Vampires may be greeted with swoons today, but in medieval Eastern Europe they were dealt a metal spike through the chest.

Last week, Bulgarian archaeologists unearthed an unusual 13th-century grave in an ancient city named Thracian.

The bones are encrusted in dirt, revealing a bowed, partially crushed skull and a round stake emerging from the left side of the skeleton’s chest. The interred is believed to be a middle-aged man, who was incapacitated post-death—cause unknown—by a two-pound iron rod thrust through his heart and the removal of the lower half of his left leg. Both mutilations were meant to stop the man, who villagers believed was a vampire, from returning to haunt the town and prey upon its inhabitants, researchers say.