking cadaver with bald head, pointy teeth and long fingernails. But ugly as he is, the self-sacrificing heroine still surrenders herself to him with an erotic abandon noticeably lacking from scenes with her human fiancé. From the very beginning, vampire movies were always about sex.

    Like most of us, Jarzyna first came to the subject of vampires through the movies – in his case, Todd Browning’s 1931 film Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi. As horror gave way to horror comedy in the Forties, Lugosi’s full-blooded approach became the stuff of parody, but it’s largely thanks to his performance that Dracula became a pop culture icon on a par with Sherlock Holmes or James Bond.

    The Hungarian-born actor was the incarnation of the menacing yet seductive foreigner in tuxedo and cape, and it’s his Dracula that springs to mind when anyone thinks of dressing up as a vampire at Hallowe’en.

    One reason for Dracula becoming such a cultural phenomenon is surely his versatility as a metaphor. You name it, the vampire can symbolise it: religion, capitalist exploitation, death and decay, addictions and sexuality or indeed Twilight-style abstinence. Like all the best monsters, vampires are open to all kinds of reinterpretation, according to the zeitgeist.

    And Count Dracula doesn’t look as though he’s going to get a definitive stake through the heart any time soon. He’s already been played more than 300 times on screen, and next year it’s the turn of Jonathan Rhys Meyers in a 10-part series for NBC. Babylon 5 creator J Michael Stracznski is working on another series, Vlad Dracula, while directors Eli Roth and Neil Marshall are each working on films inspired by elements in Stoker’s story. There’s even talk of Tom Cruise playing Van Helsing in yet another spin-off yarn.

    “We fear the night, we fear the stranger,” says Jarzyna, “but he’s attractive!” And he hints that the vampire in his version of Nosferatu might not really exist, after all. All his characters “have the vampire inside”, he says. “They behave like vampires. They become the vampires.”

    Perhaps this is why Dracula is as popular as ever – he’s not just a symbol of our age, but also strikes a chord within us. Maybe there is something of the vampire in us all.

    Halloween first began as ‘All Hallow’s Eve’, a festival to celebrate the eve of the solemn Saint’s Day in Christianity. It is also connected with harvest festivals and festivals of the dead, either Samhain or Parentalia. It is a time when the doors of the otherworld are opened to the deceased for them to visit their homes and families. Feasts are held in their honor, and they were gathered from the houses of neighbors. As it became a Christian holiday, cakes were collected from houses to placate the dead and tricks were played on the houses that didn’t. Slowly they began to dress like the ghosts and spirits that haunted that day. Now its become a day of horror, spooky costumes and  collecting candy from your neighborhood. While most horror stories are simply folklore that has been passed down through the ages or fiction invented by creative minds, there are some archaeological truths to them. This Halloween, shock your friends and family with this knowledge of ‘true’ horrors and monsters. Check out the full post from Bones Don’t Lie here!

    Halloween first began as ‘All Hallow’s Eve’, a festival to celebrate the eve of the solemn Saint’s Day in Christianity. It is also connected with harvest festivals and festivals of the dead, either Samhain or Parentalia. It is a time when the doors of the otherworld are opened to the deceased for them to visit their homes and families. Feasts are held in their honor, and they were gathered from the houses of neighbors. As it became a Christian holiday, cakes were collected from houses to placate the dead and tricks were played on the houses that didn’t. Slowly they began to dress like the ghosts and spirits that haunted that day. Now its become a day of horror, spooky costumes and  collecting candy from your neighborhood. While most horror stories are simply folklore that has been passed down through the ages or fiction invented by creative minds, there are some archaeological truths to them. This Halloween, shock your friends and family with this knowledge of ‘true’ horrors and monsters.

    Check out the full post from Bones Don’t Lie here!

    Smithsonian.com: The Great New England Vampire Panic

    theossuary:

    Exhumations! Shenanigans! Connecticut! Read all about it:

    Children playing near a hillside gravel mine found the first graves. One ran home to tell his mother, who was skeptical at first—until the boy produced a skull.

    Because this was Griswold, Connecticut, in 1990, police initially thought the burials might be the work of a local serial killer named Michael Ross, and they taped off the area as a crime scene. But the brown, decaying bones turned out to be more than a century old. The Connecticut state archaeologist, Nick Bellantoni, soon determined that the hillside contained a colonial-era farm cemetery. New England is full of such unmarked family plots, and the 29 burials were typical of the 1700s and early 1800s: The dead, many of them children, were laid to rest in thrifty Yankee style, in simple wood coffins, without jewelry or even much clothing, their arms resting by their sides or crossed over their chests.

    Except, that is, for Burial Number 4.

    Read more. Via Powered by Osteons.

    The Great New England Vampire Panic

    Photo by Landon Nordeman, Smithsonian.com.

    After the discovery of a 'vampire', Sozopol archaeological dig yields skeleton of gambler...

    Archaeological digs in the Bulgarian town of Sozopol on the Black Sea – where earlier this summer archaeologists found a skeleton staked post-mortem to prevent the deceased from rising as a vampire – have yielded another unusual find in the skeleton of a man that appears to have been such an inveterate gambler that he took his knucklebones to the grave.

    The skeleton has been provisionally dated to the fifth century BCE. As part of the funeral rites, the deceased was buried with a Greek dish that had 80 astragaloi – roughly cubic-shaped ship ankle bones used for gambling in the ancient times, Bulgarian daily Pressa reported.

    The use of astragaloi for gambling in ancient Greece is well-established by pottery depicting Ajax and Achilles playing a version of backgammon, such as the Exekias amphora of the Vatican museum.

    The skeleton was found in a classical-era necropolis under the St Nicholas church in Sozopol. Other skeletons found as part of the digs include that of a pregnant woman and, separately, that of a Christian girl, dating to the sixth century CE, the report said.

    Sozopol is one of Bulgaria’s oldest towns, the current settlement dating back to the seventh century BCE when it was founded as a Greek colony named Antheia (the town’s name would later change to Apollonia and then Sozopolois), but it appears that the site was inhabited as far back as the second millennium BCE, which makes it a rich digging ground for archaeologists every summer.

    It does not hurt that one of the town’s more famous sons, the head of the National History Museum in Sofia, Bozhidar Dimitrov, rarely misses an opportunity to promote Sozopol – as he did with the “vampire” find, which grabbed international media attention and resulted in a documentary by the National Geographic channel.

    Dimitrov is not averse to making bombastic pronouncements on the value of new finds – in 2010, he proudly proclaimed the contents of a relic urn found on a small island off the coast of Sozopol to contain the bones of St John the Baptist, even before the remains could be dated.

    Dimitrov, who is a former diver and whose historian credentials are based mainly on his research of the medieval Boyana church near Sofia, has in recent years seized every opportunity to big up his hometown, nor is he afraid of stepping on anyone’s toes – earlier this summer, he proudly proclaimed Vlad the Impaler, the Wallachian prince who served as the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula, as having been Bulgarian.

    Following the “vampire” find earlier this summer, Sozopol plans to twin with Sighisoara, the Transylvanian town where Vlad spent his exile between his first two reigns.

    The Vampire of Venice Returns, or What Is that Brick Doing in that Skull's Mouth?

    It seems like every spring there is renewed coverage of a partial skeleton that was found on the island of Lazaretto Nuovo (one of two 15th-16th century leper colonies near Venice) in 2009. I’ve never covered it here, but since I was alerted to an airing of a documentary about the skeleton on Italian TV this week, I thought it may be time to track the progress of the so-called Vampire of Venice (“il vampiro di Venezia” in Italian, and not to be confused with a similarly named Dr. Who episode).

    A great post - check it out!

    A vampire slaying kit – inspired by 19th century folklore and fiction – has been bought at auction by the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds. The fascinating kit comprises a mahogany casket, packed with everything a vampire hunter might need – including a pistol, crucifix, rosary beads, a bottle labelled holy water and even a mallet, plus four wooden stakes. The Royal Armouries secured the unusual lot at auction, organised by Tennants Auctioneers in Leyburn, North Yorkshire, after the box was left to a local woman in her uncle’s will. It was probably compiled in the late 20th Century following the success of the Hammer Horror Movies and inspired by Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula. Royal Armouries Curator of Firearms, Jonathan Ferguson, said, These kits are often said to have been made as novelties in the Victorian period, but research shows they are later than this. We’ve yet to establish a firm date for our kit, but we know it will attract a lot of interest from our museum visitors. The mahogany box is split into two tiers. The top layer contains a percussion cap pistol with an octagonal barrel – for firing silver bullets. The lid holds a crucifix and rosary beads, to ward off ‘evil spirits’. Other compartments contain three glass bottles, two of which are labelled holy water and another holy earth. As a ‘last resort’, there’s a mallet and four wooden stakes, plus A Book of Common Prayer, dated 1857. A handwritten extract from the Bible, quoting Luke 19:27, reads, “But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.” The kit will go on public display at the Clarence Dock museum – hopefully in time for Halloween 2012. WANT!

    A vampire slaying kit – inspired by 19th century folklore and fiction – has been bought at auction by the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds.

    The fascinating kit comprises a mahogany casket, packed with everything a vampire hunter might need – including a pistol, crucifix, rosary beads, a bottle labelled holy water and even a mallet, plus four wooden stakes.

    The Royal Armouries secured the unusual lot at auction, organised by Tennants Auctioneers in Leyburn, North Yorkshire, after the box was left to a local woman in her uncle’s will.

    It was probably compiled in the late 20th Century following the success of the Hammer Horror Movies and inspired by Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula.

    Royal Armouries Curator of Firearms, Jonathan Ferguson, said, These kits are often said to have been made as novelties in the Victorian period, but research shows they are later than this. We’ve yet to establish a firm date for our kit, but we know it will attract a lot of interest from our museum visitors.

    The mahogany box is split into two tiers. The top layer contains a percussion cap pistol with an octagonal barrel – for firing silver bullets. The lid holds a crucifix and rosary beads, to ward off ‘evil spirits’.

    Other compartments contain three glass bottles, two of which are labelled holy water and another holy earth. As a ‘last resort’, there’s a mallet and four wooden stakes, plus A Book of Common Prayer, dated 1857.

    A handwritten extract from the Bible, quoting Luke 19:27, reads, “But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.”

    The kit will go on public display at the Clarence Dock museum – hopefully in time for Halloween 2012.

    WANT!

    Vampire beliefs still have bite The recently discovered ‘vampire’ skeletons in Bulgaria may be centuries old but some blood-sucking superstitions refuse to die The unearthed skeleton, pinned down through the chest with iron rod, in an excavation site in Sozopol, Bulgaria. Photograph: National History Museum of Bulgaria/HO/EPA Last weekend, Bulgarian archaeologists working near the Black Sea town of Sozopol unearthed centuries-old skeletons pinned down through their chests with iron rods. Interestingly, this technique was evidently used to “stop the dead from becoming vampires”: people who had been “unusual” in life (alcoholics, criminals and assorted outsiders) were automatically suspect, even before any vampiric assaults had actually occurred. The Bulgarian finds were mere youngsters by comparison with the deviant burials unearthed in Mikulovice, in the Czech Republic, a few years ago. There, the bodies weighted down with rocks were thought to be around 5,000 years old. In the age of modern “vampotainment” – with Johnny Depp recently offering yet another vampire who many women (and men) would die for – we might forget that vampires were not invented for fun. For most of history, vampirism was the subject of mind-shattering terror. During a vampire outbreak, everyone would routinely flee their houses and sleep together in one building. Meanwhile, there was the question of those who fell into a coma. In Greece, one family was so terrified that their comatose daughter risked becoming undead that they buried her alive, against the desperate pleas of the local doctor (secretly, he opened up her grave that night, only to have her die in his arms). In the same country, another luckless man woke from a coma at his own funeral, in his open coffin. Sadly, this was no cause for celebration. Traumatised by this vampiric being, the villagers stoned him to death. Oh, I do love a good vampire skeleton news story! Click through to read the rest of the article.

    Vampire beliefs still have bite

    The recently discovered ‘vampire’ skeletons in Bulgaria may be centuries old but some blood-sucking superstitions refuse to die

    The unearthed skeleton, pinned down through the chest with iron rod, in an excavation site in Sozopol, Bulgaria. Photograph: National History Museum of Bulgaria/HO/EPA

    Last weekend, Bulgarian archaeologists working near the Black Sea town of Sozopol unearthed centuries-old skeletons pinned down through their chests with iron rods. Interestingly, this technique was evidently used to “stop the dead from becoming vampires”: people who had been “unusual” in life (alcoholics, criminals and assorted outsiders) were automatically suspect, even before any vampiric assaults had actually occurred. The Bulgarian finds were mere youngsters by comparison with the deviant burials unearthed in Mikulovice, in the Czech Republic, a few years ago. There, the bodies weighted down with rocks were thought to be around 5,000 years old.

    In the age of modern “vampotainment” – with Johnny Depp recently offering yet another vampire who many women (and men) would die for – we might forget that vampires were not invented for fun. For most of history, vampirism was the subject of mind-shattering terror. During a vampire outbreak, everyone would routinely flee their houses and sleep together in one building. Meanwhile, there was the question of those who fell into a coma. In Greece, one family was so terrified that their comatose daughter risked becoming undead that they buried her alive, against the desperate pleas of the local doctor (secretly, he opened up her grave that night, only to have her die in his arms). In the same country, another luckless man woke from a coma at his own funeral, in his open coffin. Sadly, this was no cause for celebration. Traumatised by this vampiric being, the villagers stoned him to death.

    Oh, I do love a good vampire skeleton news story! Click through to read the rest of the article.

    The Vampire Museum The Musée des Vampires is a small private museum (near the Mairie des Lilas) dedicated to vampires and the study of their place in folklore and modern culture. Located just on the outer edge of Paris, it can be a bit complicated to visit for non-French speakers, but it’s totally do-able and absolutely worth the effort if you’re a fan of vampires, mythology, and weird stuff in general! When I was initially researching the museum, all of the sources I found online, most of which are in French only, mention that the museum is open daily from 12:30pm to 8pm, but some sites don’t make it perfectly clear that you must have an appointment to visit. Making an appointment is little complicated if you don’t speak French, as the main phone number listed (01 43 62 80 76) just gives you a recorded message in French. This message lists the hours and also gives a cell phone number — 06 20 12 28 32 — which you can call to make an appointment. The museum’s curator, a wonderful, captivating fellow named Jacques Sirgent, speaks impeccable English. So if youdon’t speak French, try calling the cell number and very politely asking, “Parlez vous anglais, s’il vous plait?” and I’m sure Monsieur Sirgent will be happy to help you. The collection: You enter the museum through a small courtyard at the back of a private residence. The main room that was open to the public when I was there was a crowded, cluttered, and absolutely fascinating collection of every type of vampire-related item you can imagine: stacks and stacks (and stacks) of books, dozens of paintings and movie posters lining the walls, spooky fine art objects, Halloween-esque props, et cetera, et cetera — even a mummified cat found in Père Lachaise Cemetery! The room is relatively small but I could’ve spent all day in there inspecting these treasures. One highlight I found very impressive: the autographs of every actor who’s ever starred as Dracula in a Hollywood movie! After briefly being shown around the place by Monsieur Sirgent, we sat down for a long chat about the history of vampires, their folkloric origins, and their place in French history and the modern human psyche. Monsieur Sirgent, or Jacques as he told us to call him, has written several books on the topic, and very clearly is an expert on all things vampiric. Beforehand, I was a little concerned we’d find the museum’s director to be sort of overly goth or flaky or downright crazy, but I’m pleased to report Jacques is actually almost startlingly down to earth, and completely, well, normal! I made a joke about having worried that he’d be a serial killer, and he laughed and immediately pointed out a painting on a wall and told me it had been painted by famous French murderer Nicolas Claux, “le Vampire de Paris,” with whom Jacques is acquainted. Wow. Via Cool Stuff in Paris, click the photo to read more!

    The Vampire Museum

    The Musée des Vampires is a small private museum (near the Mairie des Lilas) dedicated to vampires and the study of their place in folklore and modern culture. Located just on the outer edge of Paris, it can be a bit complicated to visit for non-French speakers, but it’s totally do-able and absolutely worth the effort if you’re a fan of vampires, mythology, and weird stuff in general!

    When I was initially researching the museum, all of the sources I found online, most of which are in French only, mention that the museum is open daily from 12:30pm to 8pm, but some sites don’t make it perfectly clear that you must have an appointment to visit.

    Making an appointment is little complicated if you don’t speak French, as the main phone number listed (01 43 62 80 76) just gives you a recorded message in French. This message lists the hours and also gives a cell phone number — 06 20 12 28 32 — which you can call to make an appointment. The museum’s curator, a wonderful, captivating fellow named Jacques Sirgent, speaks impeccable English. So if youdon’t speak French, try calling the cell number and very politely asking, “Parlez vous anglais, s’il vous plait?” and I’m sure Monsieur Sirgent will be happy to help you.

    The collection: You enter the museum through a small courtyard at the back of a private residence. The main room that was open to the public when I was there was a crowded, cluttered, and absolutely fascinating collection of every type of vampire-related item you can imagine: stacks and stacks (and stacks) of books, dozens of paintings and movie posters lining the walls, spooky fine art objects, Halloween-esque props, et cetera, et cetera — even a mummified cat found in Père Lachaise Cemetery! The room is relatively small but I could’ve spent all day in there inspecting these treasures. One highlight I found very impressive: the autographs of every actor who’s ever starred as Dracula in a Hollywood movie!

    After briefly being shown around the place by Monsieur Sirgent, we sat down for a long chat about the history of vampires, their folkloric origins, and their place in French history and the modern human psyche. Monsieur Sirgent, or Jacques as he told us to call him, has written several books on the topic, and very clearly is an expert on all things vampiric. Beforehand, I was a little concerned we’d find the museum’s director to be sort of overly goth or flaky or downright crazy, but I’m pleased to report Jacques is actually almost startlingly down to earth, and completely, well, normal! I made a joke about having worried that he’d be a serial killer, and he laughed and immediately pointed out a painting on a wall and told me it had been painted by famous French murderer Nicolas Claux, “le Vampire de Paris,” with whom Jacques is acquainted. Wow.

    Via Cool Stuff in Paris, click the photo to read more!

    Zombie, vampire or saint? A grave disturbed, the coffin opened, and the body of a young girl, years dead, freakishly un-decomposed: Undead monster or miracle of faith? It depends on who’s asking.  Under other circumstances, being discovered in a state of less than natural rot can be bad news for a corpse. In Germany and Italy such undecayed dead were considered highly suspect and likely to be named vampire and have a brick crammed in their undead mouth. But the rules are different for potential saints. Where some see evidence of the rampaging undead, and others might see a really just slightly-less-than-funky corpse, the right people saw what has been come to be called “incorruptibility” - which is a good thing if you want to be saint. It’s also a good thing if you are a local church that would like to lure visitors by displaying a dead lady in a box for a few hundred years. First class relics, or bodies and parts of bodies of saints, have long been among the Catholic church’s most revered artifacts, and these “Incorruptibles” are the best one might ask for, in terms of attracting the curious masses into your church. The mysteriously preserved body of a the particularly pious were seen as an indication of potential saintliness, their exhumed bodies expected to give off a sweet odor known as the “Odor of Sanctity”. This alone was not reason for canonization, but it was a step in the right direction.  There are in reality, many reasons a corpse might not decay at a normal rate. In cases of a cold and humid environment, a process known as adipocere can transform the body’s fat into a waxy substance resistant to decay. Bodies buried in lime can become saponified, transforming that fat into something akin to soap. And finally, a dry environment can of course naturally produce the kind of mummies our favorite Wild West museums have propped up in corners. Whatever the cause, there are LOTS of dessicated saints on display, some dating back hundreds of years and others recent enough to have been photographed in life. In some cases, the term “incorruptible” seems perhaps overly generous. When the devout and lovely-in-life Bernadette of Lourdes was exhumed in 1919, a witness described the body thus: “The body is practically mummified, covered with patches of mildew and quite a notable layer of salts, which appear to be calcium salts… The skin has disappeared in some places, but it is still present on most parts of the body.” Readers of the above might be surprised to find out that not only was this considered good news and proof of incorruptibility, but that her mildewed and skinless corpse has been on display in a fairy tale style glass coffin for nearly a hundred years, and is widely considered to be among the most beautiful of the holy dead. However, seekers of proof of the miraculous might benefit from knowing that the hauntingly beautiful face and hands seen by thousands of pilgrims were in fact made by a designer of fashion mannequins in Paris.  Via Atlas Obscura

    Zombie, vampire or saint?

    A grave disturbed, the coffin opened, and the body of a young girl, years dead, freakishly un-decomposed: Undead monster or miracle of faith? It depends on who’s asking. 

    Under other circumstances, being discovered in a state of less than natural rot can be bad news for a corpse. In Germany and Italy such undecayed dead were considered highly suspect and likely to be named vampire and have a brick crammed in their undead mouth.

    But the rules are different for potential saints. Where some see evidence of the rampaging undead, and others might see a really just slightly-less-than-funky corpse, the right people saw what has been come to be called “incorruptibility” - which is a good thing if you want to be saint. It’s also a good thing if you are a local church that would like to lure visitors by displaying a dead lady in a box for a few hundred years.

    First class relics, or bodies and parts of bodies of saints, have long been among the Catholic church’s most revered artifacts, and these “Incorruptibles” are the best one might ask for, in terms of attracting the curious masses into your church. The mysteriously preserved body of a the particularly pious were seen as an indication of potential saintliness, their exhumed bodies expected to give off a sweet odor known as the “Odor of Sanctity”. This alone was not reason for canonization, but it was a step in the right direction. 

    There are in reality, many reasons a corpse might not decay at a normal rate. In cases of a cold and humid environment, a process known as adipocere can transform the body’s fat into a waxy substance resistant to decay. Bodies buried in lime can become saponified, transforming that fat into something akin to soap. And finally, a dry environment can of course naturally produce the kind of mummies our favorite Wild West museums have propped up in corners.

    Whatever the cause, there are LOTS of dessicated saints on display, some dating back hundreds of years and others recent enough to have been photographed in life.

    In some cases, the term “incorruptible” seems perhaps overly generous. When the devout and lovely-in-life Bernadette of Lourdes was exhumed in 1919, a witness described the body thus:

    “The body is practically mummified, covered with patches of mildew and quite a notable layer of salts, which appear to be calcium salts… The skin has disappeared in some places, but it is still present on most parts of the body.”

    Readers of the above might be surprised to find out that not only was this considered good news and proof of incorruptibility, but that her mildewed and skinless corpse has been on display in a fairy tale style glass coffin for nearly a hundred years, and is widely considered to be among the most beautiful of the holy dead. However, seekers of proof of the miraculous might benefit from knowing that the hauntingly beautiful face and hands seen by thousands of pilgrims were in fact made by a designer of fashion mannequins in Paris. 

    Via Atlas Obscura

    Via Atlas Obscura The Vampire Plague of Venice It’s bad enough when the plague rolls into town, but the citizens of Venice apparently also did battle with vampires. In 1629-1630 the black death descended on Italy, killing as many as 280,000 people. In isolated and crowded Venice, the disease hit hard, taking nearly a third of the population: 46,000 lives out of a population of just 140,000. The death and resulting chaos deeply brought the once great maritime empire to its knees. In an attempt to prevent disasters like this, Venice had long ago built two quarantine islands on the outskirts of the city, known as Lazzaretto Vecchio (Old Quarantine) and Lazzaretto Nuovo (New Quarantine). During normal times, these islands functioned primarily as a filter, waylaying incoming ships as they entered the city so that crew and goods could be inspected for signs of disease. But in the desperate times that came with the outbreak of the black death, citizens were taken by force and marooned on the islands, where they were left to die. Mass graves containing thousands of bodies have been uncovered on both islands in recent years. But more distressingly than plague bodies, recent excavations also uncovered the skull of a woman with a brick jammed in her mouth, leaving her in an eternal scream. This was the prescribed method in the mid 17th century for dealing with “Shroud Eaters”, a type of vampire also known as “The Chewing Dead”. These particular vampires were believed to be able to cause death and disease from the comfort of their own graves, laying there in the dark, possessed and chewing at their burial garments. Vigilant citizens who somehow noticed unsettling masticating sounds emerging from the grave, or spotted the blood-stained mouths of the recently dead (a naturally occurring side effect of decomposition) took it upon themselves to put an end to the Shroud Eater’s reign of terror by inserting a brick in their mouth. Although stories of the chewing dead and the treatments for them had long been a part of vampire lore, finding actual evidence of the practice is extremely rare. The excavation referred to in the article took place in 2009 and you can find out more about the discovery of the ‘Vampire of Venice’ by clicking here.

    Via Atlas Obscura

    The Vampire Plague of Venice

    It’s bad enough when the plague rolls into town, but the citizens of Venice apparently also did battle with vampires.

    In 1629-1630 the black death descended on Italy, killing as many as 280,000 people. In isolated and crowded Venice, the disease hit hard, taking nearly a third of the population: 46,000 lives out of a population of just 140,000. The death and resulting chaos deeply brought the once great maritime empire to its knees.

    In an attempt to prevent disasters like this, Venice had long ago built two quarantine islands on the outskirts of the city, known as Lazzaretto Vecchio (Old Quarantine) and Lazzaretto Nuovo (New Quarantine). During normal times, these islands functioned primarily as a filter, waylaying incoming ships as they entered the city so that crew and goods could be inspected for signs of disease.

    But in the desperate times that came with the outbreak of the black death, citizens were taken by force and marooned on the islands, where they were left to die. Mass graves containing thousands of bodies have been uncovered on both islands in recent years.

    But more distressingly than plague bodies, recent excavations also uncovered the skull of a woman with a brick jammed in her mouth, leaving her in an eternal scream. This was the prescribed method in the mid 17th century for dealing with “Shroud Eaters”, a type of vampire also known as “The Chewing Dead”. These particular vampires were believed to be able to cause death and disease from the comfort of their own graves, laying there in the dark, possessed and chewing at their burial garments. Vigilant citizens who somehow noticed unsettling masticating sounds emerging from the grave, or spotted the blood-stained mouths of the recently dead (a naturally occurring side effect of decomposition) took it upon themselves to put an end to the Shroud Eater’s reign of terror by inserting a brick in their mouth.

    Although stories of the chewing dead and the treatments for them had long been a part of vampire lore, finding actual evidence of the practice is extremely rare.

    The excavation referred to in the article took place in 2009 and you can find out more about the discovery of the ‘Vampire of Venice’ by clicking here.

    The “science” of Edward Cullen, a sparkly vampire Many elements of science fiction have their roots in actual science, so why couldn’t the same be true of Edward Cullen? For those of you who have not heard of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series (all one or two of you), Edward Cullen is a dreamy vampire who is madly in love with a human girl (see: irony). He has classic vampire traits: he really wants to drink human blood (but he abstains!), and he’s icy cold to the touch. And he has not-so-classic vampire traits: he sparkles in the sunlight (sunlight which he tries to avoid, because sparkling publicly would give away his non-humanness). What would you say if I told you I could explain Edward Cullen (everything but his hair, that is) using science? Intrigued? Click the photo of R-Patz to find out more! Via Try Nerdy.

    The “science” of Edward Cullen, a sparkly vampire

    Many elements of science fiction have their roots in actual science, so why couldn’t the same be true of Edward Cullen? For those of you who have not heard of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series (all one or two of you), Edward Cullen is a dreamy vampire who is madly in love with a human girl (see: irony). He has classic vampire traits: he really wants to drink human blood (but he abstains!), and he’s icy cold to the touch. And he has not-so-classic vampire traits: he sparkles in the sunlight (sunlight which he tries to avoid, because sparkling publicly would give away his non-humanness).

    What would you say if I told you I could explain Edward Cullen (everything but his hair, that is) using science?

    Intrigued? Click the photo of R-Patz to find out more! Via Try Nerdy.

    Archaeology of the Undead Lots of press has been given in the past week to two late 7th to early 9th century burials found at the site of Kilteasheen in Ireland. According to the news reports and the documentary (which won’t air in the U.S. until 2012, but which you can see on YouTube… for now), archaeologists excavating at the site from 2005-2009 uncovered over 130 graves.  Two of them - both males - were buried with stones in their mouths, and one of the men also had a large stone on top of his torso.  Aside from a 2008 report of a 4,000-year-old burial, these two early 8th century Irish burials seem to be the oldest evidence of what may be the practice of preventing “revenants” (zombies, vampires, and other undead people) from returning to the land of the living. Check out this excellent blog post by Kristina Killgrove about archaeological ‘revenants’ and be sure to watch the documentary about the ‘vampire’ burials in Ireland - now available on Youtube!

    Archaeology of the Undead

    Lots of press has been given in the past week to two late 7th to early 9th century burials found at the site of Kilteasheen in Ireland. According to the news reports and the documentary (which won’t air in the U.S. until 2012, but which you can see on YouTube… for now), archaeologists excavating at the site from 2005-2009 uncovered over 130 graves.  Two of them - both males - were buried with stones in their mouths, and one of the men also had a large stone on top of his torso.  Aside from a 2008 report of a 4,000-year-old burial, these two early 8th century Irish burials seem to be the oldest evidence of what may be the practice of preventing “revenants” (zombies, vampires, and other undead people) from returning to the land of the living.

    Check out this excellent blog post by Kristina Killgrove about archaeological ‘revenants’ and be sure to watch the documentary about the ‘vampire’ burials in Ireland - now available on Youtube!

    Vampire Slaying Kit For Sale! A BB reader spotted this antique vampire-killing kit at an antiques show this weekend. You may purchase it from Best of France Antiques in Buckingham, Pennsylvanie. Included are a pistol, a stake, garlic, holy water, mirror, bible, silver bullets, and crucifixes. It’s $9,000, which is quite a bargain if you are in need of such a kit. I’m somewhat sceptical, but it does look awesome and the article contains some interesting links to ‘genuine’ kits…

    Vampire Slaying Kit For Sale!

    A BB reader spotted this antique vampire-killing kit at an antiques show this weekend. You may purchase it from Best of France Antiques in Buckingham, Pennsylvanie. Included are a pistol, a stake, garlic, holy water, mirror, bible, silver bullets, and crucifixes. It’s $9,000, which is quite a bargain if you are in need of such a kit.

    I’m somewhat sceptical, but it does look awesome and the article contains some interesting links to ‘genuine’ kits…

    So, whilst reading yesterday’s Guardian on my lunchbreak, I came across this interesting little factoid:

    “Vampire bites, werewolf attacks and alien kidnappings - Lloyds of London has insured people for all these eventualities. Across the industry as a whole, more than 40,000 policies have been sold to insure people against alien abductions.”

    Just…wow. And people say *I’m* weird.