An iron bar was buried with Sozopol’s toothless “vampire skeleton” to prevent it from emerging from the grave
The vampire skeleton of SozopolCredit: Bin im Garten; CC-BY-SA-3.0 The Black Sea town of Sozopol in Bulgaria has become home to the buried remains of “vampire skeletons.”
These skeletons date back to the Middle Ages. Bulgaria is reported to be home to at least 100 burials of vampire skeletons.
In Slavic folklore, the existence of vampires was a common tradition but especially popular in Bulgaria. The vampire was considered a beautiful supernatural being who sucked the blood of maidens. The only way to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 the vampire was to stick a stake or wooden rod into his chest.
In 2014, archaeologists discovered many tombs containing skeletons with wooden or iron rods pierced into the chest cavities. Some of the tombs were older than the Middle Ages. However, Bulgarian historians claimed that the practice of nailing the dead with rods was common in some villages until the first decade of the 20th century.
The belief that the villagers had was that it would prevent the dead from rising at midnight and terrorizing everyone. For the villagers, sinking an iron bar was not the only way to kill a vampire. They also pulled out the skeleton’s teeth.
Evidence of extracted teeth was found in a 700-year-old toothless skeleton found in the ruins of a church in Sozopol. The skeleton had also been stabbed with an iron bar.
The skeletons and superstition about vampires in the area eventually led Bram Stoker to write about his famous fictional character, Dracula, in 1897.
As for the Bulgarian vampire skeletons, historians still consider the origin of the superstition a mystery.