The Great New England Vampire Panic: How Tuberculosis Sparked a Supernatural Scare

0:00 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Strange History Podcast. Buckle up, ladies and gentlemen,

0:04 Speaker 1: put on a turtleneck and grab some garlic. We are

0:06 Speaker 1: about to talk about vampires in New England. Now. I

0:11 Speaker 1: don't know about you, but I find the Victorian era

0:14 Speaker 1: of history the most interesting. The world was on the

0:17 Speaker 1: cusp of technology advances, but US humans were still gripping

0:21 Speaker 1: superstition and religious beliefs when it came to crisis. In

0:25 Speaker 1: the dark and dreary days of the late nineteenth century,

0:28 Speaker 1: Rhode Island, a state better known for its quah hogs

0:32 Speaker 1: and contentious tavern debates, became the unlikely epicenter of a

0:36 Speaker 1: vampire panic that left its citizens aghast, bewildered, and in

0:41 Speaker 1: at least one case, covered in an unfortunate amount of

0:45 Speaker 1: exhumed bodily fluids. It all stemmed from a most peculiar epidemic.

0:53 Speaker 1: To fully appreciate the sheer absurdity of Rhode Island's vampire panic,

0:57 Speaker 1: one must first understand the grip of tuberculosis, or, as

1:00 Speaker 1: it was then ominously known, consumption. This disease, much like

1:05 Speaker 1: the overly persistent neighbor who just won't take a hint,

1:08 Speaker 1: made itself at home. In many Victorian households, it would

1:12 Speaker 1: steal in quietly draining its victims of vitality, leaving them gaunt, pale,

1:18 Speaker 1: and coughing up blood in a manner that suggested Gothic

1:21 Speaker 1: poetry rather than good health. Medical science being somewhat akin

1:26 Speaker 1: to educated guesswork at the time, many folks saw a

1:29 Speaker 1: more supernatural explanation for their woes. The conclusion, obviously, their

1:35 Speaker 1: dead relatives, who had been exhumed for the sake of

1:38 Speaker 1: spectral justice, were rising from the grave and siphoning the

1:42 Speaker 1: life force from their kin. The most famous case to

1:46 Speaker 1: come out of Rhode Island's vampiric hullabaloo was that of

1:49 Speaker 1: Mercy Lena Brown of Exeter, a young woman who, much

1:53 Speaker 1: like her mother and sister before her, succumbed to tuberculosis

1:57 Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety two. Her brother Edwin, having the unfortunate

2:03 Speaker 1: luck of still being alive, was suffering from the same

2:06 Speaker 1: wasting disease, and the good townsfolk decided that science had

2:11 Speaker 1: failed them. One doesn't simply let one's brother waste away

2:15 Speaker 1: while doing nothing, and by doing nothing they meant digging

2:19 Speaker 1: up corpses to check if they were vampires, and so,

2:23 Speaker 1: led by a collection of local minds more influenced by

2:26 Speaker 1: folklore than formal education, the good people of Exeter exhumed

2:30 Speaker 1: the Brown family. The mother and sister were appropriately decomposed,

2:35 Speaker 1: but Mercy, having been buried in the cold winter months,

2:38 Speaker 1: was remarkably well preserved. This was all the proof they needed,

2:43 Speaker 1: never mind that refrigeration had yet to become a household staple.

2:47 Speaker 1: She must be a vampire. The most unpleasant remedy. Believing

2:54 Speaker 1: her to be the culprit of Edwin's illness, the townspeople

2:57 Speaker 1: removed Mercy's heart and liver, burned them to ashes, and

3:01 Speaker 1: then mixed the remains into a tincture. This concoction, in

3:05 Speaker 1: the spirit of dubious medical treatments, was promptly fed to

3:09 Speaker 1: Edwin in the hopes of curing his affliction. Shockingly, drinking

3:13 Speaker 1: the charred remains of one's deceased sister did not, in

3:17 Speaker 1: fact serve as an effective cure for tuberculosis, and Edwin

3:21 Speaker 1: passed away shortly thereafter. The town, however, considered this a

3:26 Speaker 1: noble effort. You can't say they didn't try. Rhode Island

3:30 Speaker 1: was not the only New England location to suffer from

3:33 Speaker 1: a bout of post mortem paranoia. In Griswold, Connecticut, an

3:37 Speaker 1: unassuming colonial graveyard revealed yet another chapter of the region's

3:42 Speaker 1: vampire panic. In the nineteen nineties, a group of children

3:45 Speaker 1: playing near a gravel pit stumbled upon a collection of

3:48 Speaker 1: human remains, leading to a full archaeological investigation. The most

3:54 Speaker 1: peculiar discovery was a man who had been exhumed and

3:57 Speaker 1: reburied in the nineteenth century. His bones had been deliberately

4:01 Speaker 1: rearranged into a skull and crossbones pattern, a common practice

4:05 Speaker 1: to prevent suspected vampires from rising. The man, later identified

4:10 Speaker 1: as JB, was likely a tuberculosis victim, and his reburial

4:15 Speaker 1: suggested that his frightened neighbors thought him responsible for the

4:18 Speaker 1: continued afflictions in their community. Just a short ride from Griswold,

4:23 Speaker 1: the town of Jewett City, Connecticut, saw its own vampire panic.

4:27 Speaker 1: In the eighteen fifties. The Ray family, much like the

4:31 Speaker 1: Browns of Rhode Island, were plagued by tuberculosis. As several

4:35 Speaker 1: members of the family wasted away, the remaining townspeople decided

4:40 Speaker 1: that their departed relatives must be the cause. In a

4:43 Speaker 1: bid to put an end to the supernatural menace. The

4:46 Speaker 1: bodies of the deceased Ray family members were exhumed and burned.

4:51 Speaker 1: This drastic measure was believed to prevent further deaths, though

4:54 Speaker 1: in hindsight one could argue that proper quarantine and medical

4:58 Speaker 1: care might have been a slightly more effective approach. Then

5:03 Speaker 1: we move on to the tragic tale of Lina and

5:05 Speaker 1: her brother. Another chilling case of New England's vampire hysteria

5:11 Speaker 1: revolves around a young woman named Lina and her devoted

5:14 Speaker 1: but desperate brother. After Lina succumbed to tuberculosis, her brother,

5:19 Speaker 1: convinced that she was draining his life from beyond the grave,

5:22 Speaker 1: participated in one of the most unsettling remedies of the era.

5:27 Speaker 1: Her body was exhumed, her heart removed and burned, and

5:31 Speaker 1: in an act of macabre desperation, he consumed the ashes,

5:36 Speaker 1: hoping it would break the vampire's hold over him. As

5:39 Speaker 1: one might expect, consuming cremated remains did not miraculously restore

5:44 Speaker 1: his health, and he succumbed to tuberculosis. Nonetheless, the story

5:49 Speaker 1: serves as a particularly gruesome example of the extent to

5:52 Speaker 1: which people would go in their fight against an invisible

5:55 Speaker 1: foe they barely understood. Let's dive into the broad New

6:00 Speaker 1: England panic. Rhode Island, Connecticut and other parts of New

6:05 Speaker 1: England were rife with tales of exhumed bodies, desecrated graves,

6:10 Speaker 1: and one imagines more than a few cases of people

6:14 Speaker 1: awkwardly realizing they had just dug up their beloved aunt

6:18 Speaker 1: Mildred for no good reason. The idea of the New

6:21 Speaker 1: England vampire became part of regional lore, distinct from the

6:26 Speaker 1: suave cape wearing European variety. These were not charismatic aristocrats

6:31 Speaker 1: with hypnotic gazes, but rather sad, emaciated family members who

6:36 Speaker 1: had the audacity to continue dying. Inconveniently, they were creatures

6:41 Speaker 1: of grief and fear, fueled by a medical crisis no

6:44 Speaker 1: one understood and a cultural inclination towards the supernatural. The

6:50 Speaker 1: vaccine that changed everything. While the idea of vampires as

6:57 Speaker 1: a cause of tuberculosis was put to rest, along with

7:00 Speaker 1: quite a few exhumed corpses, it wasn't until the twentieth

7:04 Speaker 1: century that an actual scientific solution emerged. In nineteen twenty one,

7:09 Speaker 1: French bacteriologists Albert Calmet and Camille Gherant developed the Bacillis

7:14 Speaker 1: calmet Geren vaccine, the first and only vaccine for tuberculosis.

7:20 Speaker 1: Though its effectiveness varies by region, it became widely used

7:24 Speaker 1: in countries with high TB prevalence, significantly reducing the spread

7:28 Speaker 1: of the disease. By the mid twentieth century, improved public

7:32 Speaker 1: health measures, antibiotics like streptomycin, and widespread vaccination rendered tuberculosis

7:39 Speaker 1: far less of a mysterious and terrifying scourge. It turns

7:44 Speaker 1: out that science, not exhumation and organ burning, was the

7:47 Speaker 1: real hero of the story the end of an era.

7:54 Speaker 1: As germ theory took hold and tuberculosis became less mysterious

7:58 Speaker 1: and more preventable, the vamp pyre panic faded into the

8:01 Speaker 1: history books, where it remains today as one of New

8:04 Speaker 1: England's strangest moments of mass hysteria. Rhode Island, Connecticut, and

8:09 Speaker 1: the rest of New England, having recovered from their brief

8:12 Speaker 1: flirtation with exhumation as medicine, went on to contribute much

8:16 Speaker 1: more sensibly to American culture clam cakes, for instance. And so,

8:22 Speaker 1: dear reader, let this be a lesson to us all.

8:25 Speaker 1: When faced with a strange affliction. Perhaps consult a doctor

8:29 Speaker 1: before digging up Grandma. It may save you from a

8:32 Speaker 1: great deal of trouble and quite a bit of unnecessary

8:35 Speaker 1: grave digging. This has been another weird episode of Strange History.

8:41 Speaker 1: If you like this episode, spread the word, Tell your friends, family,

8:45 Speaker 1: and co workers, and promise them you will not dig

8:49 Speaker 1: them up if they die from a weird affliction. Subscribe

8:52 Speaker 1: and review. It's all appreciated and helps get the word

8:55 Speaker 1: out about this odd podcast. If not, we speak into

8:58 Speaker 1: the void, but no we av fun going through the

9:01 Speaker 1: strangest of our history.