Those trying to save us from evil bloodsuckers 500 years ago didn't rely on a stake through the heart - they used a humble brick.
A skull impaled with a brick has been found in an ancient graveyard for more than 1,500 victims of the Black Death in Italy.
The gruesome discovery - on the island of Lazzaretto Vecchio near Venice - tells us a lot about how superstitious people dealt with vampires in the Middle Ages.
They feared the plague was spread by female vampires - and that the fiends fed on victims of the disease when they were buried next to each other until they were strong enough to rise from the dead.
'The idea probably originated from the dribble of blood that often came from the mouths of plague victims when they died,' said Dr Matteo Borrini, of Florence University.
So, to stop the bloodthirsty 'undead' sinking their teeth into a carcass, gravediggers jammed a brick into their mouths with such force that it smashed their teeth.
Another island, Lazzaretto Nuovo, was used by Venice's rulers as a quarantine hospital in 1468 following an earlier plague epidemic. When a later wave of the Black
Death swept through Venice between 1630 and 1631, the epidemic claimed a third of the city's 150,000 inhabitants.
Legends of vampirism have existed for centuries, but the modern vampire popularised by Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, originates from stories spread in the Balkans and Eastern Europe in the early 18th century.
(Original headline: Forget a stake through the heart - vampires were slain with bricks 500 years ago )
