Vampires Found in Bulgaria!

Better grab your garlic, gang.

Archaeologists have discovered two 800-year-old skeletons with iron rods shoved through their chests. Like any normal human being, they decided they’d found some vampires. Because really, what other conclusions can you draw when you find a stake through someone’s heart? It has to be vampires.

I like to think this is a boon for the archaeologists that discovered them. I mean, really, how’s that for a feather in your proverbial excavation cap? Man, you could flaunt that in front of your coworkers, couldn’t you? “Oh, dusting bits of pottery again? Well, I discovered the bodies of ancient vampires. Maybe you should rethink your life choices.”

The supernatural-loving side of me is digging this story. The practical side of me is afraid this is going to stir up even more Twilight nonsense. Can we just let that craze die with the next Breaking Dawn, please?

For those of you who want a little more information, the BBC is your next stop. Stabbing “bad” people through the heart after they died was an accepted practice way back when; the rod pinned them down in their graves so they couldn’t rise in the night and drink the blood of the living.

(People had real worries back before sports teams and the internet were invented.)

Over the years, more than 100 staked corpses have been discovered. Medieval Buffy was clearly a busy lady.

I’m going to be the voice of reason here and point out that perhaps it’s not wise to un-stake a vampire. I distinctly remember watching some movie or TV show – I don’t remember what, exactly – where the protagonists found a long-dead vampire and pulled the stake out of him. Before you could say, “Don’t do that, you moron!” the vampire popped back up and took a chunk out of the nearest hapless hero.

Or am I thinking of The Mummy?

Anyway. I think it’s something we should be worried about. We’ve found all these dead vampires and now we’re unstaking them to move them to museums or labs? This is just asking for trouble, people. We’ve already got problems with the zombie crowd. We don’t need vampires adding their distinct brand of terror to the mix.

Unless they happen to look like Colin Farrell. Then they can stick around.

(Even I make allowances sometimes.)