Mar 6, 2009
Real vampire sightings are not just the work of modern day fiction, a skeleton uncovered from a grave in Venice is being alleged as the first recognized case of ‘vampires’ extensively referred to in present day records.
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Matteo Borrini of the University of Florence in Italy discovered the bones of a woman with a small block in her mouth while digging mass graves of plague fatalities from the Middle Ages on Lazzaretto Nuovo Island in Venice which was removed from a mass grave of victims of the Venetian plague of 1576.
During the time period the woman perished, many individuals conceived that the plague was spread by ‘vampires’ which, rather than consuming human’s blood, spread illness by gnawing on their coverings after death. Grave diggers positioned blocks in the mouths of believed vampires to impede them from gnawing the coverings, Matteo stated.
The urban myth depicts Vampires as possessing a variety of supplemental powers and personality characteristics, radically changeable in different traditions, and is a familiar subject of folklore, movies, and present day fiction. Vampires are believed to be enormously powerful, possessing fangs, and an inability to be exposed to daylight or holy water Whilst they enjoy a long existence and have an incredible healing capability, they are not as legend tells it, thought to be outright immortal.
Additional characteristics of the traditional Vampire is the possession of supernatural physical abilities such as, agility, hearing, increased smelling capacity and of course, omitting no shadow. It is believed that Vampires also have quadrochromatic vision; while we humans have just three kinds of conoids in our eye vampires possessed four, the fourth being regulated to be near-infrared. It is understood that they are able to close themselves down for decades, desiccating down to this biologically inactive condition and entering what is commonly recognized as an ‘undead’ phase whereby they cannot be destroyed other than by decapitation, burning, or puncture of the heart by a wooden implement.
Vampire legend implies that they principally bite the victim’s neck, drawing out the blood commencing with the carotid artery. In mythology and popular tradition, the expression usually relates to a ideology that one can gain supernatural powers by consuming human blood. In addition, Werewolves are occasionally thought to become vampires following death, and vampires are frequently believed to possess the capacity to metamorphose themselves into wolves.
The above is of course the stuff of urban legend and our movie screens and works of fiction however, this latest find in Venice is probably as close as we are going to get in terms of real vampire sightings.