A female "vampire" unearthed in a mass grave near Venice, Italy, may have been accused of wearing another evil hat: a witch's.The 16th-century woman was discovered among medieval plague victims in 2006. Her jaw had been forced open by a brick—an exorcism technique used on suspected vampires in Europe at the time.
The discovery marked the first time archaeological remains had been interpreted as those of an alleged vampire, project leader Matteo Borrini, a forensic archaeologist at the University of Florence in Italy, said when the skull was first revealed in March 2009.
New investigations have now shed light on who this "vampire" was, why people may have suspected her of dabbling in the dark arts, and even what she looked like.
"There is a piece of history to rewrite, to see this individual again after 500 years and also try to understand why the myth of vampire started," Borrini says in a new National Geographic Channel documentary. (The National Geographic Channel is part-owned by the National Geographic Society, which owns National Geographic News.)