posted on Dec, 30 2008 @ 12:58 PM
One can roll this story back a bit further than Vlad. In the times before modern mortuary services, people were not embalmed. Some could not even be
proven dead when they were buried.
Bells were hanged above the graves and strings run down and tied to a finger so that if a person awoke, the bell would ring in the panic. They could
then be dug up before dying of hysteria or suffocation.
Bodies not drained and then embalmed induce riggor and will move, twitch or out right jump. When they would dig up bodies this long into death, they
opened the caskets only to see the bodies sit up or the arms reach out. As well, the body becomes bloated in death and the movement let out a howling
sound as the built up gases expelled, which gave the impression of the dead person screaming out.
This began the mythos of the undead since they did not have the medical knowledge at the time to know what was happening. All they saw was a rotting
corpse sitting up, reaching out and screaming out in pain. They literally stumbled upon the means of "killing" the undead by staking the heart,
which seemed to suppress the undead back into death. Thereby, the first means of destroying the undead was to stake them through the heart. Further
demonizing this myth was lead by the fact that this could not be the work of God, so this must be a form of demonic possession. This brought the
priests into the realm of purifying the corpse.
However, not all of the "undead" died from just a stake. Cutting off the head was added as a measure of insuring that the dead remained dead.
So, this is the origin of the myth that to kill a vampire, you force a wooden stake into the heart and cut the head from the body to insure they stay
dead.
I would like to correct that Vlad III is Vlad Dracul/Tepes. Vlad IV is Vlad the Monk. He is not related to the Devil/Impaler legacy beyond being the
youngest brother and eventual ruling successor.
Vlad Tepes later does become the familiar blood lusting demonic face of the origin of the vampires. Count Dracula, a blood drinking night stalker
that is the immortal embodiment of one man's sins against God and humanity.
Of course, thanks to Hollywood and the tourist attraction at Castle Dracula, a lot of the history of the truth behind the myth has been distorted and
lost.