 Romani people drove steel or iron needles into a corpse 's heart and placed bits of steel in the mouth , over the eyes , ears and between the fingers at the time of burial . They also placed hawthorn in the corpse 's sock or drove a hawthorn stake through the legs . In a 16th @-@ century burial near Venice , a brick forced into the mouth of a female corpse has been interpreted as a vampire @-@ slaying ritual by the archaeologists who discovered it in 2006 . 
