Unearthed Vampire Skeleton: Massive Stake Driven Through Chest to Prevent Return from the Dead

The ancient skeleton, identified as a 35 to 40-year-old male, is only the second-ever skeleton with a spike embedded near its heart. The first such discovery was made last year in the southern town of Sozopol.

The ancient skeleton, identified as a 35 to 40-year-old male, is believed to have been considered a vampire by his medieval contemporaries. He was pinned to his grave with a ploughshare—a metal blade from a plough—to prevent him from rising at midnight and terrorizing the living.

This eerie discovery was made at the Perperikon site in eastern Bulgaria during a dig led by Professor Nikolai Ovcharov of the ‘Bulgarian Indiana Jones’ fame.

Last year, Professor Ovcharov’s team unearthed another 700-year-old skeleton of a man similarly pinned down in his grave within a church in the Black Sea town of Sozopol.

The skeleton, quickly dubbed the ‘Sozopol Vampire,’ had been pierced through the chest with a ploughshare and had its teeth removed before being buried.

Professor Ovcharov described this latest finding as the ‘twin of the Sozopol Vampire,’ suggesting it could provide further insights into how vampire beliefs from pagan times were preserved by Christians during the Middle Ages.

The remains found with the body have been dated to the 13th and 14th centuries.

In other cases, Professor Ovcharov has discovered skeletons “nailed to the ground with iron staples driven into their limbs,” but this is only the second instance where a ploughshare was used near the heart.

“The ploughshare weighs nearly 2 pounds (0.9 kg) and is driven into the body through a broken shoulder bone,” he explained. “You can clearly see how the collarbone was literally shattered.”

This discovery adds to a series of finds across Western and Central Europe, shedding new light on how seriously people took the threat of vampires.

According to pagan beliefs, individuals considered evil during their lifetimes might transform into vampires after death unless they were pierced in the chest with an iron or wooden rod before burial.

These ‘vampires’ were often intellectuals, aristocrats, and clerics.

“The curious thing is that there are no women among them. They were not afraid of witches,” said Bozhidar Dimitrov, chief of Bulgaria’s National History Museum.

The plagues that ravaged Europe between 1300 and 1700 fueled a growing belief in vampires. Grave diggers reopening mass graves following a plague often encountered bodies swollen with gas, with hair still growing and blood seeping from their mouths. The shrouds used to cover the deceased’s faces were frequently decayed by bacteria, revealing the corpses’ teeth, and these ‘vampires’ became known as ‘shroud-eaters.’

Medieval medical and religious texts suggested that the ‘undead’ were believed to spread disease in order to drain the remaining life from corpses until they acquired enough strength to return to the streets.

“In my opinion, it’s not about criminals or bad people,” said Professor Ovcharov.

“Rather, these are precautionary measures to prevent the soul from being taken by the forces of evil during the 40-day period after death.”

Over 100 buried individuals whose corpses were stabbed to prevent them from becoming vampires have been discovered across Bulgaria over the years.