If your only reference point for vampires came during the last 50 years or so, you'd probably think they're sexy and charming. But behind the "Twilight" book series and new movie, behind the Kate Beckinsales and Brad Pitts of the entertainment world, is a pretty gruesome -- and very real -- history that is decidedly less sexy than the creators of the slinky type-o negative vamps on the silver screen would have you believe.

The real vampire craze probably started with a bunch of (literally) rabid peasants.

There are mentions of bloodsucking creatures that go back thousands of years, and span almost every continent on the globe, but the first real vampire frenzy began in Eastern Europe in the 1700s, when reports began to come out about crazy folk killing animals, raping women, eating dirt and causing general havoc. The locals called them umpir, or vampires, and began to dig up countless graves to stake the alleged umpirs, rip off their heads or tear out their hearts. Some scientists speculate this all was the result of a rabies or tuberculosis epidemic. So get your shots, kids.

Click here to find out more about how real people became branded as undead bloodsuckers.


The undead looked undead because they were, well, dead.

So what happened when these peasants would dig up graves? Sometimes it would look like the guy in the coffin was very much alive: the hair and nails would have grown, there would be a stubbly beard, maybe the lips would have pulled back and the teeth would seem longer or the eyes would be open. To your average illiterate farmer in the 1700s, the guy would seem very undead. To your average modern scientist, you'd be looking at a classic case of putrefecation: the skin retracting as the body dehydrates.



What makes a real-life vampire? How about ugly babies, drunks and the dateless?

That's right. In parts of Eastern Europe a few hundred years ago, if you were born with teeth or a unibrow, you could be immediately marked as a vampire. Same goes for alcoholics, people who committed suicide and, at least in Romania, those who died unmarried. In parts of Greece, if you were born on Christmas Day, not only were you unlucky enough to have that combo-Birthday-Christmas-present thing going, you were also considered much more likely to end up rising from the dead as well.

Eat your heart out Transylvania, we got them here, too.

American vampires don't exist only in the fantasies of Mormon housewives (hello, "Twilight"). New England had a nasty rash of vampires in the 1700s and 1800s, which actually just turned out to be a nasty tuberculosis epidemic. But that didn't stop the upstanding citizens of Connecticut and Rhode Island from blaming the "mysterious wasting" on the undead, and digging up the suspected graves.

One anti-vampire remedy was to swipe the heart from an undead body, burn it and feed it to the vampire's suffering victim. Archaeologists are still finding "vampire burials" full of rearranged bones throughout New England. (Tip: If you feel you are the victim of a vampire, it may reassure you to know that they're still doing the undead-heart-burning-treatment over in Europe. It's been documented in Romania as recently as a few years ago.)

Kristin Romey is an anthropologist, explorer, former executive editor of Archeology Magazine and, most prestigiously, Asylum's scientific adviser.