Historian Dr. Raymond McNally got a Fulbright scholarship to go to Romania in 1972, and to study the actual historical Dracula, Vlad Tepes (1428-1477), whom Bram Stoker's fictional character was partially based upon. In his research, he accessed some pretty remote countryside, tiny villages which had remained intact and untouched by too much of the Communist government imposed after World War II.
Years later, he related that while he was gathering accounts in one small village, he met a young woman named Tinka, who told him that her own father was a vampire. Intrigued, he obtained the whole story from her and from the other villagers: after Tinka's father died, the body was prepared for the traditional wake. Three days went by, and there was no rigor mortis; the skin was still soft and pliable; the cheeks of the corpse bore a rosy complexion. These were the signs of a vampire in that remote section of the world.
Tinka told Dr. McNally that she couldn't do what "needed to be done", because it was the body of her own father---but the villagers did; and McNally was astounded to learn that what the villagers did was the same thing you see them doing in all those old movies: they got a long wooden stake, and they drove it thought the heart of the corpse with a sledgehammer. McNally said the villagers explained to him that staking a vampire didn't kill the vampire; the stake was actually driven through the body, and into the earth below. The idea was to pin the vampire to the ground, to prevent it from rising and walking, to prey on the living.
Weird stuff.
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