ST:  What do you think about the idea that perhaps these vampires had been buried too soon? Perhaps they weren't really "completely" dead at the time of interment, as embalming was yet to become an established practice.

MB: Premature burial has often been cited as an explanation for the vampire belief. Personally, I think that this hypothesis is much less tenable than other explanations. Even corpses that are "completely dead" (if this isn't an oxymoron) undergo many changes during the processes of decomposition that could appear "unnatural" or "weird" to people who had little exposure to or understanding of these processes. Blood can coagulate and then become liquid again; corpses bloated with gases (by-products of decomposition) might seem to groan if the gases are suddenly released (by staking, for example) and they pass over the vocal chords; corpses do exhibit movement as they decompose; and hair and nails appear to grow because the surrounding skin shrinks and recedes. An excellent discussion of this aspect of vampirism appears in Paul Barber's book, "Vampires, Burial and Death."