Forget Edward Cullen. It’s all about the Vampire of Venice.
Why?
1. She doesn’t sparkle.
2. She’s real.
Forensic archaeologists recently finished their reconstruction of the skull of a medieval plague victim discovered in a mass grave in Italy in 2006. The “Vampire of Venice” was found with a brick inserted into her jaw, a common post-mortem procedure believed to expel evil spirits from the bodies of alleged vampires.
Among the many superstitions of people in the Middle Ages was the belief that bloody corpses were the result of a vampire feeding. The Vampire of Venice has what appears to traces of blood on her corpse, which explains the brick in her mouth. But was she really a vampire? Decomposing bodies often leak “purge fluid” which can look a lot like blood, so this is a more likely, albeit less fun, explanation. Either way, I bet she didn’t twinkle in the sunlight.
