"Facial Reconstruction Reveals 16th-Century Italian 'Vampire' Buried with Brick in Mouth"

Researchers have reconstructed the face of a 16th-century Italian woman, buried in a mass grave for plague victims, who was believed to be a vampire due to a brick found in her mouth. The facial reconstruction, based on scans of the remains and historical data, revealed that the woman was around 60 years old and of lower class. The practice of placing a brick in the mouth of a suspected vampire was connected to the paranoia during the bubonic plague outbreak, and this is the first time archaeology has successfully reconstructed the ritual of exorcism of a vampire.