Profs & Pints DC: Digging Up Vampires

Profs and Pints DC presents: “Digging Up Vampires,” on the origins and evolution of vampire beliefs, with Jordan Wilson, bioarchaeologist, skeletal biologist, and assistant professor at Georgetown University.

Hollywood has taught many of us that vampires are alluring undead creatures that drink blood, recoil from garlic and crucifixes, and turn to dust in sunlight. The truth, however, is much creepier.

Venture into DC’s Penn Social to learn what we know about real vampire beliefs based on research by archeologists, forensic scientists, and psychologists. 

Dr. Jordan Wilson, who gives excellent Profs and Pints talks, will discuss how vampires prowled long before Dracula emerged from Transylvania. 

You’ll learn how folkloric traditions from the ancient Mediterranean and Middle East spoke of fears of restless dead, nocturnal demons, and spirits that preyed upon the living. In later Europe, fears of revenants and vampires took on new forms as disease outbreaks swept through communities and the exhumed dead…