Vampire in Venice

This was a fascinating article about how people actually dealt with vampires. I'm surprised that archeological evidence of vampire slayings weren't found before. In the "Historical Evidence" section of the book that we're reading, the corpses of "vampires" are described as bloated with blood seeping out the mouth and other openings in the body. This was the case in pretty much all of the stories. The Polish legends were the ones, I believe, that thought that vampires would be swimming in their coffins in the blood of their victims. Back to the article: as creepy as it is to dig up and reuse a mass grave, it does make sense if the number of dead people isn't much less than the number of people still living. Medieval science and medicine would have no way of knowing how a body naturally decomposes, so it does make sense that the response to seeing a "vampire" is to shove a stake through the heart, a brick in the mouth or whatever to kill it.