The truth behind stories of zombie and vampire graves may be more complicated and less gruesome than previously imagined.
This serves as a cautionary tale for those, like myself, with vampires on the brain. Even scientists, sober, serious scholars that they are, can be guilty of this malady. But who can really blame them? You dig up a centuries-old grave to find a skeleton that has obviously been treated in some way anomalous to the norm, say buried facedown or with its head separated from its body, what are you supposed to think? That person was OBVIOUSLY believed to be a vampire by those who interred it, and thus efforts were made to see to it the corpse stayed put in the grave. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of garlic, right?
Turns out, though, what is so obvious might be incorrect. There might have been OTHER ritual reasons for burying the dead in such a manner, something that had nothing to do with preventing that person from returning as a revenant. The dead might have been prisoners of war, say, or convicts, and the irregularity of their interment a means of further punishing them after death, indicative of shame or some such. Makes sense. But if you dig up a body and find a stake poking out of its ribs, safe bet it’s a vampire.