It’s a nightmare come true: A Bulgarian vampire who was nailed to his final resting place by a metal spike was discovered during a dig at a spooky cemetery.
After a skeleton that was discovered in the southern town of Sozopol, the ancient skeleton, which has been identified as a 35 to 40-year-old guy, is the only one to ever have a spike pushed near its heart in this manner.
According to legend, the man—whom his medieval contemporaries believed to be a vampire—was pinned to his grave with a ploughshare, the metal end of a plough, to stop him from rising at midnight and terrorizing the living.
The discovery was made at the Perperikon site, in the east of the country, during a dig led by the ‘Bulgarian Indiana Jones’ Professor Nikolai Ovcharov.
A group heading by Professor Ovcharov unearthed another 700-year-old skeleton of a man pinned down in his earth in a church in the Black Sea town of Sozopol.
According to Pagan belief, people who were considered bad during their lifetimes might turn into vampires after death unless stabbed in the chest with an iron or wooden rod before being buried.
These ‘vampires’ were often, intellectuals, aristocrats and clerics.
