Our speaker for tonight's meeting was Dr. Michael BELL, consulting folklorist for the Rhode Island Historical Preservation & Heritage Commision, and author of Food for the Dead: On the Trail of New England's Vampires. He recounted one gruesome tale after another, all apropos for Halloween, the season of ghosts, goblins, trick-or-treaters, witches on broom sticks, and VAMPIRES. (Incidentally, the term "vampire" was used only by those outside of New England, not by those who were involved in the exhumations in this area during the near epidemic of consumption.)
In the 18th and even the 19th century, New England medicine was hardly a science and most practitioners had little or no formal education. When pulmonary tuberculosis, commonly called consumption, reached epidemic proportions, people did not know what it was or how it spead. All they knew was that when someone in the family had it, that person would waste away, another family member most probably would be afflicted, and then it would move out into the community at large.
What was a family to do if its members were dying of consumption? Some turned to what was an old folk tradition - exhume the bodies of those who died from the disease and check the corpses for anything unusual. If the fluid in the heart was liquid, it was deemed to be that of a vampire who fed on the blood of its closest relatives. Depending on the community where it was held, this called for a variety of rituals. Sometimes the heart would be burned to ashes and those ashes fed to someone who was ill, or the entire corpse burned and the smoke inhaled by the person who was infected.
Dr. Bell's research sources for his book included eyewitness accounts, family stories, local legends, newspaper articles, local histories, town records, journal entries, unpublished correspondence, genealogies, gravestones, cemeteries and even actual human remains documenting that the rituals really happened.
Two of the cases, that of Mercy BROWN, who is buried in the Chestnutt Baptist Church Cemetery in Exeter, and Nellie VAUGHN, who is buried in the Plain Meeting House Church cemetery in West Greenwich, are well known to Rhode Islanders since they are resurrected by the media every year at the end of October. But a little known occurrence is one that appeared in 1888 in a publication by Sidney S. RIDER, a Rhode Island Historian. It was titled The Belief of Vampires in Rhode Island. The story begins:
"At the breaking out of the Revolution there dwelt in one of the remoter Rhode Island towns a young man whom we will call Stukeley." We soon find that the town is Exeter and the man was nicknamed "Snuffy" because he always wore a homespun jacket of butternut brown, the color of snuff. He was married to Honor, and they lived on a farm, raised crops, animals, and maintained an orchard. The couple had 14 children. According to the story, one night Snuffy had a dream and in that dream half of his orchard died. He tried to determine what it implied but he was soon faced with more important events - his children started dying, one at a time, until five of them were gone. Honor told him that before the children died they complained to her about Sarah, the first child to die, who came during the night to visit them, in silence, putting pressure on different parts of their body.
Snuffy knew that something had to be done to save the rest of the family. He called together people in the community and it was resolved that they had to rid this family of its curse. In the meantime a sixth child had died and the seventh was ill. A group of people went out to the cemetery and exhumed the bodies of the six dead children. The corpses of five were as expected but Sarah's eyes were wide open and fixed, her hair and fingernails had grown, and her arteries were filled with fresh red blood. Her heart was removed and burned. Shortly thereafter the last child who was sick died but no one else succumbed. Reflecting on what had hapened to his family, Snuffy understood what the dream meant - seven of his children, half of his orchard, would die.
This story has the same elements that folklorist have collected for almost 200 years: prophetic dreams, and the dead returning to do harm to the living.
Dr. Bell was curious to know if this folktale was based on fact so he started researching Sidney Rider's collection of notes in the John HAY Library at Brown University where he found a notebook titled "Exeter Notes." This led him to Exeter and the start of a search into the STUCKELEY - TILLINGHAST genealogy. In the records he found that Snuffy had indeed had 14 children, his wife was named Honor, and one of the children was named Sarah. He also found that over the years the story may have been enhanced since only four, not six or seven, of his children died in 1799...but they did die of consumption, Sarah being one of them.
The cemetery was originally located off 102 on the north side up a small hillside with nothing around it, but now finds itself in the cul-de-sac of a recent housing development. Dr. Bell impishly related that since he and his cohorts were seen sleuthing in the area, the neighbors now know that there is a "vampire" buried there, a bone-chiling thought especially at Halloween.
As much as we may look at these events with a critical eye, we must appreciate that those were desperate times, and the ritual practice of exhumation was given more validity by the frequent attendance of a medical doctor or the clergy. The peple involved deserve our compassion, they were not superstitious or "workers of the devil" but only trying to save the lives of their families.
For those who would like a few more chills, Dr. BELL's book "Food for the Dead: On the Trail of New England's Vampires,"documents many other casesd throughout New England.
Dr. BELL was awarded a PH.D in Folklore from Indiana University at Bloomington, where his dissertation topic was African-American voodoo practices. He also has an M.A. in Folklore and Mythology from the University of California at Los Angeles, and a B.A. in Anthropology and Archaelogy from the University of Arizona, Tucson. He resides in Warwick.
Taken from the Pawtuxet Valley Historian, October 2003, volume 17 issue 2.
Sites of interest:
A picture of Mercy Brown grave taken by International Ghost Hunters Society
Another site on Mercy Brown with Photos of her grave.
New England Skeptical Society
Haunted New England - Ghost Tours
The works of H. P. Lovecraft
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