Vampires and Beans
→ September 13th, 2010 → the blog
While I was working on my piece on cemeteries for the upcoming “Cities” issue of Lapham’s Quarterly, I came across a number of random facts and other historical detritus that caught my eye—while none of it was suitable for the Lapham’s piece, a couple of interesting finds stayed with me, and with a little more [...]
Brick Eaters
→ April 22nd, 2009 → the blog
Several weeks ago National Geographic reported the discovery of a “vampire” skull, that is, the remnants of a plague victim into whose mouth a brick had been stuffed, a form of postmortem exorcism which would indicate the first remains of a suspected vampire: “as the human stomach decays, it release a dark ‘purge fluid.’ This [...]
