Vampirism Fears In 18th / 19th Century New England (Mercy Brown, etc.)

[MrRING]

(for some reason, i thought there was a thread on her elsewhere on FTMB, but I can't find it).

What do you make of this very interesting story of the last member of a vampire epidemic in America?

According to this article:

http://www.ghostvillage.com/legends/2003/legends20_06142003.shtml

Mercy Brown has the distinction of being the last of the North American vampires -- at least in the traditional sense. Mercy Lena Brown was a farmer's daughter and an upstanding member of rural Exeter, Rhode Island. She was only 19 years old when she died of consumption on January 17, 1892. On March 17, 1892, Mercy's body would be exhumed from the cemetery because members of the community suspected the vampire Mercy Brown was attacking her dying brother, Edwin.



The author of the book has a website here:

http://www.foodforthedead.com/

And it seems to tie in beliefs about vampires with other illnesses, the author's website has a little map you can visit that has reports from all over New England about vampire activity. It's well-researched, and certainly seems to point out that belief in vampires was more widespread than I ever though in the US and that people were actually digging up bodies and taking action!

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

Seems like the kind of person we should be getting to write an article for FT. Who is in charge of arm twisting around these parts?

Just a warning the site does make a lot of use of Flash (although it is used well) and that map is 3 Mb so if you are on a slow connection expect long waits.

Emps

 

[MrRING]

Just read this passage last night, a report from 1888 that the writer thinks as being mostly folktale, but it's interesting because of the description of the vamp. It's a telling of a family visited by the "consumption" vampire of a relative...

His unquiet quiet was but of short duration, for soon a second daughter was taken ill precisely as Sarah had been, and as quickly was huried to the grave. But in the second case there was one symptom or complaint of a startling character, and which was not present in the first case. This was the continual complain that Sarah came every night and sat upon some portion of the body, causing great pain and misery. So it went on. One after another sickened and died until six were dead, and the seventh, a son, taken ill

I find it interesting that this case makes the vampire's visit sound like the whole "night hag" experience (or the local vampire that was stalking the sons of Vietnamese immigrants, the aswag?).

Great book BTW.

 

[MrRING]

The Shunned House

Seems like the Mercy Brown vampire case as well as other ones helped to influence HP Lovecraft's The Shunned House.

You can see some pix of the real Shunned House here:

http://cthulhu.kittyfox.net/summaries/shunned.html

And here:

http://www.hplovecraft.com/creation/sites/rhode.htm#shunned

 

[MrRING]

Just got through reading an account of Arnod Paole, who might be the first "Dracula"-style vampire in recorded history that I know of.

The story of Arnod Paole is one of the few vampire histories that has been sufficiently documented over the years to lend it historical validity. In the spring of 1727, Arnod Paole returned from service in the military to settle in his home town of Meduegna, near Belgrade. He bought some land, built a home and established himself in the community. After a short time, he was betrothed to a local girl whose father's land bordered his, and the two were wed.

Paole told his wife that he was haunted by fears of an early death. In the military, he had been stationed in Greece. Local beliefs were that the dead come back to haunt the living in the form of revenants or vampires. While he was stationed there, he told his wife he had been visited by an undead being. Afterwards, he hunted down the unholy grave from which the undead being had come, as was the local custom. He extracted his revenge upon the vampire by burning the corpse. However, the incident affected him so greatly that against the advice of his superior officers, he resigned from the military and came back to Meduegna.

Shortly after his marriage, Paole fell from a great height while working on the farm, and was brought, unconscious, back to his home. He must have sustained internal injuries with the fall, for within a few days, Paole died and was buried in the town cemetery. A month after he died, there were several reports from people around the township who had seen Paole. A few had even seen him in their own home, although these reports do not clearly state what he did while in these homes. For the most part, however, there was little panic stemming from these reports until a short time later. Several weeks after the initial reports, most of the people who had claimed Paole had visited their home turned up dead for inexplicable reasons, and a group was assembled to exhume the body of Arnod Paole.

Vampire Proof

The group consisted of two military officers, two army surgeons, and a priest from the local church. When the group exhumed the body, they found a fresh corpse. There was no decomposition of the body whatsoever, and in fact the old skin and nails had fallen off, and new ones had grown to take their place! The final insult was the fresh blood that rested on the lips of the deceased Paole. When one member of the group staked the body, it cried out and fresh blood spilled from the wound. The group then scattered garlic around the remains, and did the same to each of the graves whereto Paole had sent his newest victims.

All was quiet in Meduegna for several years until 1732, when there was another spate of inexplicable deaths. This time, the town took no chances and immediately sent out a group to the graveyard to investigate. The resultant report has ended up in many history books over time. It was signed by three renowned army surgeons and cosigned by a lieutenant-colonel and a sub-lieutenant. Of all the body they disinterred during the investigation, they once again found no less than 11 corpses which displayed the same marked traits as the Paole corpse. No decomposition, (although many had been interred several months previous to their inquiry), fresh skin grown, fresh blood in the arteries and in the heart. The complete medical report is available in many modern vampire histories. No explanation has been given for the later outbreak of vampirism, although one theory holds that Paole had feasted on local cattle as well as people during his vampiric reign. Then, the theory states, as time passed and the cows were killed for their meat, the vampire qualities were passed on to anyone who ate the meat.

http://vampqueen.homestead.com/Arnod.html

http://www.dagonbytes.com/vampires/history/arnoldpaul.htm

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

Along similar lines:

19th-century family inspired vampire lore


By AMY BETH PREISS
Norwich Bulletin

GRISWOLD -- As the story goes, the first member of the Ray family to die was Lemuel.

He was the family's eldest son. He died in March 1845 at the age of 24.

The next to go was his father Henry, who reportedly died of consumption (tuberculosis) four years after his son.

Two years after Henry died, another son, Elisha Ray, 26, died in 1851.

It was the story of this family, documented in an 1854 edition of the Norwich Currier that supported State Archaeologist Nicholas Bellantoni's findings of the first physical evidence in America that colonists believed the dead were coming back to life to infect family members.

Members of the Ray family were buried two miles away from where Bellantoni made his significant discovery in 1990.

"The Ray family account played a very important role," Bellantoni said. "To have that same type of activity just two miles down the role was very significant to us. We had an example of another family who actually went back into the graves of their loved ones thinking that they were mischievous or remained undead."

Then in May 1854, one of the two remaining sons, Henry B. Ray, 35, the eldest, was stricken with tuberculosis.

According to the book "Legendary Connecticut, Traditional Tales from the Nutmeg State," by the late David E. Philips, after learning of Henry's sickness, the remaining family members lost their patience.

They headed to the burial ground with shovels.

According to Philip's research, the family, accompanied by friends and neighbors headed to the burial ground on May 8, armed with digging materials and matches.

Philips said the group was acting on the conviction that Henry Nelson Ray's seemingly fatal illness was caused by his brothers' emerging from the ground and draining the blood from his veins.

The bodies of Lemuel and Elisha were said to have been dug up and burned. They chose not to dig up and burn the father.

There is neither a gravestone nor any document, Philips says, to confirm the date of Henry Nelson Ray's death.

But since there is a date of death on a marker in the cemetery and in town records for all other family members, it is entirely probable that Henry Nelson survived his "fatal" illness, Philips says in his book.

"The young man who caused his family's vampire panic may well have lived to a ripe old age," Philips concludes in his book. "If so, the surviving Rays were undoubtedly convinced that their anti-vampire "medicine" had saved his life."

[email protected]

http://www.norwichbulletin.com/news/stories/20040215/localnews/415860.html

Emps

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

NEW ENGLAND VAMPIRES - IN R.I. AND BEYOND

BY GLORIA RUSSELL - THE SUN STAFF

WESTERLY - The vampire, romanticized in literature as a creature who sleeps by day and becomes a blood-sucking monster by night, has inspired the curious and fostered superstition for centuries.

Today's scholar has separated fact from fiction, folklore from literary license.

At a meeting this week of the Westerly Historical Society, Michael Bell, a trained folklorist, anthropologist and author of "Food for the Dead: On the Trail of New England's Vampires," discussed vampire tales spawned in New England between the 18th and 19th centuries.

Up until the Civil War, the major cause of death in America was tuberculosis, an airborne disease for which there was no known cure. The deadly epidemic was wasting whole families and entire communities.

In a last desperate effort to combat the plague, families began exhuming their dead in an attempt to save the living. Essentially, the corpses of people who died from tuberculosis were viewed as vampires, responsible for contaminating others.

As a defensive measure, much like inoculation - where a little of a disease is injected into the body so the body can build resistance - families would dig up the dead, burn the heart and feed the ashes to family members in an attempt to ward off the disease. If the heart contained liquid, it was used to treat the disease.


In some cases, all of the exhumed remains were burned to ward off the death of family members. Sometimes the bones were rearranged. Heads and leg bones were severed.

These were not clandestine activities Bell explained during his talk at the Westerly Public Library. And while physicians and clergy did not endorse the practice, they did not openly condemn it either.

It was a time of "do-it-yourself" medicine and those afflicted with tuberculosis evoked the idea of a vampire.

Victims suffered the most during the night and woke up coughing; bloody spittle gathered at the corners of their mouths; there was blood on their bedclothes. Ghastly in appearance, they seemed to be walking corpses, with their lives draining away.

"The symptoms very much mimic what you think a vampire attack would do," Bell remarked.

The patients, with their emaciated forms, crimson lips and sunken eyes, fed the theory that the evil in the corpse must be killed. And while the living looked as though they were dying, after they did die of tuberculosis (or consumption, as it was also called) they seemed to grow, Bell explained. Their corpses would appear to gain weight when they began to bloat, their nails would curl and their hair would grow.

Rhode Island had the dubious distinction of being named the Transylvania of America but neighboring Connecticut had its share of "vampires" as well.

In New England, "vampirism" thrived outside the Puritan communities, in the fringe areas. A documented account appeared in The Connecticut Courant in 1765 and later in the Norwich Weekly Courier. Bell said such accounts were also recorded in the Providence Journal. He noted about 20 cases of vampire folklore chronicled throughout New England.

Vampirism, he said, has been described as "a corpse that comes to the attention of the populace in times of crisis."

The vampire tales were more legend than historical account. Bell, in a slide presentation, showed a recently discovered broken tombstone for Simon Whipple Aldrich, who died in North Smithfield, which reads in part, "Although consumption's vampire grasp had seized thy mortal frame ...."

Stuckley Tillinghast, father of 14, had a recurring dream in which he lost half his orchard. His dreams turned out to be prophetic as he saw his family die of consumption one by one, until half of them, like the orchard, were gone.

The departing family members had all complained that Sarah, the first to die, had returned. Tillinghast exhumed the bodies of his children. Some bodies had decayed but Sarah was well preserved. So her heart was cut out.

Stories of the undead - vampires - were adopted by gothic literature. They took a folk figure, transformed it into a literary sophisticate and added a sexual element. The literary vampire lives for centuries while folk vampires stay close to home. "Folk vampires seldom leave the grave," Bell quipped.

http://www.thewesterlysun.com/articles/2004/02/28/news/news1.txt

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

Doesn't this case sound an awful lot like the Mercy Brown case?

Yes I posted an earlier report and that one as a follow up here:

http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=343482#post343482

but I wasn't sure if it would have been better off here - I posted a link through to this thread (I suppose given the nature of the field things will be relevant to different topics).

PS: Any chance of getting rid of that terrible deep pink colour to the text?

Emps

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

I just stumbld across these while looking for something else (you have too lvoe the Serendipituous Web ):

Bioarcheological and Biocultural Evidence for the New England Vampire Folk Belief,
Paul S. Sledzik and Nicholas Bellantoni (1994)
American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 94.
http://users.net1plus.com/vyrdolak/NEfolkbelief.htm

The Animistic Vampire in New England,
G.R. Stetson (1896),
The American Anthropologist. IX (1).
http://users.net1plus.com/vyrdolak/animist.htm

Emps

 

[MrRING]

Great interview with Michael Bell, author of Food for the Dead:

http://seacoastnh.com/dead/foodforthedead.html

Interview with a Vampire Stalker

SEACOASTNH.COM:
Your study offers a wholly new definition of vampires, far from the familiar Hollywood lexicon. What exactly did our New England ancestors do with the exhumed bodies of their relatives and why?

MICHAEL E. BELL:
When consumption (which is what people used to call tuberculosis that settled in the lungs) took hold in a family, some people in the outlying areas of New England would open the graves of their deceased relatives, looking for signs that they considered out of the ordinary -- such as liquid or "fresh" blood in the heart. The heart would be cut from the body and burned to ashes. Often the ashes were administered, in water or some medicine, to sick family members. The belief supporting these practices seemed to be that there was some sort of evil, perhaps a demon, residing in one of the bodies that was draining the life from others in the family.

SEACOASTNH.COM:
Is this really vampirism, or something else entirely?

MICHAEL E. BELL:
The procedures are identical to those practiced in Eastern Europe, particularly Romania. In New England, the people involved never referred to their relatives as vampires. Most of them probably had never even heard of vampires. It was outsiders who recognized the practice as vampirism and labeled it so.

SEACOASTNH.COM:
You're from Rhode Island, home of Mercy Brown. Is that the story that got you started?

MICHAEL E. BELL:
Yes, it was a descendent of the Brown family who shared his family's story with me that got me following the vampire trail. His story was that people in the family were dying of some mysterious disease and nothing that they tried could stop it from spreading. So the remaining men of the family got together and decided they had to go to the cemetery and exhume the body of Mercy, the last to die. When they uncovered her, they saw that she had turned over in the grave, and they found fresh blood in her heart. They cut out her heart and burned it on a nearby rock and fed the ashes to her sick brother, Edwin. Although Edwin died two months later, no one else became ill. So the family believed that had taken care of the problem.

SEACOASTNH.COM:
And what did you find nearby in New Hampshire?

MICHAEL E. BELL:
A Freewill Baptist Minister who kept a journal from 1810 to 1865 described an exhumation he had witnessed in 1810 in Barnstead, New Hampshire. A man named Denitt was dying of consumption, so people in the community went to the graveyard and dug up the body of his dead daughter, Janey Denitt. In this case, they "had a desire to see if anything had grown upon her stomach," according to the journal entry, "but found nothing as they supposed they should." The next day, the minister, Rev. Place, went to Loudon where the people told him of a similar incident that had occurred among the Shakers several years earlier.

SEACOASTNH.COM:
Can you tell us what conclusions 20 years of vampire stalking research have led you to?

MICHAEL E. BELL:
I believe that this practice was probably much more prevalent and widespread than we might think. The few cases I've found are just the tip of the iceberg. I think that this practice reveals how people deal with looming death that is considered untimely or premature -- they will not accept it without putting up a fight. If the medical profession says, "I can't help you," then people will look elsewhere for an answer. And folklore always has an answer. It may not be an effective answer, but in the end, even a wrong answer is better than none. Doing something beats doing nothing.

 

[MrRING]

Great new site with plenty of detail about the Mercy Brown case:

http://www.quahog.org/attractions/index.php?id=50

A Contemporary Account
Pawtuxet Valley Gleaner
Letter to the Editor
March 25, 1892

Mr. Editor, as considerable notoriety has resulted from the exhuming of three bodies in Exeter cemetery on the 17th inst., I will give the main facts as I have received them for the benefit of such of your readers as "have not taken the papers" containing the same. To begin, we will say that our neighbor, a good and respectable citizen, George T. Brown, has been bereft of his wife and two grown-up daughters by consumption, the wife and mother about eight years ago, and the eldest daughter, Olive, two years or so later, while the other daughter, Mercy Lena, died about two months since, after nearly one year's illness from the same dread disease, and about two years ago Mr. Brown's only son Edwin A., a young married man of good habits, began to give evidence of lung trouble, which increased, until in hopes of checking and curing the same, he was induced to visit the famous Colorado Springs, where his wife followed him later on and though for a time he seemed to improve, it soon became evident that there was no real benefit derived, and this coupled with a strong desire on the part of both husband and wife to see their Rhode Island friends decided them to return east after an absence of about 18 months and are staying with Mrs. Brown's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Willet Himes. We are sorry to say that Eddie's health is not encouraging at this time. And now comes in the queer part, viz: The revival of a pagan or other superstitions regarding the feeling of the dead upon a living relative where consumption was the cause of death and so bringing the living person soon into a similar condition, etc, and to avoid this result, according to the same high authority, the "vampire" in question which is said to inhabit the heart of a dead consumptive while any blood remains in that organ, must be cremated and the ashes carefully preserved and administered in some form to the living victim, when a speedy cure may (un)reasonably be expected. I will here say that the husband and father of the deceased ones has, from the first, disclaimed any faith at all in the vampire theory but being urged, he allowed others if not wiser, counsel to prevail, and on the 17th inst., as before stated the three bodies alluded to were exhumed and then examined by Doctor Metcalf of Wickford, (under protest, as it were being an unbeliever.) The two bodies longest buried were found decayed and bloodless, while the last one who has been only about two months buried showed some blood in the heart as a matter of course, and as the doctor expected but to carry out what was a forgone conclusion the heart and lungs of the last named (M. Lena) were then and there duly cremated, but deponent saith not how the ashes were disposed of. Not many persons were present, Mr. Brown being among the absent ones. While we do not blame any one for there proceedings as they were intended without doubt to relive the anxiety of the living, still, it seems incredible that any one can attach the least importance to the subject, being so entirely incompatible with reason and conflicts also with scripture, which requires us "to give a reason for the hope that is in us," or the why and wherefore which certainly cannot be done as applied to the foregoing.

Note: All errors of spelling, punctuation, and syntax are as they appeared in the Gleaner —ed.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

The story of Arnod Paole is one of the few vampire histories that has been sufficiently documented over the years to lend it historical validity.

Belief in vampires was the very first of my childhood bogeys to go away....but also the very first to come back.

And what convinced me is the detailed history of the "vampire plagues" which swept back and forth across Eastern and Central Europe between 1725 and 1750.

Arnod (Arnold) Paole was merely the most famous. But the Peter Plogojowitz case is equally fascinating

 

[OldTimeRadio]

I've never been confortable with cute little potted theories blaming New England "vampirism" on tuberculosis, which - by this theory - the citizens of Rhode Island were too primitive and stupid to understand.

For heaven's sake, we're dealing with Rhode Island in 1892 AD and NOT the Isle of Rhodes in 1289 AD.

 

[MrRING]

Belief in vampires was the very first of my childhood bogeys to go away....but also the very first to come back.

And what convinced me is the detailed history of the "vampire plagues" which swept back and forth across Eastern and Central Europe between 1725 and 1750.

Arnod (Arnold) Paole was merely the most famous. But the Peter Plogojowitz case is equally fascinating

I wasn't familiar with the case but I got an eyefull here:

The Report 1725

And since with such people (which they call vampires) various are to be seen that is, the body undecomposed, the skin, hair, beard, and nails growing - the subjects resolved unanimously to open the grave of Peter Plogojowitz and to see if such above-mentioned signs were really to be found on him. To this end they came here to me and, telling of these events, asked me and the local parish priest, to be present at the viewing-
And although I at first disapproved, telling them that the praiseworthy administration should first be dutifully and humbly informed. and its exalted opinion about this should be heard, they did not want to accommodate themselves to this at all, but rather gave this short answer: I could do what I wanted, but if I did not accord them the viewing and the legal recognition to deal with the body according to their custom, they would have to leave house and home, because by the time a gracious resolution was received from Belgrade, perhaps the entire village - and this was already supposed to have happened in Turkish times - could be destroyed by such an evil spirit, and they did not want to wait for this,
Since I could not hold these people from the resolution they had made, either with good words or with threats, I went to the village of Kisilova, taking along the Gradisk priest, and viewed the body of Peter Plogojowitz, just exhumed, finding, in accordance with thorough truthfulness, that first of all I did not detect the slightest odor that is otherwise characteristic of the dead, and the body, except for the nose, which was somewhat fallen away, was completely fresh. The hair and beard- even the nails, of which the old ones had fallen away - had grown on him; the old skin, which was somewhat whitish, had peeled away, and a new one had emerged from it. The face, hands, and feet and the whole body were so constituted, that they could not have been more complete in his lifetime. Not without astonishment, I saw some fresh blood in his mouth, which, according to the common observation, he had sucked from the people killed by him.
In short, all the indications were present that such people (as remarked above) are said to have.

After both the priest and I had seen this spectacle, while people grew more outraged than distressed, all the subjects, with great speed, sharpened a stake - in order to pierce the corpse of the deceased with it- and put this at his heart, whereupon, as he was pierced, not only did much blood, completely fresh, flow also through his ears and mouth, but still other wild signs (which I pass by out of high respect) took place. Finally, according to their usual practice, they burned the often mentioned body, in his case, to ashes of which I inform the most laudable Administration, and at the same time would like to request, obediently and humbly, that if a mistake was made in this matter, such is to be attributed not to me but to the rabble, who were beside themselves with fear.

Wiki has a more sceptical view of the events.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

Wikipedia sez:

These phenomena or appearances are now known to accompany the natural process of the decomposition of the body.

And:

In fact, all of the phenomena described are characteristic of corpses at certain stages of decay.

I don't think this washes, for the following reasons:

People living three centuries ago were FAR MORE knowledgeable of the stages of human decay than we are today. Individuals living today can go their entire lives without ever seeing or smelling a decaying human corpse (except possibly in battlefield situations). That was CERTAINLY NOT true during the early 18th Century. Corpses regularly fell into decay during their own obsequies. They were often buried no more than a foot deep, so that cemeteries were notorious for their miasmic odors (and corpse lights and "candles," too) and shallow-buried corpses often made unscheduled "reappearances" during thunderstorms.

Moreover the autopsy of Arnod (Arnold) Paole was carried out and attested to by THREE DIFFERENT military doctors. I would assume that army doctors and surgeons had seen LOTS of corpses in VARIOUS stages of disintegration, from the freshly-rotting to the completely skeletonized.

 

[EnolaGaia]

Another New England subject of vampirism-induced corpse desecration has now been identified ...

Mysterious Connecticut 'Vampire' Finally Identified 200 Years After Burial

In a Connecticut graveyard dating to the late 18th century, one grave stood out. Its occupant, a man who died about 200 years ago, had been dug up and reburied with his head and limbs piled on top of his ribcage, hinting that he was suspected of being a vampire.

Now, archaeologists have revealed the identity of the man, formerly known only as "JB-55" — his initials and age when he died, which were spelled out on his coffin in embedded brass tacks, The Washington Post reported.

Forensic scientists compared genetic evidence from the skeleton with online genealogical databases to ID the "vampire" as a man named John Barber. He was probably a poor farmer who lived a hard life; he appears to have died from tuberculosis, a representative of the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Silver Spring, Maryland, announced at a museum event on July 26. ...

The condition of Barber's skeleton suggested that he suffered from a poorly healed broken collarbone and an arthritic knee, according to The Post. The tuberculosis that killed him was so acute that it left lesions on his ribs, and his excruciating illness and death were likely what led his family and friends to suspect that he was a vampire, Jennifer Higginbotham, a DNA researcher with the U.S. Armed Forces Medical Examiner System, explained at the event.

Commonly known as consumption during the 18th and 19th centuries, tuberculosis caused ulcers in the lungs and left its victims pale, emaciated and weak. Infected people often had bloodstains at the corners of their mouths from coughing up blood, and their gums would recede, making their teeth appear longer, Higgenbotham explained.

Tuberculosis is highly contagious. As epidemics spread through families and villages in New England, people interpreted the ghastly appearance of dying victims — and the subsequent sickening of their families — as part of a supernatural and monstrous transformation, researchers reported in an analysis of JB-55, published in 1994 in The American Journal of Physical Anthropology. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/66087-vampire-connecticut-dna.html

Cited Washington Post article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/hist...ew-life/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.90e1411717af

Cited American Journal of Physical Anthropology article:
http://www.yorku.ca/kdenning/+++2150 2007-8/sledzik vampire.pdf

 

[maximus otter]

SILVER SPRING, MARYLAND—The identity of an early nineteenth-century Connecticut man who appears to have been treated as a vampire after burial has been determined, according to a report from The Washington Post.

The man’s coffin was found in 1990 in a gravel quarry in the town of Griswold. Its lid bore the inscription “JB 55” in brass tacks, indicating the man’s initials and age at death. Inside, his head and limbs had been arranged over his ribs to form a skull and crossbones.

Researchers who studied the man’s remains in the 1990s determined that he had likely died of tuberculosis at a time when victims of the disease were believed to leave their graves to infect their relatives. It appears that the man’s family dug him up several years after he was buried and rearranged his bones to prevent him from stalking them.

Researchers from the U.S. Armed Forces Medical Examiner System believe they have identified him as John Barber, who was most likely a farmer.

The researchers first used Y-chromosomal DNA profiling in conjunction with publicly available genealogy data to determine that the man’s last name was Barber.

http://www.archaeology.org/news/7878-190805-connecticut-tuberculosis-vampire

maximus otter