The discovery of the graves of suspected vampires in Bulgaria may turn into a tourism gold mine, according to local news reports.
During excavations of a monastery in the city of Sozopol, Bulgaria's National Museum of History says it unearthed two skeletons that showed the deceased person had been stabbed through the heart with an iron rod.
"This was (the) customary way (in) Bulgarian medieval tradition to deal with people which were presumed to be vampires," the museum's website says.
People at the time of the burial of the skeletons, about 700 years ago, thought that stabbing the corpses multiple times with an iron rod through the heart would prevent the dead from rising and attacking the living, museum director Bozhidar Dimitrov said, according to a report from the Sofia News Agency.
Dimitrov said more than 100 such "vampire" burials have been discovered in Bulgaria over the years, according to the Sofia News Agency.
But headlines of the latest find have piqued interest in the U.S., Europe and Asia, the report said, and tour operators are fielding inquiries about what it called "vampire vacations."
Already, people were lining up at the excavation site at the monastery of St. Nicolas the Wonderworker, the Sofia News Agency reported.
Big lines for vampires could pump even more blood into the country's expanding tourism industry. Bulgaria led the European Union last year in the increase in hotel occupancy by foreigners, with numbers up almost 20% over the previous year.
No stats on how many of those folks slept with the lights on, however.
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So where are the werewolves???
Don't you know your Eastern European supernatural history? When a werewolf dies, he or she becomes a vampire unless they confess their sins. All these are supposed to be unconfessed werewolves or victims of vampires.
Heroy amm! rawr!
They don't show up until the second movie.
Why in London, of course.
Wooden steaks, not iron rods, to kill vampires
That's what I thought, too.
Folklore dating past wooden stakes was actually iron rods . Hightened iron (major componaet of blood) supposedly is why it was lethal to "vamps."
Do you carve those from wooden steer?
Would those steaks be well-done or medium-rare?
Actually it is Iron rods. See wooden is a common misconception because of hollywood and book writers. But the old Anglo-catholic way was to nail them with a Iron rod. Iron has holy importance to the old testament. The more pure you made it the longer it stood up. (The way of making steel had not been discovered yet). There for all of churches crosses were made of iron.
The old process of making these iron rods was to melt down the cross into rod shapes with spiked ends and a diameter head on it... .kinda like a nail. It was meant to "nail" the dead back down. Since the Rod was made with holy cross iron it was impossible for a unholy creature to remove it.
i believe you mean "stakes". Not even a wooden steak would be such a bad death.
Hope it works out, Bulgaria could use the tourism dollars, as well as Romania(Transylvania).
The new vampires of today are the politicians
Tourists who ask questions about why the bones don't sparkle will be shot.
huh?
Lol.
"Twilight"
i believe
Brau..HAHAHAHAHA
And the iron rod worked every time? Seems legit.
I agree with Deez. I dont see anymore Vampires so it must have worked. They need to change the movies now that we know.
Only a Witch would accuse someone of being a Vampire!
Next they'll be telling us they found the Cullen lair.....Oh brother......
No, this is an article about Vampires, not homosexuals.
The iron rods or wooden stakes were driven through the chest of the suspected undead while in the coffin in the ground to prevent them from rising out of the grave. Was never any intention of actually killing the undead, just to keep them from getting out
Not one of those bodies stabbed with an iron rod ever came back as a vampire, i'm calling this myth 'confirmed'
Yea ok so because two skeletons were found with remnants of stab wounds, thousands from across the world will flock to Bulgaria to go to a museum. Very realistic.
"Dimitrov said more than 100 such "vampire" burials have been discovered in Bulgaria over the years"
not 2...more than 100.
and they are talking about vampire vacations, not just to see the skeletons.
I get very tired of the media disregarding the very true existance of the vampire. They still exist and run much of the worlds governments. Feeding has been taking place in Africa predominantly for many years and the thousands of simply missing people around the world have been harvested for food. we need to take this danger seriously.
Thanks for the tip!
Along with Zombies.
Sure.
Thank you, I needed a good laugh.