Original subtitles

vampires night lurking creatures that

prey on our deepest fears at the margin

between life and death

fiction and fantasy have molded our

perception of these night stalkers but

what is the truth behind the myth of the

vampire vampires were somewhere between

a nuisance and in danger they could

curdle the milk in your cows they could

steal your sheep they could physically

attack you or your family now forensics

medicine and science are uniting to

expose the facts behind the fiction

natural trace of decomposition can build

into the appearance of the vampire the

Living Dead they're proving vampires are

much more than simple horror stories

this takes replace their favorite things

to stop this man from transforming

himself for some people vampires are

still a terrifying reality

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I saw him coming at night they were

sucking my blood this is my pitch book I

used it to remove his heart to unlock

the secrets of the vampire will travel

across Europe and Beyond and find a

proof that could even upgrade vampires

from creatures of legend to historical

fact in 1897 a mysterious boat's slowly

floated it Swain would be harder than

all these coast of England everyone on

board was either missing or dead the

very instant she was touched an immense

dog sprang up on deck from below and

running forward jump from the bow onto

the sand making straight from steep

cliff where the churchyard hangs over

the lane it disappeared into the

darkness which seemed intensifies just

beyond the focus of the search right

with these words Bram Stoker's infamous

vampire Dracula was introduced to the

world and entered the popular psyche

everything everything that vampires in

contract

the archetypal image of the vampire as

we know it but where did Stoker's tale

of gothic horror originate and could

there be a real-life figure behind his

creation vampires exist in every culture

china's shanxi

yerim a yahoo from australia he indian

ezra park the jaracaca of brazil or the

many european incarnations such as the

Strix Strigoi Rico Lucas revelant poopy

vampire Drac all such creatures predate

the Bible yet they weren't just myths

they were very real reanimated corpses

that feed on the living to prevent their

own decay

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damn Jones is an author and historian

with a particular interest in society's

portrayal of vampires the rules in

vampire stories in Europe but it really

comes to a head in the 18th century when

the under theologian Callum I started to

get a dossier of vampire tales actually

in an attempt to debunk vampire myth

unfortunately what that does is give a

story's legitimacy because they're being

engaged with by the scientific men at

the age

by the turn of the 19th century the

vampire myth starts feelings of Gothic

literature and so you have Polidori and

stuff like the vampire really template

for what Bram Stoker does when he writes

Dracula and every time you have the

vampire story reinvented it tightly

reflects the preoccupations and the

concerns of the society that's

reinventing in the 20th century you have

lost Farrar too and there's a kind of

strain of anti-semitism in it in Hammer

horror the vampire stories a lot more

bloody it's a lot more violent in n

Rice's interview with a vampire

you have a real undercurrent of

homosexuality and when you get to blade

say in the late 90s it is sort of

reciting futurism that again

characteristic of that society

fictional vampires continue to reflect

our morality today if you look at the

21st century the Twilight movies and

books the vampires the geek but actually

there's a beautiful story in there as

well I mean that's totally 21st century

models all over

preying on our ethics was no doubt at

the forefront of Stoker's mind when he

dreamt up Dracula if this symmetry with

account first bites Lucy Westenra to

impure a 19 year old virgin she

eventually transformed into a lusty

vampire herself who terrorizes North

London biting young children and this

mixture of sex and scandal that Stoker

was doing pretty deliberately to

titillate and to scare under shock his

audience probably helped build a sales

figures at the same time Bram Stoker's

Dracula is so successful it hasn't been

out of print for over a century yet

unlike Stoker's count the real-life

vampires of history were not charismatic

gentleman with a black cape mesmerizing

stare and upon shock for nubile young

women the vampires of the Greek folklore

will not glamorous at like the Hollywood

vampire

they were bloated corpses that spread

all diseases you're not going to get

people fooling over deformed

Mediterranean peasants slobbering along

biting chunks out of your breasts now

recent discoveries on a small Greek

island are revealing who these creatures

really were and what it took to become

one

professor Hector Williams has been

conducting archeological research on the

Greek island of Lesbos for over 30 years

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but it was in 1988 that he made a

discovery that could put flesh on to the

stories of vampires

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I'm standing on top of the ancient city

wall of middle Eenie

for five seasons with more than 40

workmen we dug on both sides of it and

around it

dozens of discoveries emerged a Roman

brothel over there the Hellenistic

industrial district down here pottery

from the age of SAPO 600 years before

Christ down below but nothing prepared

us for the remarkable discovery we were

going to make at the far end of the wall

built actually into the wall itself it

was a discovery that shook the very

foundations of archeology proof that

vampires may not just be creatures of

legend but of historical fact we're here

on the edge of the ancient city wall and

it was at this point that we discovered

the wall had been cut in two and a crypt

very carefully excavated in which a

wooden coffin had been lowered and heavy

stones placed on top for some reason

somebody had gone to the huge effort of

digging a grave right into the

foundations of the city walls but that

wasn't the only mystery it stretched

along here for about two meters and in

it were sprawling the remains of a

middle-aged man creature our students

nicknamed glad after Vlad the Impaler

Vlad the Impaler was a 15th century

ruler of Romania and was probably the

inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula

and like his counterpart

Hector's Vlad came to a sticky end he

had spike driven through his throat

middle and his ankle to hold him in the

tomb

not a normal burial a corpse nailed into

his coffin 320 centimeter long metal

stakes driven through his body into his

ankle pelvis and neck this was unique we

found over 50 burials in this area of

men and women and this one had received

very special treatment the treatment of

a suspected vampire so who was glad and

why was he considered to be a vampire

Hector turned to greet born paleo

pathologist anastasius le key for

answers she found that far from the

fanged figure of fiction this vampire

was surprisingly ordinary he was mister

average but for some reason of what his

death the villagers believed that he

would become a vampire or a revenant so

when she sit down they took every

measure they could in order to prevent

him from striking back a building

aged 40 to 50 years Vlad had been fit

and strong he was probably a laborer and

had eaten a decent diet but for some

reason when he died he didn't get a

normal burial instead he'd been nailed

into a crude coffin and hidden right

inside the city walls but why was he

treated in such a way I have had some

characteristics that made him suspect in

his lifetime so they weren't taking any

chances this was a man that they did not

want to see again alive or dead

why were the locals so scared of Ladd

and why was he considered to be a

vampire Clues may lie a thousand miles

to the west beneath a quintessential

English parish church since Leonard's

church in high in southern England is a

church with a secret alien pathologist

anastasius Aliki has come here not to

marvel at its grand stained-glass

windows but to pay homage to a

clandestine space beneath the chancel

a crypt containing the bones of over

4,000 people a place that may hold clues

to the origins of vampire belief there

are many theories about who we see in

where some say that there were the

victims of a great battle others that

they were the victim to the Black Death

but recent studies have found so inside

some of the skulls so we believe that

these were ordinary citizens of high and

in the 13th century when the church

needed to be expanded

there were dug up from the churchyard

and they were brought here there's

nothing unusual about this bone creeps

like they existed all over Europe and it

was not rare for the bones to be dug up

and put in a oh sure ease or creeps

forty miles south of Prague in the Czech

Republic the Church of All Saints in the

town of coot mahira has taken the idea

of bone crypts to the extreme known as

the Sedlec oh sorry this is the largest

bone tomb in Europe and holds the

remains of up to 70,000 people

originally a simple pile of bones dug up

from the graveyard like those in hive

when the church was extended in the 14th

century it wasn't until the 1870s that

it took on this macabre

gothic display there are four enormous

bell-shaped mounds in each corner of the

chapel and a colossal chandelier

containing at least one of every bone in

the human body hanging from the center

of the names the beds don't necessarily

stay buried forever in many cultures

they dig up the forties and they keep

the ball in ER and mausoleum a family

grave or inari although rarely as ornate

bone crypts and mausoleums are still

commonplace the world over

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my family has its own burial cloth on a

small island in Greece so one day I hope

with my bones will be transferred there

so that I can rest alongside my

ancestors

back on lesbos Hector Williams is

visiting a modern-day cemetery to see

whether this practice of relocating the

bones could explain the ancient Greeks

belief in Vampires sign in the village

cemetery mentions because of the small

size of the second cemetery of medellin

e we have relatives of the deceased

proceed with the exclamation of their

relatives in timely fashion after three

years post mortem even today bones are

being exhumed to free up space for new

burials we're here by a modern grave in

the cemetery one that will soon be

excused and the body placed in a box and

transferred to the charnel-house you can

see part of a leg bone coming out of the

ground there's a back bone here there's

a bit of rib coming up there with flesh

still on it and very conspicuous at the

end of the grave is the skull

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so could a familiarity with the remains

of the dead have led to a belief in the

undead the problem started when

something unexpected happen for example

when the villagers went to dig up the

body to traffic the bones and instead of

the skeleton

they found a corpse looking fresh so

when there were only two solutions

either that was the body of a saint or

they were dealing with a work of the

devil and in this case they thought they

were dealing with a vampire or a

revenant but could there be a more

natural explanation for the lack of

decay popular misconception is that a

body will decompose quite fast after

death but in fact nothing can be further

from the truth

Professor Richard Shepherd is one of the

UK's leading pathologists a forensics

expert in a real-life CSI he even

advises the British government on

mysterious deaths the speed at which a

body does decompose depends on the state

of the body at the time of death when

the ground in which the body is buried

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the body normally contains millions and

millions of bacteria mostly they're

beneficial to the body and help in

digestion help to an extent in

protecting the body against infection

because after death there's nothing left

for these bacteria to feed on and

they'll start to digest the body itself

this is the natural process of decay the

body's bacteria given with freedom to

feed and the result would normally be a

pile of bones ready to be moved into the

ossuary or mausoleum but they had to be

cleaned first between afar did not

necessarily know the connection between

the spread of bacteria and disease

however the ritualized treatment of the

bones gave them a way to protect the

living from the spread of contagion

washing horns with wine for example has

been known to act as a disinfectant

since he poker design 2500 years ago

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during the ritualized

treatment of the bones the Greeks were

literally protecting themselves from the

dead a process that could have lent

favor to details of vampires many areas

in Greece they use boiled wine and

vinegar as a defense against the

vampires or revenant and these might

have something to do with the

disinfectant properties of the

substances and there are other features

of decomposition that can also

substantiate the idea of the Living Dead

sometimes a corpse might even move

inside the grave one of the things that

occurs to a body after death is a

natural process rigor mortis the

stiffening of the muscles after death

some people believe it affects the body

permanently but that's not true it's a

temporary process and as the body

relaxes it may cause it to appear to

move within the coffin if there's

movement there it may also cause noises

to come out of the coffin as well

and this could give the impression that

the bodies are rising from the dead and

even the look of the corpse could

portray it as a vampire after death the

skin of the body dries out dehydrates

and shrinks a bit and this can give the

impression that stubble is growing on

the face blisters forms top surface of

the skin can peel off and slip off and

the fingernails are growing sometimes to

a considerable length we can curve a

little like a claw and this can give the

impression that the bodies to the live

hair is still growing fingernails are

still dry so that's no surprise that

Hollywood has taken these three natural

signs of decomposition the facial hair

growth the long fingernails and the

smooth skin as being signs of the

continuing life of this vampire after

there

what you get when you see these vampire

stories especially about the blood

around the mouth the rosy cheeks these

bodies apparently not decomposing as

they should according to science if

you're pushing the boundaries of what

science or medicine the cutting edge of

the day can explain I think that's one

reason one of the prime reasons why

people just get so mad for these vampire

stories and were they then to drive a

stake through the heart that would tend

to expel the gases that is developed in

the body after death make the body fart

it could certainly cause it to sigh and

this one doesn't reinforce their belief

that this body had in fact been alive

all the time so ignorant of the bodies

be composition cycle when it came to

transferring the remains to the Ossorio

mausoleum could offer evidence that

vampires are real

might be suggester rationale for the

stakes driven through the body of lad on

the island of Lesbos Greece has a long

tradition of Vampira revenue mythology

in the 17th to 19th century European

travelers would recount story of how

suspected vampires were exhumed and

nailed inside their caskets in order to

prevent them from arise again and I

think that's exactly what they found in

the case of Vlad here was a poor man who

for whatever reason had been assumed to

be a vampire so when he died he was

treated as such with stakes driven

through his body

they took a number of precautions to

make sure that this man did not return

from the dead they put the stakes

through him they put the wooden

sarcophagus around him they built the

special crypt for him they put the heavy

stones on top of the crypt to make sure

that the coffin could not be opened

there was a reason and we'll never know

the reason that they thought this man

was a threat to the living that he was a

potential vampire

glads discovery shook the archaeological

world and confirmed that vampires were

real but why Vlad was considered to be a

vampire remains a little more than

supposition likely they thought he was a

vampire because of his behavior in his

lifetime

there are dozen reasons why one might

have been thought to be a vampire

strange behavior on your part strange

family history particular evil

reputation mistake the priest might have

made in the burial there are all sorts

of reasons we don't know why they

thought this particular man was a

vampire we may never know for sure but

another even more mysterious grave was

soon to be found on lesbos one that

could provide the answers

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at the turn of the 21st century beside

the tiny Church of taxi arcus high above

Vlad's grave in the city walls of

Mitylene II a second mysterious burial

was unearthed one that may explain what

he took to become a vampire

1999 a team from the Greek

archaeological service was restoring

this medieval Chapel they were digging a

drainage ditch around it came across the

series of burials running down the hill

one up here perfectly normal one here

somewhat deformed individual with 216

centimeters stakes laid out on either

side of him it was these states that

provided the first clues that this

burial was unique estates falling

underground were too big to be coffee -

and there is no sign that they were

attached to anything so I believe that

they were placed there deliberately as a

preventive measure to stop this man from

transforming himself to his empire just

like black who had been treated as a

vampire when he died with stakes driven

through his body here lay a man who it

was expected would also rise from the

grave so why didn't the locals go

through with a necessary action that's

taking him in place at the time of his

funeral they weren't taking any chances

so they very carefully after wrapping

him in his winding-sheet

buried him within 24 hours of death in

usual Christian way facing the east for

the Last Judgement as a precaution they

put these two spikes beside him why they

didn't put them through him to keep him

in there we will never know but they

were there and they were intended to we

think act as talismans to keep him in

the grave

whilst the true nature of the taxi arcus

vampire remains unclear a discovery on

the other side of the world may reveal

the purpose of these talisman stakes in

1988 in the city of Mitylene II on the

Greek island of Lesbos Hector Williams

and his team of archaeologists unearthed

the remains of a vampire they named glad

his body nailed into his grave 10 years

later a second vampire was exhumed in a

churchyard just a few miles out of town

these two files have helped elevate the

vampires of Eastern Europe from mythical

beings to ones of historical fact but

why would someone be considered a

vampire in the first place clues may lie

on the other side of the world in 1990 a

series of shocking discoveries terrified

a sleepy American town in New England

archeologists working on a gravel pit

understand the crop that's dating back

nearly 300 years to the time of the

founding fathers the cemetery contained

the remains of an entire family but one

burial plot was distinct bearing the

initials JB when the coffin lid was

opened the archaeologists found that the

bones had been rearranged into the sign

of the skull and cross was this a pirate

or could there be a more startling

explanation

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forensic scientist Anastasius Aliki has

been reexamining the case for clues and

to see if the find can be linked in any

way to the vampires of lesbos Island

when the phones were first added it soon

became clear that there was a series of

lesions present the appearance the

distribution and the location of the

lesions point it out towards one disease

and that's tuberculosis also known as TB

so the disease would have spread from

the four-month flies onto his ribcage

and almost certainly it is what killed

him

tuberculosis is a terrible disease that

was rife in eastern America in the 18th

and 19th centuries a period known to

coincide with a spate of vampiric

activity so could there be a connection

between tuberculosis and vampires there

are a number of symptoms of tuberculosis

can be linked to vampirism for instance

conductive itis that red and inflamed

eyes that often make people dislike

going out in bright sunlight or there's

the pallor of the skin associated with

anemia of the disease or the thin and

thready pulse associated with the

debility of tuberculosis then of course

there's the fact that people

tuberculosis are commonly coughing up

blood via second understand there's an

argument for linking the symptoms of

tuberculosis which was also known as

consumption with the features of

vampirism

of course these diseases are highly

contagious so they'll stick within a

family group and so when one member the

family has died is quite likely that

other members of the family will die

soon after those who are infected would

lose the health slowly so it would

appear as if life was strained away from

them and that they were wasting away

I believe that this person died from

tuberculosis and his family caught the

disease as well and soon followed him to

the grave

the JB's family members died so soon

after him was a sure sign that he had

become a vampire and as the disease

spread hysteria may have gripped the

community they might have been an

inclination to dig up the corpse and

undertake the appropriate precautionary

action and there could have been other

indicators of vampire activity thanks to

the volume of people dying at the time

when many people are dying this will

lead to rapid burials barrels in shallow

graves and in the digging of those

graves other bodies will be disturbed

lead to scattering of the bones maybe

even body parts on the surface or

protruding full grave and this

appearance could give the impression

that the bodies are becoming alive again

and rising from the dead

it may have been quite natural to take

safety measures to ribery the remains to

weigh them down with stones or a heavy

casket or to stick them into the grave

to stop them rising again or perhaps in

the case of JB of simply rearranging his

bones by rearranging the bones they may

have believed that they were mobilizing

the corpse in the grave and that they

were preventing it from coming out again

and there is one further nail in the

coffin to link tuberculosis to vampires

50 miles away in an abandoned Cemetery

in Rhode Island later gravestone from

1841 it bears the inscription in memory

of Simon Whipple who died May 6th 1841

although consumptions vampire grasp has

seized that mortal frame consumption is

another name for tuberculosis so maybe

this is a proof of the link between

tuberculosis and vampires in New England

at least and the link even made it into

the popular literature of the time front

summary Arroway better known as Voltaire

is one of the greatest thinkers of the

18th century enlightenment and he wrote

in his philosophical dictionary that

vampires are corpses who went out of

their graves at night to suck the blood

of the living either at the throats of

stomachs after which they returned to

their cemeteries the person so sucked

wanes grew pale and fell into

consumption while the sucking corpses

grew facts got rosy and enjoyed an

excellent advertised

proof that in earlier times when

people's understanding of disease and

illness was limited superstition held

sway over fearful minds vying for the

18th century but you'd be wrong if you

thought that a belief in Vampires had

died out today in February 2004 the

authorities were called into the small

village of Cray over Southwest Romania

to investigate six people alleged to

have impaled the body of a villager Tom

Petra who according to them had

transformed himself into a vampire after

his death

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my brother-in-law died when he died he

became a vampire

the villagers believed that Petra was

returning from the grave and feasting on

his next of kin

did you know moving in Oporto there you

go I saw him coming at night he was

calling I was screaming he was sucking

our blood his relatives were gradually

fading away this will mark the union

Medicis I had stomach ache I Chantal O

everybody in the neighborhood witness

how bad I was feeling at night parameter

not me in Slavic society it is still

believed that a person's spirit lingers

for 40 days after death so there was

only one solution six weeks after his

funeral as midnight approached Petra's

family snuck into the cemetery and dug

up his corpse it condition confirmed

their worst suspicions

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we found him with his hands at his side

like this his neck was told and his

mouth was full of life a corpse full of

blood a sure sign that Petra had become

a vampire blood has a symbolism in many

religion there's the drinking of wine to

symbolize Jesus's blood in Christianity

but there's also the drinking of blood

to gain supernatural powers in many

other religions and so the presence of

blood around the mouth must have been

truly terrifying the villagers did what

their beliefs required results with our

part we work inside the grave and we did

everything properly this is my pitch

book we used it to remove the heart we

got this sheet in dollars in emulsion

and a dead man's heart is not supposed

to have blood in it if he isn't a

vampire witch panic on it

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you know they told us all to be Burnett

and we track the issues together with

water

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we drank the ashes and immediately we

felt better in Romania at least the

vampire is no legend it remains a very

real threat a night lurking creature

that preys on our deepest fears in the

margin between life and death

vampires entities that prey on your

lifeforce creatures of the night that

lurk in the borders between life and

death

modern medicine can explicate at least

some vampire cases but what had flared

the other vampires of Lesvos Island

it fell on anastasius illegally to

examine the remains of the taxi arcus

vampire she discovered that he was no

mr. average as Vlad had been the person

found in the doxiadis grave and had

severe facial deformities especially in

the area of the nose and the jaws and

there was evidence of disease like

lesions on the skull at probably a

fungal infection to the brain what I

think we have here is the poor division

to form and we know from folklore that

people with TB rabies or deformities

were thought to become vampires after

death and this is exactly what happened

in this case the physical condition may

have made people suspicious of them

added to outrageous behavior in his part

strange behavior on his part the

presence of the stakes does indicate a

suspected revenue

so they weren't taking any chances when

he was buried they put the stakes in and

covered him up and so he remained till

the fall of 1999 when we uncovered him

but why didn't they drive their snakes

homes as they had done with the earlier

discovered glad maybe they were

squeamish maybe they thought it was just

enough to have them there as a sort of

guardian of the grave fearing he would

rise again

the locals placed their vampire snakes

beside him in the coffin but anastasiya

thinks these snakes may have had a

practical purpose to the spikes inside

the grave were sharp and as the body

swell during the composition they would

have pierced the flesh and they would

not have released all the internal gases

by releasing the gases built up during

decay the internal organs would have

been exposed when the corpse would have

dried out that speeded up the rate of

the decay so after that if somebody

wanted to pick up the body they will

find only bones no vampire and to me

this shows that the locals were taking

no chances

there is one final twist to the story of

vampire Island during his research over

the last 30 years Hector Williams has

become fascinated by the writings of one

of the area's most famous travel authors

charles thomas mutant in the eighteen

sixties Charles Newton who had been

British vice consul at Medellin II

published his memoirs travels and

discoveries in the Levant and he refers

at one place to an island near mythili

knee

in Italy knee the bones of those who

will not lie quiet in their graves are

transported to a small adjacent island

where they are reinterred this is an

effective bar against all future

vagaries for the vampire to not cross

salt water it's an intriguing clue a

written text from a respected author

telling of a small island near mytilini

containing not one vampire but a whole

vampire cemetery thanks to the vampires

fear of salt water in Bram Stoker's

classic gothic novel Dracula the count

and always in Transylvania by sea

travelling in a cockpit which is filled

with his native soil

a vocal taken from Eastern European

stories about vampires

in fact the vampire couldn't travel over

salt water it is really many places that

vampires and other supernatural beings

cannot cross salt water so the villagers

must have thought that to transfer a

very a course or an island would be more

than enough to stop the vampire attacks

if the historians and scientists are

right then somewhere off the coast of

lesbos lies the real vampire island and

the location of the world's first

vampire cemetry Newton wrote these words

about a hundred and forty years ago

and we've been wondering what the Greeks

did with their vampires beside bury them

locally finding this passage suggested

that we found out where they went over

there to this little island of the

village of Tam Villa from the shore it's

almost impossible to see any evidence of

burials so there's only one thing for it

Hector is going to take to the skies

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we've just taken off from middle Eenie

International Airport we're heading due

north to the island of Buffalo we're

about to come up on the island now so

things should start getting interesting

we're going to drop to about 500 feet

under 50 meters that may be a little

bumpy but we'll get a good view of the

top of the Isle is that way we're going

to circle around the island and look and

see there's remains of a small building

here on the north side there foundations

of what looks like a basement a little

bit further east of it could these be

the burial sites places that may contain

structures on the ground we have been

able to pick out the lines of several

buildings foundations that indicate

there are buried structures on the

island

it's worth coming back with

ground-penetrating radar as getting

further details of the graves who knows

what he'll find for now Hector must wait

his curiosity wetland and replete in the

knowledge that he may have discovered a

world first a graveyard for the undead

the real vampire island

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Hector's research has confirmed beyond

doubt that vampires once roamed the

island of Lesbos people his fume

vampires are a mist that the Central

European Balkan vampire evolved in a

particular way that has fascinated

people since the 18th century thanks to

modern forensics medicine and science we

now know that vampires were real people

outcasts from society stricken with

disease deformities or mental illness he

must have been an outcast

and this is why he was treated as a

vampire after he died and even today in

some parts of the world vampires are

still regarded as a very real threat one

of the most enduring and enduring of all

supernatural beings

you