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What may have been an exorcism of a vampire in Venice is now drawing bad blood among scientists arguing over whether gravediggers were attempting to defeat an undead monster.
The controversy begins with a mass grave of 16th-century plague victims on the Venetian island of Nuovo Lazzaretto. The remains of a woman there apparently had a brick shoved in her mouth, perhaps to exorcise the corpse in what may have been the first vampire burial known in archaeology, said forensic anthropologist Matteo Borrini of the University of Florence in Italy.
Vampire superstitions were common when plague devastated Europe, and much, if not all, of this folklore could be due to misconceptions about the natural stages of decomposition, Borrini said. The recently dead can often appear unnervingly alive. As the corpse's skin shrinks and pulls back, for example, hair and nails may appear to grow after death.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/30/vampire-plague-victim-venice_n_1556091.html
The suggestion is this brick in the mouth was an attempt to incapacitate a nachzehrer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NachzehrerA Nachzehrer is a sort of German vampire. Nachzehrer translates "afterwards (nach) devourer (zehrer)". The Nachzehrer was prominent in the folklore of the northern regions of Germany, including Silesia and Bavaria, and also with the Kashubes of Northern Poland. Though officially a vampire, they are also similar to zombies, and in many ways different from either undead. The nachzehrer is not a blood-sucker, but rather consumes already dead bodies.
A nachzehrer is created most commonly after suicide, and sometimes from an accidental death. According to German lore, you don't become one from being bitten, or scratched. It is just something that happens. Nachzehrers are also related to sickness and disease. If a large group of people died of the plague, the first person to have died is believed to be a nachzehrer.
Typically a Nachzehrer devours its family members upon waking. Its also been said that they devour themselves, including their funeral shroud, and the more of themselves they eat, the more of their family they physically drain. It is not unlikely that the idea of the dead eating themselves might have risen from bodies in open graves who had been partly eaten by scavengers like rats.
Some Kashubes believed that the Nachzehrer would leave its grave, shapeshifting into the form of a pig, and pay a visit to their family members to feast on their blood. In addition, the Nachzehrer was able to ascend to a church belfry to ring the bells, bringing death to anyone who hears them. Another lesser known ability of the Nachzehrer is the power it had to bring death by causing its shadow to fall upon someone. Those hunting the Nachzehrer in the graveyard would listen for grunting sounds that it would make while it munched on its grave clothes.[1]
From the news story:
However, now other researchers are openly deriding this claim. Where some might see an exorcism, these researchers see a brick accidentally falling into a skull's mouth.
