Vampires

The idea of the vampire has caused some extreme behaviour. In October 1974 a drunkard was lured to the home of a Mr Lorca in Germany. Promising him food and shelter, instead, Mr Lorca descended on the man and bit him hard on the neck, drawing blood. Passing out, when the drunkard came round, he rushed out of the house and went to the police. Arriving a short time later, they found Mr Lorca asleep in a coffin with blood on his lips. Mr Lorca, it seems, liked to be called Count, ate only raw meat and was only active at night. Strange behaviour: Polish immigrant to the UK, Demetrious Myicura, was found dead in 1973. His room was covered in ceremoniously placed garlic. Said to have been terrified of avampire attack, he choked to death on a clove of garlic he had placed in his mouth to protect him while he slept.

Although tragic, we can see a degree of irony in such cases. But ideas of vampirism can affect entire societies. For instance, the Kashubs are a Christian sect of Slavs living mainly around Ontario who retain many pagan practices. As professor of Slavic languages Jan Perkowski discovered when he visited a Kashub farm in 1968, principal is their belief in vampires. Indeed, one wife had her upper incisors removed because she was a vampire. Upon death, elaborate measures must be taken otherwise the person will rise at midnight and suck the life and blood from family members. Mythical suckers: The above cases are modern survivals of a rich vampire mythology. Consider the ‘al", the half human, halfanimal vampire from Armenian folklore, thought to be based on the alu of Babylonian myth. One eyed with iron teeth, tusks and snake-like hair, it wears a triangular hat that makes it invisible. Its victim is the pregnant woman and her unborn child, whom it strangles. The best defence against the al is to surround yourself with, and use, iron implements. The empusa is an ancient Greek vampire spirit which often appears as an alluring young woman. Its intention is to seduce young men and eventually enter them and consume their flesh and blood.

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A paper has been published demonstrating the impossibility of the concept of vampires, drawing upon the fact that if vampires were among us then we would have seen a huge population explosion and their food supply (us) would have ran out."Two physicists have published an academic paper where they demonstrate, by virtue of geometric progression, that vampires could not exist, since they would almost immediately deplete their entire food supply (a.k.a, all of us)."

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A headmaster in Boston has had to make a statement to reassure people that Boston Latin School does not have any vampires. The rumors started following reports of 'vampires' roaming the halls and the police being called to investigate a report of a student being bitten."The headmaster of one of the city's most prestigious exam schools is dealing with an unusual rumor sweeping student classrooms.

There are no vampires at Boston Latin School, says headmaster Lynne Moone Teta. Seriously. Students at the school, which was founded in 1635, began e-mailing news organizations Wednesday night with the strange story ofvampires roaming the halls."

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A skeleton exhumed from a grave in Venice is being claimed as the first known example of the "vampires" widely referred to in contemporary documents. Matteo Borrini of the University of Florence in Italy found the skeleton of a woman with a small brick in her mouth while excavating mass graves of plague victimsfrom the Middle Ages on Lazzaretto Nuovo Island in Venice.At the time the woman died, many people believed that the plague was spread by "vampires" which, rather than drinking people's blood, spread disease by chewing on their shrouds after dying.

Grave-diggers put bricks in the mouths of suspected vampires to stop them doing this, Borrini says.The belief in vampires probably arose because blood is sometimes expelled from the mouths of the dead, causing the shroud to sink inwards and tear. Borrini, who presented his findings at a meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in Denver, Colorado, last week, claims this might be the first suchvampire to have been forensically examined. The skeleton was removed from a mass grave of victims of the Venetian plague of 1576. However, Peer Moore-Jansen of Wichita State University in Kansas says he has found similar skeletons in Poland and that while Borrini's finding is exciting, "claiming it as the first vampire is a little ridiculous". Borrini says his study details the earliest grave to show archaeological "exorcism evidence against vampires".

Copyright: NewScientist