The Shroud of Turin – Blood Tests

© 1999 by Linda Moulton Howe

May 23, 1999  Danbury, Connecticut - The Shroud of Turin is a linen cloth alleged to be the burial shroud of Christ. It has straw-colored front and back images of a crucified man with blood colored wounds and dozens of scourge marks similar to whips used two thousand years ago. It's as if the linen shroud had been wrapped around the man's body from the feet up over the head and back down to the feet after the blood had clotted. The body images are also bracketed the entire length of the cloth by parallel burn and scorch marks from fire damage suffered in 1532.

The Shroud images were photographed in 1931 and 1978. In the authoritative and well-illustrated book, The Blood and The Shroud by Ian Wilson, positive and negative photographs of the head and body clearly show rivulets of blood on the head and lash marks and larger blood stains on the body.