Vampire DNA

The Discovery, Investigation, and Identification of the Colonial Vampire Guest: Nicholas Bellantoni, Emeritus State Archaeologist with the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History and is Adjunct Associate Research Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Connecticut Vampires today are cheesy Halloween costumes or heartthrobs in teen romance novels. But back in the 1800s, people in New England were genuinely afraid of vampires—so much so that they dug up the graves of their family members in order to protect themselves from the undead. When archaeologist Nicholas Bellantoni found one of these corpses in 1990, he went on to study it for 30 years and only just discovered who this colonial vampire was.