“Since the 12th Century folktales have swept across Western Europe, leaving terror and panic in their wake.”
The discovery of vampire graves is not an unnatural phenomena, in fact, recently, more vampire graves are being uncovered by archaeologists in Poland. And the primary element in both of these discoveries? Disease. The Polish vampire graves were believed to be the result of uneducated fears of disease, being spread by monsters. The vampires discovered in Ireland were found next to a mass grave, believed to be a Black Death burial site, some 3000 corpses piled together in shallow graves, underneath paving stones.
Archaeologists discovered to more grave sites, on the outside of the main mass grave site. Two men were buried there, at different times, but both had suffered violent deaths, as there were blade marks on their bones, and both were buried in a horrific manner. Their arms, legs, hands, and feet were broken, and bound together around a large boulder, and stuffed inside their jaws was a large rock. The shock of finding these vampire graves was that they are dated roughly between 600 and 800 A.D., –which is before any vampire folklore or fiction was recorded, meaning vampires have been around in oral tradition and superstition, for a very long time.