Resurrection of the Day: 3D Technology Brings 900-Year-Old Vampire Back to Life

Seven years after Avatar, 3D technology finally proves its worth.

Commemorating the 50th anniversary of the uncovering of an burying site where 13 "vampire" skeletons were found, scientist Cicero Moraes has used 3D technology to reconstruct the face of the skeleton and see what these night walkers looked like. The results? They look like a 35-year-old dude.

“The remains were found in a 'non-traditional graveyard' alongside 13 other bodies of people thought to have been killed in anti-vampire rituals,” reported the Mirror. “Some of the bodies had their hands tied behind their backs and were lying in unnatural positions on their side or on their front and their mouths were clogged with sand.”

Now before you go home and say “see, mom, I told you vampires are real,” you should know that these are not really vampires. They were just killed in the same manner that you would kill a vampire: stabbed by a wooden stake.

Let’s be clear: the last way anyone is killing a vampire is by drowning them in sand. Though the manner in which these people were killed and buried indicates that these were either real vampires or just social misfits who were not allowed to be buried in a church graveyard, which would really bite. Ok. Sorry.

Still, the science here is pretty cool. Using the skull from the famed excavation, more than 100 photographs were taken and rendered in a free 3D graphics progam on Blender.org. What’s more it only took 24 hours. 100s of years in the sand and brought back to life in a day using free software.