Monsters and Myths

BOSTON — The headmaster of one of the city’s most prestigious exam schools is dealing with an unusual rumor sweeping student classrooms.

There are no vampires at Boston Latin School, says headmaster Lynne Moone Teta.

Seriously.

Students at the school, which was founded in 1635, began e-mailing news organizations Wednesday night with the strange story of vampires roaming the halls.

“Supposedly 3 students believe that they are vampires and today when a student was bitten the police were informed,” wrote one student in a message to TheBostonChannel.com. “I heard that one girl was arrested another suspended.”

Police, however, denied reports that anyone at the school was bitten.

The rumors were strong enough to cause anxiety among the student body and disrupt classes on Thursday. “I seek your cooperation in redirecting your energy toward the learning objectives of the day. Please do not sensationalize or discuss these rumors,”

Teta wrote in a notice obtained by the Boston Globe and sent to faculty, students and parents. Teta said she was concerned that some students’ safety might be jeopardized because of the rumors. “At no time was anyone’s safety in jeopardy,” she wrote. In its long, rich history the school’s students have included revolutionary firebrands Ben Franklin, Sam Adams, John Hancock, but likely never vampires.

Boston police acknowledged visiting the school Wednesday after learning about the rumors. “We did go over there and speak to some of the students and quelled the rumors that were going and kind of told them the effect those rumors could have on the rest of the student population,” spokesman Eddy Chrispin said.

Interest in vampires among young people has been rekindled in the past year with the release of the hit movie “Twilight”. It tells the story of a teenage girl who falls in love with a vampire.

The movie, which stars teen heart throb Robert Pattinson, was released on DVD last weekend. The DVD sold 13 million copies on its first day of sales, according to Entertainment Weekly.

thebostonchannel.com/cnn-news/19020075/detail.html

A SKELETON exhumed from a grave in Venice is being claimed as the first known example of the “vampires” widely referred to in contemporary documents.

Matteo Borrini of the University of Florence in Italy found the skeleton of a woman with a small brick in her mouth (see right) while excavating mass graves of plague victims from the Middle Ages on Lazzaretto Nuovo Island in Venice .

At the time the woman died, many people believed that the plague was spread by “vampires” which, rather than drinking people’s blood, spread disease by chewing on their shrouds after dying. Grave-diggers put bricks in the mouths of suspected vampires to stop them doing this, Borrini says.

The belief in vampires probably arose because blood is sometimes expelled from the mouths of the dead, causing the shroud to sink inwards and tear. Borrini, who presented his findings at a meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in Denver, Colorado, last week, claims this might be the first such vampire to have been forensically examined. The skeleton was removed from a mass grave of victims of the Venetian plague of 1576.

However, Peer Moore-Jansen of Wichita State University in Kansas says he has found similar skeletons in Poland and that while Borrini’s finding is exciting, “claiming it as the first vampire is a little ridiculous”.

Borrini says his study details the earliest grave to show archaeological “exorcism evidence against vampires”.

newscientist.com/article/mg20126985.200-vampire-discovered-in-

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