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The legend of blood sucking vampires has captured our imagination for generations. Mysterious tales of the un-dead rising from their coffins to terrorise the living and drain their blood are the stuff of horror movies and novels. But a crack team of archaeologists and forensic scientists have uncovered hard evidence for the existence of the legend, a legend that continues to haunt communities in the present day…

We find out about the vampire's victims, what they may have looked like, and try to build a picture to discover how they met their end. Modern scientific techniques and forensic pathology are applied to solve this spine-chilling ancient mystery.

Lesbos, an idyllic Greek island, is the location for our vampire investigation. Here we meet archaeologist Hector Williams who has been studying the island for the last 40 years. But it’s his most recent discoveries, two unusual burials where the bodies were pinned inside their coffins with long metal stakes, that led to the connection with vampires. Digging deeper into the history, Hector has discovered something else – evidence that the small islet of Pamphila just a few kilometers off the coast, could be a mass-burial site for Vampires...

But how does this new evidence contribute to vampire mythologies from an international perspective? We reveal how the popular image of vampires like Bram Stoker’s Dracula was in fact based on the pre-existing folklore and legend of Eastern Europe. We reveal how the legends spread across the continent and how in the UK Stoker’s publication led to mass vampire hysteria.

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