A "vampire grave" containing a corpse with stake through its heart was unearthed Thursday by famed archaeologist Nikolai Ovcharov, Bulgaria’s "Indiana Jones."
According to The Telegraph U.K., the skeleton dates back to the 13th century, and was found at the ruins of Perperikon, an ancient Thracian city located in Bulgaria near the border of Greece.
"We have no doubts that once again we’re seeing an anti-vampire ritual being carried out," said Professor Ovcharov.
He explained that for years, paranoid townspeople would often drive a stake through the recently deceased to ensure they wouldn't rise from the dead and terrorize the living. In this case, the roughly 40-year-old man was staked with what appears to be a ploughshare, an iron rod from a plough.
"The ploughshare weighs almost 2 pounds and is dug into the body into a broken shoulder bone. You can clearly see how the collarbone has literally popped out," he said. "Often [the stakes] were applied to people who had died in unusual circumstances — such as suicide."
The Daily Beast reported that the city, which dates back to 5,000 BC, is home to other burial oddities as well. Two years ago, Ovcharov found bodies with iron rings and heavy stones pinning them down, and sometimes hands bound together at the wrist.
In fact, the newest body impaled on the ploughshare is not the first body found with a pierced heart. In 2012, a pair of suspected vampires were found in the coastal town of Sozopol with metal takes between their ribs. Quickly dubbed "the twin vampires of Sozopol, the Bulgarian Natural History Museum put them on display in the capital of Sofia, which boosted tourism significantly.
Visitors to the exhibit learned that before the glamorous Hollywood heyday that's expressed itself through franchises like "Interview with the Vampire," "Twilight," and "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter," vampires may or may not have been identified with the moniker of "vampire."
Hundreds of years ago, they were often thought to be more like demon-possessed zombies — coming back from the dead half-decomposed, and looking to eat or drink whatever stood in their path.
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