Creature Feature

The Great New England Vampire Craze (USA)

"The savage in man is never quite eradicated. I have just read of a family in Vermont--who, several of its members having died of consumption, just burned the lungs & heart & liver of the last deceased, in order to prevent any more from having it." -Henry David Thoreau

I bet that is not exactly a Thoreau quote they made you memorize in High School, but it is a testimony on how far and wide the infamous Rhode Island Vampire panic of the 1850's actually reached.

It all starts, as it usually does with illness. Tuberculosis has quite a vampiric appeal when it was widely known as "consumption" and no one was really sure about how it spread.

It sounded a lot more romantic (and a little bit deranged) to think that a person dies, and for reasons unknown becomes a vampire. It was easier to believe that this animated corpses, holding on to cold logic and fueled by demonic powers comes back to prey upon those who are less likely to betray them... their family. People were thrown off the edge of desperation when one after another, entire families through New England were afflicted, leaving a trail of dead and related.

What could they do, but summon fearless vampire killers? Soon the stories (fueled by the press) grew wilder and much more colorful, involving the young and the deathless. Though the vicinity didn't quite quote the undead, people started believing crazed tales of the possibilities of revenants, and the word of the day was "exhumation."

If you have read a couple of entries here, you know by now that when people unearthed a corpse they meant business. Several tests were run, especially among those recently deceased, that although had a good week or so in the grave, still looked healthy. (Call healthy reddened skin, sunken, opened eyes and blood soaked internal organs... you say tomato... they made darn sure it was "tomatoe".)

If the vampire had not yet attacked a relative, the resolution was easy: just turn the corpse around on its grave to confuse it. However, if there were people afflicted within the vampire family, a crude and not quite needed "autopsy" was performed and the vampire internal organs (liver and heart) were removed and burned to ash. The ash was to be served to the surviving family members in an infusion. (Yes, a bit of sunshine and Auntie's blackened heart will do the trick. You'll feel better before you can say "Cough, cough, me thinks I'll call upon a coffin."

Mercy Brown and Frederic Ransom were the most notorious of the "New England Vampires" as both their cases are well documented. Their exhumation, desecration and commitment of internal organs to the fire was deemed not only lawful, but necessary to guarantee the benefit of both their communities... and people wonder why Stephen King has made New England the point of origin for so many horror stories.

The illustration is the tomb of Mercy Brown, now a bizarre tourist attraction and meeting place for those who love things that go bump in the night