DiscoverScroll article

The New England vampire panic was the reaction to an outbreak of tuberculosis in the late 18th and 19th centuries throughout Rhode Island, eastern Connecticut, southern Massachusetts, Vermont, and other areas of the New England states.

Consumption (tuberculosis) was thought to be caused by the deceased consuming the life of their surviving relatives. Bodies were exhumed and internal organs ritually burned to stop the deceased "vampire" from attacking the local population and to prevent the spread of the disease. Notable cases provoked national attention and comment, such as those of Mercy Brown in Rhode Island and Frederick Ransom in Vermont.

Tuberculosis was known as "consumption" at the time, as it appeared to consume an infected person's body. The infection spreads easily among a family; thus, when one family member died of consumption, other members were often infected and gradually lost their health. People believed that this was due to the deceased TB sufferer draining the life from other family members. The belief that consumption was spread in this way was widely held in New England and in Europe. In an attempt to protect the survivors and ward off the effects of consumption, bodies of those who had died of the disease were exhumed and examined. In other cases, families would burn the "fresh" organs and rebury the body; occasionally, the body would be decapitated. Affected family members would also inhale smoke from the burned organs or consume the ashes in a further attempt to cure the consumption. By July 1788, he and his wife had lost three daughters to consumption, including Martha Forward Dwight. He wrote in a letter: this morning opened the grave of my daughter ... who had died—the last of my three daughters—almost six years ago ... On opening the body, the lungs were not dissolved, but had blood in them, though not fresh, but clotted.

Frederick Ransom of South Woodstock, Vermont, died of tuberculosis on 14 February 1817 at the age of 20. His father was worried that Ransom would attack his family, so he had him exhumed and his heart burned on a blacksmith's forge. Ransom was a Dartmouth College student from a well-to-do family; it was unusual that he should fall victim of the vampire panic, which was most common among less educated communities.

One of the more famous cases is that of Mercy Lena Brown. Mercy's mother contracted consumption which spread to the rest of the family, moving to her sister, her brother, and finally to Mercy. Neighbors believed that one of the family members was a vampire who had the illness. Two months after Mercy's death, her father George Brown—who did not believe that a vampire was to blame—reluctantly permitted others to exhume the bodies of his family. They found that Mercy's body showed little decomposition, had "fresh" blood in her heart, and had turned in the grave. This was enough to convince the villagers that Mercy Brown was the cause of the consumption. The heart of the exhumed body was burnt, mixed with water, and given to her surviving brother to drink in order to stop the influence of the undead.

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," as a reference to contemporary superstition. When rural Rhode Islanders moved west into Connecticut, locals perceived them as "uneducated" and "vicious", which was partially due to the Rhode Islanders' beliefs in vampirism. In Woodstock, where local belief was still present, town records report hundreds of onlookers attending the burning of Frederick Ransom's heart."

However, the term was used by newspapers and outsiders at the time due to the similarity with contemporary vampire beliefs in eastern Europe.

Quick Facts

• Bodies were exhumed and internal organs ritually burned to stop the deceased "vampire" from attacking the local population and to prevent the spread of the disease.
• Notable cases provoked national attention and comment, such as those of Mercy Brown in Rhode Island and Frederick Ransom in Vermont.
• The belief that consumption was spread in this way was widely held in New England and in Europe.
• Consumption (tuberculosis) was thought to be caused by the deceased consuming the life of their surviving relatives.
• Ransom was a Dartmouth College student from a well-to-do family; it was unusual that he should fall victim of the vampire panic, which was most common among less educated communities.

Source material: Wikipedia - "New England vampire panic". Adapted and summarized for DiscoverScroll. Original contributors are credited through the linked Wikipedia article. Read original on Wikipedia. CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes were made from the original.