It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
It was just before midnight as Gheorghe Marinescu and five of his relatives crept into the graveyard in the small Romanian village of Marotinul de Sus. They knew which plot they were looking for – a simple earth grave with a wooden cross bearing the name Petre Toma – and quickly, but quietly, set about digging.
When they had dragged the body out, they waited. Then, at the stroke of 12, Marinescu began the ritual that they had been planning for weeks, one that had passed from generation to generation in their family. They drove a pitchfork through Petre Toma's chest, opened it, drew out his heart and then put stakes through the rest of his body. They sprinkled garlic over the mutilated corpse and then, carefully, laid it back in its grave.
They left the cemetery with the heart impaled on the end of the pitchfork and went to a crossroads where Marinescu's wife, son and daughter-in-law were waiting. There the group burnt it, dissolved the ashes and then drank the solution.
Some believed that the heart had to be removed and burned. Others called for cutting off the head of the suspected vampire and stuffing the mouth with garlic or rose petals or placing the head upside down in the coffin.
This is the first time I have ever heard of consuming the heart of a vampire. Most legends give the impression that the vampire is unclean (spiritually). In eating the heart wouldn't that make the vampire a part of you?