October 19, 2021 • 37 mins
While historians continue to explore the details of the infamous Salem witch trials, another, earlier panic swept through New England -- something modern historians often refer to as the "Vampire Panic." In part one of this two-part series, Ben is joined again with guest host Alex Williams, creator of the Ephemeral podcast, to explore the brutal realities of daily life in New England, and how the everpresent threat of disease led some communities to take increasingly desperate (and gruesome) actions to save themselves.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. Shout out to shout out
to our super producer Max Williams, who was on vacation
and is going to send me some out of context
photos at some point. Everybody get ready, I'll update you
if they're safer. Work. Big shout out to our returning
(00:49):
guest producer, the one and only Mr Lowell Brilliante, also
the creator of the Prodigy podcast. Check it out as
soon as you get a chance, but don't check it
out just yet. Check it out after you listen to
today's episode, where I am joined with a returning special
guest for their third time on the show. Fellow Ridiculous Historians,
(01:13):
you know him as the creator of the soundtrack of
this show. You know him as the creator of Ephemeral,
one of the best podcast out there, neck and neck
with Prodigy in my opinion, Please join me and welcoming back.
Alex Williams, you guys do the best. I mean, you
do the best. Introductions. I was gonna say you guys,
but Noel's not here. Noel is on Adventures separate adventures
(01:36):
from Max. That's my writer or die co host Noel Brown.
We are doing this with his blessing and uh adoration
of you. At least he will be returning soon. But yeah,
you're you're you are our draft pick. You're the You're
the one person out of all twelve friends that Nolan
(01:56):
I have and out of those twelve, out of the
five that were available, you were the one who said, yes,
you know, it's nice to be on a list of
any size or kind, right, That's what the n s
A is always delegated. Yeah, so, Alex, this is as
you know we talked off air. This is one of
(02:17):
my favorite times of the year because we are hurtling
toward the end of the calendar and on the way
we're going to hit Halloween. Were you ever a big
Halloween guy? You're you're also since your Max's older brother,
I have to ask, were you guys like Halloween kids?
Very much? So? I mean we grew up in the suburbs.
I don't know if that, but you know, like trick
(02:39):
or treating, you know, door to door sort of neighborhood
black party style, haunted houses in the neighborhood. My birthday
is in October October four. I'm all fall all Halloween
ever since I can remember. Still there. Yeah, yeah, all
about it. Nice. So you are imminently qualified for this.
(03:02):
That's imminently with an e M. Not like immediately about
to be qualified just because this is audio show. So
we talked off air, you and Lowell and I about
some some I don't want to say HALLOWEENI, but no,
keep it. Yeah, we can keep that. It's just like Halloween.
And I've sort of come around on that one. Okay.
So so some HALLOWEENI stories we wanted to explore. And
(03:26):
one of the ones that we one of the ones
that we're diving into this week on this episode is
about vampires. It's about New England, it's about panicking. Yes
it is, um sorry, I don't yes, And I just
want vampire jokes. Ben, I don't know if I have
(03:47):
a whole bunch prepared, it's gonna say something like, oh,
Noel's not you know here because I you know, it
was the word exanguinated. Yes, you know, bit into his
neck and exanguinated him to dream one of the blood Alex.
If I had really thought I had bro I would
have brought those little plastic vampire teeth iss me and
it would have totally like not smiled at you or
(04:09):
talk to you until we got in here and we're
just pro like harsh my frown shrow. That's fantastic. Yeah.
I mean some people think vampire jokes are pain in
the neck, but I dig them because my bar for
comedy is like way low. I was thinking about vampires
so much today, but I think literally any vampire punt
is gonna get me fantastic. Okay, yes, uh, also tell
(04:33):
me if we need to dial it back, because I
got I got vampires on the mind as well. We're okay.
So when we talked about vampires today, what do we
usually think about, Alex, Like, what do you think is
Eastern Europe? Eastern Europe? Okay, you know Olden times like
medieval times, fangs, I think of lad then Paler. Yeah. Yeah,
(04:54):
if we're gonna go like literal though, I and we
could get into that if you want. I I it
seems like the connection between Fled the Impaler and Tracula
and the whole vampire myth is maybe kind of overexaggerated
in in in popular consciousness. What else do you think of,
like castles, castles, yet unnecessary capes that they can still
(05:18):
sort of pull off. What would you call an unnecessary cave?
I mean, well, I you know, it's a necessary cape.
A necessary cape is when it's cold out and you
don't have other kinds of clothing, or I would say
a necessary cape if you're a kid and you're playing superhero,
you need you need a blanket like that to find
(05:40):
your character. Capes often go on flying figures that fly.
Superheroes and vampires fly. Sometimes sometimes the rules aren't clear.
What is interesting is that the what you do, what
you describe perfectly like immortality, maybe some helio phobia. These
(06:02):
kinds of things all sort of coalesced in our idea
the modern vampire. But as as you know, if you
look back across the span of human civilization, different cultures
around the planet, you'll see something like a vampire exist
in folklore. And often I don't know, maybe I'm being
like a grass is Greener on the other side of
(06:23):
the grave guy, but I feel like a lot of
other cultures have more interesting ideas of vampires, or pre
Bram Stoker, there was a lot more variation in the idea.
But today you and I are going to talk about
when this folklore had some very real, quite grotesque consequences
(06:44):
for the people of early New England. You're talking about
when melt brooks Um went made with Leslie Nielsen Dracula
dead and loving it. Yes, yeah, which I count as
early New England. But what am I here with it? Yeah?
So when we think of New England, we often early
(07:05):
New England people often think of things like the Salem
Witch Trials. They think of Puritans, they think of the Crucible,
but they don't think of a vampire panic. If we
were to paint this scene of early life in let's
say the seventeen hundreds in New England, then we see
(07:28):
it's a pretty brutal life, right, there's not I mean,
people are it's not unusual for people as starved to
death the colonists or having conflicts with indigenous people. Uh.
People are struggling to grow food in an unfamiliar climate,
and there's disease like everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. I I was
(07:51):
lucky enough to work on a show called Unobscured, and
in its first season I still work on it. But
in its first season, we we was all about the
Salem Which Trials and we got to interview all these
the these greatest eminent historians, um that have done really
incredible work about and it's it's it's really interesting. It's
just like a few months in two But yeah, everything
you said, I mean, it was it was super hard
(08:12):
that the war is going on all the time between
native peoples and the colonists, and like, you know, I
think there's this idea that um, you know, at least
this is I feel like the idea that I walked
away from, like you know, maybe primary school with it.
Like it's like, oh, these sort of puritans, like you know,
these pilgrims fled the old world for like religious persecution
(08:32):
and they came here and they got to practice it
and it was super nice. But really people were had
very strong opinions here in very different opinions, and that
led a lot to sort of where people settled and
so like the differences between different towns, even within Massachusetts,
of the difference between Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. In the
different Vermont and Connecticut, it was often like very sort
(08:55):
of furtive ground for disagreements of all kinds. Y s. Yeah,
especially when you consider that for people in the secular world,
or even for people who consider themselves religious. In the
modern day, some of these doctrinal differences might seem relatively
like not not too crazy, can't we all just get along?
(09:17):
But for these folks, they were hard enough limits to
make visiting another another area or another community feel almost
as though when we're traveling to a foreign country and
culturally in some ways, you can see how people would
feel that way because these are these are folks immigrating
from various parts of Europe right over time. So you're right,
(09:39):
this was not as hunky dorry as many public schools
taught us. Uh, it's quite the opposite. Uh. This this
episode owes a lot to a retired state archaeologist in
Connecticut named Nicholas Bellantoni. He put some time into kind
of characterizing just how bad mortality rates were in New
(10:02):
England between seventeen eighty six and eighteen hundred six is
when health officials first started saying we should figure out
how many people are dying each year. I swear there
were more people at the last Christmas party, you know
they I know that sounds cool, but they when they
(10:23):
when they calculated this, they said that for tuberculosis alone,
two percent of New England's population went down because of that.
They died, and they didn't call it tuberculosis at this point.
They called it um consumption, consumption. I have not heard
(10:50):
or seen a reasonable explanation of why it was called consumption.
It's just not a term that I really used or
here today at all. Consumption in any kind text besides
like eating consuming something. I think that's that's what I
always That's why always assumed. I don't have a hard
and fast answer for that, but I always, I always
assumed it was cold consumption due to the weight loss
(11:14):
that a lot of people encounter during tuberculos, like the
disease that is consuming you. Yes, it was the way
that you mind that. That just clarified it for me,
which I noticedn't translate into audio. But okay, okay, I
get it. I get it. I get a consumption. Yes,
it's not so because I would think, you know, I would.
I always hear that, you know, consumption is about it eating.
(11:34):
But I'm like, but if you're getting skinnier, if you're
wasting away, but you are being consumed. The disease itself
is the consumption toad to get you're the one on
the menu. Yeah, this is And later in Gosh two,
a doctor Robert Coke will announce that he has discovered
the bacteria that causes tuberculosis, and physically no one listens
(11:58):
to him. No, no, of course, who listens to doctors.
Term theory was not very popular, as I understand it.
When it came out. People like, what there is not
little entities living all over the place. It's magic, like
it's always been, it always has been. Yeah, And and
that reminds me the story of Samul weis the one
guy who said, hey, everybody, maybe we should wash our hands.
(12:21):
Since we're doctors, maybe we should just scrub our hands
a little. I didn't even have to be soaked, just
run some water over him before we stick him inside people.
And they were like, this guy is an ass. Lock
them up. They put him in an institution, right, you
know how I learned that. Uh no, it's not a spoiler.
They say it at Midnight Mass in one of these
long monologues at midnight Mass. Yeah, I love midnight Mass.
(12:42):
I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed it, and I thought,
it's the problems, but maybe we want to include me
saying that because I don't want to get flak from
Midnight Mass from fans of it. Oh no, no, I
think people would agree. But uh, speaking of speaking and problems,
can asumption, like the consumption is a problem. Here we've
(13:04):
got a quote from Belentoni who says this death toll
referring to New England is not only terrifying, it's also
a horrific way to die. Consumptives lost weight, they coughed
up blood, their skin turned ashen, and sometimes they died
a slow death, almost as if well, if we could
get a creepy sound cue here, someone was sucking the
(13:26):
life out of them. And like you, you set us
up perfectly here, Alex. This is before germ theory. Even
the learned men of the day, the physicians aren't sure
how to really explain how infectious diseases are spread. And
(13:47):
because no one had an explanation, people started thinking through
like their own ideas of what this could be. Yeah,
you know one other thing that I that I uh,
that's really kind of terrifying, um that I didn't realize
about tuberculosis or consumption. I mean, just just call it consumption.
It sounds class here, It's it's really creepy. It's a
(14:10):
really well named disease. Now that you've made it so
you've illustrated it so well for me. But one of
the things, one of the things that I learned, and
when you sort of read on this this subject, you
hear this name Michael Bell a lot, Michael Bell. It
seems to be is like the guy who really has
has connected tuberculosis that the awful I mean tuberculous being
(14:32):
the leading killer of people in New England at this time.
Uh and uh, this particular panic that we're talking about today.
But one of the things that that I learned from
him is that tuberculosis or consumption could be very slow acting.
It could come on and then it could go dormant,
and it could rest dormant in you for years and
(14:53):
then suddenly could come back. People and also you know,
it was sort of a selective hller. It seems like
like people in close quarters. You know, it would spread
like a wildfire from one family member to the next,
but then someone in the family might just not get it,
or maybe they carry it for a long time and
it wouldn't affect them till later. Has some eerie parallels
(15:15):
to coronavirus obviously, and just the way that you you like,
don't know when it's going to strike, but you know
it's sort of in your midst it's out there. Yeah,
And that's an example of this would be perhaps the
life of Doc Holiday as played by Val Kilmer and
two so, which is not super accurate, but but he
(15:38):
has traveled as a consumptive to a different environment with
the hope being that a different climate will um will
help him survive to berculosis. A lot of people in
New England at this time they didn't have that option.
They couldn't say no, perha was summer in Greek, so whatever,
(16:00):
you know what I mean. They were like trying not
to cough blood on whatever they were growing, or you know,
the kids they're trying to feed. And you described something
that I think is incredibly important here, Alex, the the
paranoia this kind of thing can create because you are
probably living in close quarters with people. A lot of
(16:22):
folks the family is living in a in a small structure.
They're not able to effectively fluorentine if if they practice
some concept like that. In many cases, just living in
the same home and these small structures was enough for
the disease to spread throughout the entire family. But Not
(16:42):
only would it maybe playball sometimes and then go dormant
and then go back on its game over years. Not
only would that occur, but people couldn't predict it. People
didn't know someone. You would think you were fine, and
then you would start wasting away, but it had been
several months after a relative had died. That's just when
(17:04):
you were tuberculosis for some reason went active. And that's
what they talk a lot about. Health experts and historians
talk a lot about tuberculosis in terms of latency and active,
like latent tuberculosis, dormant or active. And at some point
anywhere between seventy to nine of the population of the
(17:26):
US had either latent or active tuberculosis. Nowadays, as you know,
if you're listening, we figured out we the human species,
not Alex Lowell and I figured out that tuberculosis has
spread through the air. So just like with COVID. Remember
did you ever go out during the pandemic and accidentally
cough somewhere? Yeah, I feel like I. I I coughed
(17:49):
in the office today a few times, and I feel
like you're almost staring at me, even though there's there's
four of you here. Um like I could spread to
tuberculosis to you, I thought he's never going to call
an sumption consumption. I could consumpt you from here, Yes, yes,
one could be consumpted, which I think we should use
instead of consumed. Well, yeah, clearly consumed is at the end.
(18:12):
You're consumpted at the beginning. Yeah, it's true. But because
people didn't have the benefit of germ theory, they weren't
sure how to what caused it, and they weren't sure,
more importantly, how to stop it. And in places like Lynn, Massachusetts,
this consumption, whatever it is, becomes the leading cause of death.
(18:35):
We mean, entire families are gone there, as the more
dramatic would put it, their bloodline has been erased, consumed,
and no one, no one could figure out what happened,
why people would suddenly get this incredibly unpleasant death sentence.
And if we go back to Michael Bell, who really
(18:59):
did write the book, he's the guy, he says, he
points out some differences between COVID nineteen and consumption. He says,
one of the primary differences is that it is, like
you pointed out, Alex, it's much slower to manifest and
(19:20):
it doesn't explode through a population and when when something
explodes through population, it will leave behind people who were
either lucky or had some kind of natural immunity. But
this instead goes in and out of of I don't
want to call it remission, but it goes in and
out of being active. No one knows. And this could
(19:43):
go for this could go on for decades before it
killed them anyhow, Because people were so terrified rightly of
dying or having their loved ones dying, they were trying
to find causes. I think it was eighteen ninety two
after discovering after the discovery of the bacteria, there was
(20:05):
one doctor who was still who was still insist on
things like to burcul loisis is caused by drunkenness and
want and povert. Yeah, they always blame the poor. It's
playing the poor. Just be less poor. That's what I
would do when you want to s're spending time with
the poor, weren't you? You know they mingled with the poor.
(20:29):
Do you know how I smingled with the poor? Jesus Christ,
I'm I'm a fan of the book. Yeah, he's famous
for that. He's famous hip for that, amongst many other
and people were praying. People were seeking spiritual protection in
the face of let's see not just not just to
brcular consumption, excuse me, but cholera, smallpox, yellow fever, measles, influenza,
(20:56):
and then just straight up plague. M There is a
I think kind of common misconception that I've also held
with New England of this time too, that when you
say spiritual protection, I think we all think kind of,
you know, standard Protestant Christian kind of practices and beliefs.
(21:23):
But there is also a whole lot of gray area
to that, and there's a whole lot of other sort
of traditions from the Old World and maybe some sort
of new New World traditions that get mixed into that.
And there's been folk magic. There's a lot of folk
magic practice. You see it in all the way back
in the six hundreds throughout the Salem witch trials and
(21:45):
again here in the in the vampire panic. Yeah, you do,
and there is It's strange because folklore is probably best
described as a conversation between cultures at these points, uh
or various points in history. And you can see it
in Appalachia later, you can really you can see it anywhere. Uh.
(22:06):
Some practice of what would be called folk magic. And
to be clear, we're not saying that in a dismissive way.
We're saying that these are practices, values, and belief systems
that maybe aren't treated with the same dogma of an
organized religion. Well, they don't come from an official source, right,
(22:26):
there's no one in the clergy that's telling you to
hang a horseshoe upside down above your door to keep
you know, ward off evil spirits or you know, leave
your boots faced up by the fire or did they
burn their boots. Well, it depends on what's going on.
It depends if there was there was a thing with
boots and the fireplace and keeping the devil away. You know,
I don't they're not gonna say that to you in church,
(22:49):
you know, during the sermon, but you know someone might
come up to you afterwards, like, you know, if you're
really having an in issue with the devil, maybe pop
those boots off tonight. Can it be anybody boots and
then go it's probably better if it's yours. I took
off my boots as soon as we get in the studio.
That's true. Are those boots? Yeah? Oh nice to these
Australian boots. If I say the name, do you think
(23:11):
they sponsor us? Maybe if it is just called blond stunts.
They're so I've had a lot of boots. Man, they're tough. Yeah,
this is not this is not planned as an ad,
but I do want to say an Alex's defense. We
were hanging out at our favorite local bar, which is
again longtime listeners, called the local, and I had asked
(23:32):
him about his boots and then we went like you
told me about them kind of in detail because I
was looking for a good pair of but I think
I put them on the table. You propped the foot up.
It did. My girlfriend turned me on him. She she
had a pair of these. We took him the petrified forest.
We accidentally went off trail and stepped in some cook
(23:53):
from the prehistoric age, you know, killed some burgeoning life forms. Yeah,
it's still stuck to those shoes. But man, they're they're
about as tough as you can get. That's awesome, blood Stone.
My name is Alex Wlams. I hope I would love
to get a sponsorship going on. Uh why also love
to be sponsored by not maybe early New England, but vampires.
(24:16):
If you're out there, if you're listening, to this show.
There are apparently, um there is and this doesn't really
all that surprising, is but there's a segment of the
population that, like in some capacity in surveys, responds that
they are vampires. Yes, different types of vampires to write
real vampires. Oh like I must I must drink blood.
(24:39):
I must drink blood. Not just people that effective vampire lifestyle,
but people that consider themselves to actually be vampires. Yeah,
I've I've heard of this. I've seen there are a
couple of documentaries about people like this. On the more
extreme end, uh, there will be people who claim that
they also cannot eat conventional sustenance. They can't eat conventional
(25:01):
food or drink. You were drank blood before, Ben, Yes,
of course, how much like I stuck that, you know, like,
you know, I cut my you know, I gotta cut
or something on my you know, on my own body,
and and you know trained a little bit, you know, Yeah,
salty irony. I mean with the largest quantity of blood
you think you ever or if you've got something you're
(25:23):
you know, you got a tooth that gets messed up,
you get blood in your mouth, you lost one time? Yeah, yeah,
right right right, Um, well I am not going to answer, uh,
any more questions about that experience. I guess it is
a pretty taboos subject, right, Like, if you were into that,
how many people do you think you could talk to
(25:44):
about it? Probably, you know what, maybe not everybody, but
the people you could talk to about it would be
a very passionate community. They would want to share those stories, right.
The X Files is a great episode with vampires, and
they have more than but there's more where it's like
three kind of young sexy vampires like living together and
(26:05):
they've got some kind of esque relationship heavily implied. Yeah,
and they've got trauma. But I feel like there's the
lead that kind of you know, has this also sort
of sexual energy going on with Molder is like describing
how save him fulfilling drinking blood is, Yeah, that's the
(26:27):
The idea of the seductive powers of a vampire is
I don't know how. It's definitely not as prevalent in
early New England as it is today, right Like today
you've got the Twilight Vampire. Today you've got you know,
the the seductive vampire. And it's funny because it goes
(26:51):
into another thing kind of unrelated. They're often often very
like sensual words are in print and in speech used
to describe two things sex and food, you know what
I mean, decadent, luscious, that kind of stuff. And it
makes sense that she's describing and this this character that
(27:13):
you're talking about X files is describing essentially was eating
in very centual terms. But that's not what the vampires
they're like in the in the vampire pandemic in New
England at all. They're much more honestly, they're much more
like zombies. Yeah, there's this idea that so the idea
(27:36):
of what we call the vampire first appears in Slavic
Europe around the tenth century. There have been plenty of
other human like monsters drinking blood, but you know, good
old vamps started in Slavic Europe. And according to Bell,
who we mentioned earlier, his his argument is that Slavic
(27:56):
and Germanic immigrants brought those superstitions vampires with them in
the seventeen hundreds, maybe around the time a specific group
from Germany was colonizing Pennsylvania or maybe Hessian mercenaries, right,
And he thinks that you can't pin it down to
(28:16):
like one family coming through town and saying, WHOA I
remember these from the old country. You've got vampires. He
argues that it probably came from more than one time,
through more than one source, which makes sense to me
because it feels like corroboration. Then right, you've got multiple
people who are seemingly confirming, oh yeah, vampires. That's way
(28:40):
different from one person going I think it's vampires because
somebody else in town walks up and goes, someone say vampires.
I agree, it's kind of I don't want to get
too far ahead of it, but it's it's even further
complicated by like whoa who was used in contemporaneously, Who
was using the term vampire? You know? Was it just
(29:01):
the media, which is what it seems like. It was
mostly a word that was used in media of the time,
but not maybe so much in uh, individual accounts. And
what were they thinking of when they said vampire? You know? Yeah,
that's the thing. It's what's in a word? What did
the word vampire mean to them versus to us today?
(29:24):
And I agree that it's much more like the modern
idea of a zombie. Uh. Look, if if I'm a yes,
if if I could explain it to you and you
tell me if I've got it. Okay. We're in a family,
the Williams ben Bowland, little brilliante, ridiculous history family. Like
we are here in this little studio together, and Low,
(29:44):
great producer as he is, gets sick with consumption. We
do our best. We sent him to a sanitarium, We
send him to Colorado Springs. He seems like he's gonna
get better. He doesn't. He gets all skinny and he's foaming,
and he's got blood coming out, and he's he's not
doing well. He's staying up weird hours of the night.
We're like weirded out by them. And then one day
(30:05):
it's mercifully over. I swear it's allergies. Uh those were
those were his last words, Oh, poor little And so
it's like, you know, the mid seventeen hundreds, late seventeen hundreds.
We want to bury him in the ground, having a
(30:27):
nice Christian funeral, but the ground is frozen. Right. We
stick this guy and above ground to him in a box.
We have the pastor come, say a few nice words,
ashes to ash this dust to dust, and we go
on with the rest of our lives, you know, missing
Low all the while. But then Ben gets sick. I do,
(30:49):
and the same symptoms are happening, the same weird stuff.
His cheeks are getting flushed, he's getting just like eyes
are sunken in even more than usual. He's like coughing
and he's starting to cough blood feel I've lost my
epic diete. And we sent him to the Adirondacks, to
(31:12):
upstate New York because we've got all the money to
send people to all this an I go along to
bring the blood stones, break them in. But Ben's not
getting better. Everything we try, we take one of the
best doctors who do like leeches and blood lighting and whatever.
We're taken with all the best doctors, and it's not working.
And I've tried everything. I want so badly to save
(31:32):
my guest co host. So I don't know. I I guess
I guess I'm your guest co host. But whatever. Uh,
And you know, people in town start saying to me,
you know what it is, right, I mean, you know
what you can't It's because low over there in the
ground is exercising his will from beyond the grave on Ben.
(31:54):
He's literally getting out of the corps, is getting out
of the grave or out of the tomb at night,
probably when no one's looking and coming and praying upon you.
Or is it more of a psychic kind of spiritual
way that it's you know, like he like he's somehow
projecting himself onto you. And so it's is it is it?
(32:18):
Is it physical? Is it? Is it spiritual? Spectral? So
this part, this is interesting because this is where we
get to the first off, excellent rendition tentet I've got
that's more or less the the idea, that is exactly
the idea. And people back then, we're just as intelligent
(32:38):
as people are now. They didn't have access to the
same um level of research or the same like knowledge
of medicine that modern folks have, but they weren't knuckleheads.
You know. There were plenty of skeptical people who would say,
all right, well that's malarkey. But then there were also
people who would say, mmm, maybe I believe in an afterlife,
(33:02):
so maybe this is another part of it that I
am not aware of. And there were people who believe
that they were physics, they were mentally u and through
some in comporeal form, they were traveling to their victims,
drawn by their life force, and they're the fact that
they had known one another in the waking world, or like,
(33:22):
the big question if you're a skeptical at all, is
if someone is physically rising from the grave, why is
the grave not disturbed? Right? That was one of the
big questions. And we see, um, we see accusations of
vampirism in other parts of history when someone had been
prematurely buried, which was becomes a huge conserve, I think
(33:45):
in in Victorian times especially, just check out the inventions
people made with a little I'm not dead bells, that's
what I call them. But uh, but I think he
nailed it because even if you're more skeptical at this point,
if you're surrounded by you've lost multiple people in your community,
you've lost more than one family member, and you think
(34:05):
more might be on the way, maybe your maybe your
last healthy kid isn't looking so healthy. Then you start
to say, ah, I don't know, maybe I'll try anything.
And if you it's a really good point that people
people aren't haven't been all that different at any point
in time, right. You know, it's a it's a crazy
(34:26):
it's a crazy story, a crazy collection of stories. But
you go and you try to look at it empathetically.
And this comes from Bell too, but I mean, you know,
imagine the father who has tried everything for his last
alien kid, and it's like, I guess I'll try this
crazy thing. I'll dig up my dead wife and this
is where we get to the grizzly strange. All two
(34:51):
real stories. We're actually going to make this a two
parter because Alex Lowell and I really want to. Well
again too, the grave of it sounds insensitive, Well we do.
We do want to We do want to give some
real examples, and we want to spend some time here.
So we're going to pause and we'll be back very
(35:13):
soon with part two of the New England Vampire Panic.
In the meantime, I I don't think I've ever done
this before, but thank you to Alex Williams, Thank you
to Lotle, brilliante. Alex, you are going to come back
for the second part of this right fun too, very much,
(35:35):
very much? Clothes? Yeah? Not bad? Uh a little? Are you?
Are you on board to come back? I think you
nailed it with that allergies line? Yeah, let's do it
all right, So hey, let me see if you can
guess this one. We'll go out because we promised some
bad jokes. Hey, Alex, why does Dracula always read the
(35:55):
most popular newspapers always read the most person I don't know, then,
why does it because he likes the ones with good circulation? Alright, alright, well,
we hope that you've weathered that one in YouTube, and
we hope you enjoyed this ridiculous historians. We hope you
tune into part two of this big big thanks to
Alex Williams, Big big thanks to Little Brilliante, big thanks
(36:17):
to Max Williams, big thanks to my rider Die co
host Noel Brown who will be returning soon, and big
thanks to Gabe Lousier. Alex. Where can people find Ephemeral?
Unlike all of the social media's, it's at Ephemeral dot
Show on Instagram. I think some of them don't have
(36:37):
the dot. And then our website is www dot Ephemeral
Dot Show. All right, and a little where can people
find Prodigy? Uh? Whenever they listen to their favorite shows?
All right? Well, with no spoilers, then please do check
out both Prodigy and Ephemeral. Stay safe, folks, we will
talk very soon. In the meantime, let us know what
(36:59):
you or Halloween ideas are. I can't wait to hear
from you. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. H
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. Shout out to shout out
to our super producer Max Williams, who was on vacation
and is going to send me some out of context
photos at some point. Everybody get ready, I'll update you
if they're safer. Work. Big shout out to our returning
(00:49):
guest producer, the one and only Mr Lowell Brilliante, also
the creator of the Prodigy podcast. Check it out as
soon as you get a chance, but don't check it
out just yet. Check it out after you listen to
today's episode, where I am joined with a returning special
guest for their third time on the show. Fellow Ridiculous Historians,
(01:13):
you know him as the creator of the soundtrack of
this show. You know him as the creator of Ephemeral,
one of the best podcast out there, neck and neck
with Prodigy in my opinion, Please join me and welcoming back.
Alex Williams, you guys do the best. I mean, you
do the best. Introductions. I was gonna say you guys,
but Noel's not here. Noel is on Adventures separate adventures
(01:36):
from Max. That's my writer or die co host Noel Brown.
We are doing this with his blessing and uh adoration
of you. At least he will be returning soon. But yeah,
you're you're you are our draft pick. You're the You're
the one person out of all twelve friends that Nolan
(01:56):
I have and out of those twelve, out of the
five that were available, you were the one who said, yes,
you know, it's nice to be on a list of
any size or kind, right, That's what the n s
A is always delegated. Yeah, so, Alex, this is as
you know we talked off air. This is one of
(02:17):
my favorite times of the year because we are hurtling
toward the end of the calendar and on the way
we're going to hit Halloween. Were you ever a big
Halloween guy? You're you're also since your Max's older brother,
I have to ask, were you guys like Halloween kids?
Very much? So? I mean we grew up in the suburbs.
I don't know if that, but you know, like trick
(02:39):
or treating, you know, door to door sort of neighborhood
black party style, haunted houses in the neighborhood. My birthday
is in October October four. I'm all fall all Halloween
ever since I can remember. Still there. Yeah, yeah, all
about it. Nice. So you are imminently qualified for this.
(03:02):
That's imminently with an e M. Not like immediately about
to be qualified just because this is audio show. So
we talked off air, you and Lowell and I about
some some I don't want to say HALLOWEENI, but no,
keep it. Yeah, we can keep that. It's just like Halloween.
And I've sort of come around on that one. Okay.
So so some HALLOWEENI stories we wanted to explore. And
(03:26):
one of the ones that we one of the ones
that we're diving into this week on this episode is
about vampires. It's about New England, it's about panicking. Yes
it is, um sorry, I don't yes, And I just
want vampire jokes. Ben, I don't know if I have
(03:47):
a whole bunch prepared, it's gonna say something like, oh,
Noel's not you know here because I you know, it
was the word exanguinated. Yes, you know, bit into his
neck and exanguinated him to dream one of the blood Alex.
If I had really thought I had bro I would
have brought those little plastic vampire teeth iss me and
it would have totally like not smiled at you or
(04:09):
talk to you until we got in here and we're
just pro like harsh my frown shrow. That's fantastic. Yeah.
I mean some people think vampire jokes are pain in
the neck, but I dig them because my bar for
comedy is like way low. I was thinking about vampires
so much today, but I think literally any vampire punt
is gonna get me fantastic. Okay, yes, uh, also tell
(04:33):
me if we need to dial it back, because I
got I got vampires on the mind as well. We're okay.
So when we talked about vampires today, what do we
usually think about, Alex, Like, what do you think is
Eastern Europe? Eastern Europe? Okay, you know Olden times like
medieval times, fangs, I think of lad then Paler. Yeah. Yeah,
(04:54):
if we're gonna go like literal though, I and we
could get into that if you want. I I it
seems like the connection between Fled the Impaler and Tracula
and the whole vampire myth is maybe kind of overexaggerated
in in in popular consciousness. What else do you think of,
like castles, castles, yet unnecessary capes that they can still
(05:18):
sort of pull off. What would you call an unnecessary cave?
I mean, well, I you know, it's a necessary cape.
A necessary cape is when it's cold out and you
don't have other kinds of clothing, or I would say
a necessary cape if you're a kid and you're playing superhero,
you need you need a blanket like that to find
(05:40):
your character. Capes often go on flying figures that fly.
Superheroes and vampires fly. Sometimes sometimes the rules aren't clear.
What is interesting is that the what you do, what
you describe perfectly like immortality, maybe some helio phobia. These
(06:02):
kinds of things all sort of coalesced in our idea
the modern vampire. But as as you know, if you
look back across the span of human civilization, different cultures
around the planet, you'll see something like a vampire exist
in folklore. And often I don't know, maybe I'm being
like a grass is Greener on the other side of
(06:23):
the grave guy, but I feel like a lot of
other cultures have more interesting ideas of vampires, or pre
Bram Stoker, there was a lot more variation in the idea.
But today you and I are going to talk about
when this folklore had some very real, quite grotesque consequences
(06:44):
for the people of early New England. You're talking about
when melt brooks Um went made with Leslie Nielsen Dracula
dead and loving it. Yes, yeah, which I count as
early New England. But what am I here with it? Yeah?
So when we think of New England, we often early
(07:05):
New England people often think of things like the Salem
Witch Trials. They think of Puritans, they think of the Crucible,
but they don't think of a vampire panic. If we
were to paint this scene of early life in let's
say the seventeen hundreds in New England, then we see
(07:28):
it's a pretty brutal life, right, there's not I mean,
people are it's not unusual for people as starved to
death the colonists or having conflicts with indigenous people. Uh.
People are struggling to grow food in an unfamiliar climate,
and there's disease like everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. I I was
(07:51):
lucky enough to work on a show called Unobscured, and
in its first season I still work on it. But
in its first season, we we was all about the
Salem Which Trials and we got to interview all these
the these greatest eminent historians, um that have done really
incredible work about and it's it's it's really interesting. It's
just like a few months in two But yeah, everything
you said, I mean, it was it was super hard
(08:12):
that the war is going on all the time between
native peoples and the colonists, and like, you know, I
think there's this idea that um, you know, at least
this is I feel like the idea that I walked
away from, like you know, maybe primary school with it.
Like it's like, oh, these sort of puritans, like you know,
these pilgrims fled the old world for like religious persecution
(08:32):
and they came here and they got to practice it
and it was super nice. But really people were had
very strong opinions here in very different opinions, and that
led a lot to sort of where people settled and
so like the differences between different towns, even within Massachusetts,
of the difference between Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. In the
different Vermont and Connecticut, it was often like very sort
(08:55):
of furtive ground for disagreements of all kinds. Y s. Yeah,
especially when you consider that for people in the secular world,
or even for people who consider themselves religious. In the
modern day, some of these doctrinal differences might seem relatively
like not not too crazy, can't we all just get along?
(09:17):
But for these folks, they were hard enough limits to
make visiting another another area or another community feel almost
as though when we're traveling to a foreign country and
culturally in some ways, you can see how people would
feel that way because these are these are folks immigrating
from various parts of Europe right over time. So you're right,
(09:39):
this was not as hunky dorry as many public schools
taught us. Uh, it's quite the opposite. Uh. This this
episode owes a lot to a retired state archaeologist in
Connecticut named Nicholas Bellantoni. He put some time into kind
of characterizing just how bad mortality rates were in New
(10:02):
England between seventeen eighty six and eighteen hundred six is
when health officials first started saying we should figure out
how many people are dying each year. I swear there
were more people at the last Christmas party, you know
they I know that sounds cool, but they when they
(10:23):
when they calculated this, they said that for tuberculosis alone,
two percent of New England's population went down because of that.
They died, and they didn't call it tuberculosis at this point.
They called it um consumption, consumption. I have not heard
(10:50):
or seen a reasonable explanation of why it was called consumption.
It's just not a term that I really used or
here today at all. Consumption in any kind text besides
like eating consuming something. I think that's that's what I
always That's why always assumed. I don't have a hard
and fast answer for that, but I always, I always
assumed it was cold consumption due to the weight loss
(11:14):
that a lot of people encounter during tuberculos, like the
disease that is consuming you. Yes, it was the way
that you mind that. That just clarified it for me,
which I noticedn't translate into audio. But okay, okay, I
get it. I get it. I get a consumption. Yes,
it's not so because I would think, you know, I would.
I always hear that, you know, consumption is about it eating.
(11:34):
But I'm like, but if you're getting skinnier, if you're
wasting away, but you are being consumed. The disease itself
is the consumption toad to get you're the one on
the menu. Yeah, this is And later in Gosh two,
a doctor Robert Coke will announce that he has discovered
the bacteria that causes tuberculosis, and physically no one listens
(11:58):
to him. No, no, of course, who listens to doctors.
Term theory was not very popular, as I understand it.
When it came out. People like, what there is not
little entities living all over the place. It's magic, like
it's always been, it always has been. Yeah, And and
that reminds me the story of Samul weis the one
guy who said, hey, everybody, maybe we should wash our hands.
(12:21):
Since we're doctors, maybe we should just scrub our hands
a little. I didn't even have to be soaked, just
run some water over him before we stick him inside people.
And they were like, this guy is an ass. Lock
them up. They put him in an institution, right, you
know how I learned that. Uh no, it's not a spoiler.
They say it at Midnight Mass in one of these
long monologues at midnight Mass. Yeah, I love midnight Mass.
(12:42):
I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed it, and I thought,
it's the problems, but maybe we want to include me
saying that because I don't want to get flak from
Midnight Mass from fans of it. Oh no, no, I
think people would agree. But uh, speaking of speaking and problems,
can asumption, like the consumption is a problem. Here we've
(13:04):
got a quote from Belentoni who says this death toll
referring to New England is not only terrifying, it's also
a horrific way to die. Consumptives lost weight, they coughed
up blood, their skin turned ashen, and sometimes they died
a slow death, almost as if well, if we could
get a creepy sound cue here, someone was sucking the
(13:26):
life out of them. And like you, you set us
up perfectly here, Alex. This is before germ theory. Even
the learned men of the day, the physicians aren't sure
how to really explain how infectious diseases are spread. And
(13:47):
because no one had an explanation, people started thinking through
like their own ideas of what this could be. Yeah,
you know one other thing that I that I uh,
that's really kind of terrifying, um that I didn't realize
about tuberculosis or consumption. I mean, just just call it consumption.
It sounds class here, It's it's really creepy. It's a
(14:10):
really well named disease. Now that you've made it so
you've illustrated it so well for me. But one of
the things, one of the things that I learned, and
when you sort of read on this this subject, you
hear this name Michael Bell a lot, Michael Bell. It
seems to be is like the guy who really has
has connected tuberculosis that the awful I mean tuberculous being
(14:32):
the leading killer of people in New England at this time.
Uh and uh, this particular panic that we're talking about today.
But one of the things that that I learned from
him is that tuberculosis or consumption could be very slow acting.
It could come on and then it could go dormant,
and it could rest dormant in you for years and
(14:53):
then suddenly could come back. People and also you know,
it was sort of a selective hller. It seems like
like people in close quarters. You know, it would spread
like a wildfire from one family member to the next,
but then someone in the family might just not get it,
or maybe they carry it for a long time and
it wouldn't affect them till later. Has some eerie parallels
(15:15):
to coronavirus obviously, and just the way that you you like,
don't know when it's going to strike, but you know
it's sort of in your midst it's out there. Yeah,
And that's an example of this would be perhaps the
life of Doc Holiday as played by Val Kilmer and
two so, which is not super accurate, but but he
(15:38):
has traveled as a consumptive to a different environment with
the hope being that a different climate will um will
help him survive to berculosis. A lot of people in
New England at this time they didn't have that option.
They couldn't say no, perha was summer in Greek, so whatever,
(16:00):
you know what I mean. They were like trying not
to cough blood on whatever they were growing, or you know,
the kids they're trying to feed. And you described something
that I think is incredibly important here, Alex, the the
paranoia this kind of thing can create because you are
probably living in close quarters with people. A lot of
(16:22):
folks the family is living in a in a small structure.
They're not able to effectively fluorentine if if they practice
some concept like that. In many cases, just living in
the same home and these small structures was enough for
the disease to spread throughout the entire family. But Not
(16:42):
only would it maybe playball sometimes and then go dormant
and then go back on its game over years. Not
only would that occur, but people couldn't predict it. People
didn't know someone. You would think you were fine, and
then you would start wasting away, but it had been
several months after a relative had died. That's just when
(17:04):
you were tuberculosis for some reason went active. And that's
what they talk a lot about. Health experts and historians
talk a lot about tuberculosis in terms of latency and active,
like latent tuberculosis, dormant or active. And at some point
anywhere between seventy to nine of the population of the
(17:26):
US had either latent or active tuberculosis. Nowadays, as you know,
if you're listening, we figured out we the human species,
not Alex Lowell and I figured out that tuberculosis has
spread through the air. So just like with COVID. Remember
did you ever go out during the pandemic and accidentally
cough somewhere? Yeah, I feel like I. I I coughed
(17:49):
in the office today a few times, and I feel
like you're almost staring at me, even though there's there's
four of you here. Um like I could spread to
tuberculosis to you, I thought he's never going to call
an sumption consumption. I could consumpt you from here, Yes, yes,
one could be consumpted, which I think we should use
instead of consumed. Well, yeah, clearly consumed is at the end.
(18:12):
You're consumpted at the beginning. Yeah, it's true. But because
people didn't have the benefit of germ theory, they weren't
sure how to what caused it, and they weren't sure,
more importantly, how to stop it. And in places like Lynn, Massachusetts,
this consumption, whatever it is, becomes the leading cause of death.
(18:35):
We mean, entire families are gone there, as the more
dramatic would put it, their bloodline has been erased, consumed,
and no one, no one could figure out what happened,
why people would suddenly get this incredibly unpleasant death sentence.
And if we go back to Michael Bell, who really
(18:59):
did write the book, he's the guy, he says, he
points out some differences between COVID nineteen and consumption. He says,
one of the primary differences is that it is, like
you pointed out, Alex, it's much slower to manifest and
(19:20):
it doesn't explode through a population and when when something
explodes through population, it will leave behind people who were
either lucky or had some kind of natural immunity. But
this instead goes in and out of of I don't
want to call it remission, but it goes in and
out of being active. No one knows. And this could
(19:43):
go for this could go on for decades before it
killed them anyhow, Because people were so terrified rightly of
dying or having their loved ones dying, they were trying
to find causes. I think it was eighteen ninety two
after discovering after the discovery of the bacteria, there was
(20:05):
one doctor who was still who was still insist on
things like to burcul loisis is caused by drunkenness and
want and povert. Yeah, they always blame the poor. It's
playing the poor. Just be less poor. That's what I
would do when you want to s're spending time with
the poor, weren't you? You know they mingled with the poor.
(20:29):
Do you know how I smingled with the poor? Jesus Christ,
I'm I'm a fan of the book. Yeah, he's famous
for that. He's famous hip for that, amongst many other
and people were praying. People were seeking spiritual protection in
the face of let's see not just not just to
brcular consumption, excuse me, but cholera, smallpox, yellow fever, measles, influenza,
(20:56):
and then just straight up plague. M There is a
I think kind of common misconception that I've also held
with New England of this time too, that when you
say spiritual protection, I think we all think kind of,
you know, standard Protestant Christian kind of practices and beliefs.
(21:23):
But there is also a whole lot of gray area
to that, and there's a whole lot of other sort
of traditions from the Old World and maybe some sort
of new New World traditions that get mixed into that.
And there's been folk magic. There's a lot of folk
magic practice. You see it in all the way back
in the six hundreds throughout the Salem witch trials and
(21:45):
again here in the in the vampire panic. Yeah, you do,
and there is It's strange because folklore is probably best
described as a conversation between cultures at these points, uh
or various points in history. And you can see it
in Appalachia later, you can really you can see it anywhere. Uh.
(22:06):
Some practice of what would be called folk magic. And
to be clear, we're not saying that in a dismissive way.
We're saying that these are practices, values, and belief systems
that maybe aren't treated with the same dogma of an
organized religion. Well, they don't come from an official source, right,
(22:26):
there's no one in the clergy that's telling you to
hang a horseshoe upside down above your door to keep
you know, ward off evil spirits or you know, leave
your boots faced up by the fire or did they
burn their boots. Well, it depends on what's going on.
It depends if there was there was a thing with
boots and the fireplace and keeping the devil away. You know,
I don't they're not gonna say that to you in church,
(22:49):
you know, during the sermon, but you know someone might
come up to you afterwards, like, you know, if you're
really having an in issue with the devil, maybe pop
those boots off tonight. Can it be anybody boots and
then go it's probably better if it's yours. I took
off my boots as soon as we get in the studio.
That's true. Are those boots? Yeah? Oh nice to these
Australian boots. If I say the name, do you think
(23:11):
they sponsor us? Maybe if it is just called blond stunts.
They're so I've had a lot of boots. Man, they're tough. Yeah,
this is not this is not planned as an ad,
but I do want to say an Alex's defense. We
were hanging out at our favorite local bar, which is
again longtime listeners, called the local, and I had asked
(23:32):
him about his boots and then we went like you
told me about them kind of in detail because I
was looking for a good pair of but I think
I put them on the table. You propped the foot up.
It did. My girlfriend turned me on him. She she
had a pair of these. We took him the petrified forest.
We accidentally went off trail and stepped in some cook
(23:53):
from the prehistoric age, you know, killed some burgeoning life forms. Yeah,
it's still stuck to those shoes. But man, they're they're
about as tough as you can get. That's awesome, blood Stone.
My name is Alex Wlams. I hope I would love
to get a sponsorship going on. Uh why also love
to be sponsored by not maybe early New England, but vampires.
(24:16):
If you're out there, if you're listening, to this show.
There are apparently, um there is and this doesn't really
all that surprising, is but there's a segment of the
population that, like in some capacity in surveys, responds that
they are vampires. Yes, different types of vampires to write
real vampires. Oh like I must I must drink blood.
(24:39):
I must drink blood. Not just people that effective vampire lifestyle,
but people that consider themselves to actually be vampires. Yeah,
I've I've heard of this. I've seen there are a
couple of documentaries about people like this. On the more
extreme end, uh, there will be people who claim that
they also cannot eat conventional sustenance. They can't eat conventional
(25:01):
food or drink. You were drank blood before, Ben, Yes,
of course, how much like I stuck that, you know, like,
you know, I cut my you know, I gotta cut
or something on my you know, on my own body,
and and you know trained a little bit, you know, Yeah,
salty irony. I mean with the largest quantity of blood
you think you ever or if you've got something you're
(25:23):
you know, you got a tooth that gets messed up,
you get blood in your mouth, you lost one time? Yeah, yeah,
right right right, Um, well I am not going to answer, uh,
any more questions about that experience. I guess it is
a pretty taboos subject, right, Like, if you were into that,
how many people do you think you could talk to
(25:44):
about it? Probably, you know what, maybe not everybody, but
the people you could talk to about it would be
a very passionate community. They would want to share those stories, right.
The X Files is a great episode with vampires, and
they have more than but there's more where it's like
three kind of young sexy vampires like living together and
(26:05):
they've got some kind of esque relationship heavily implied. Yeah,
and they've got trauma. But I feel like there's the
lead that kind of you know, has this also sort
of sexual energy going on with Molder is like describing
how save him fulfilling drinking blood is, Yeah, that's the
(26:27):
The idea of the seductive powers of a vampire is
I don't know how. It's definitely not as prevalent in
early New England as it is today, right Like today
you've got the Twilight Vampire. Today you've got you know,
the the seductive vampire. And it's funny because it goes
(26:51):
into another thing kind of unrelated. They're often often very
like sensual words are in print and in speech used
to describe two things sex and food, you know what
I mean, decadent, luscious, that kind of stuff. And it
makes sense that she's describing and this this character that
(27:13):
you're talking about X files is describing essentially was eating
in very centual terms. But that's not what the vampires
they're like in the in the vampire pandemic in New
England at all. They're much more honestly, they're much more
like zombies. Yeah, there's this idea that so the idea
(27:36):
of what we call the vampire first appears in Slavic
Europe around the tenth century. There have been plenty of
other human like monsters drinking blood, but you know, good
old vamps started in Slavic Europe. And according to Bell,
who we mentioned earlier, his his argument is that Slavic
(27:56):
and Germanic immigrants brought those superstitions vampires with them in
the seventeen hundreds, maybe around the time a specific group
from Germany was colonizing Pennsylvania or maybe Hessian mercenaries, right,
And he thinks that you can't pin it down to
(28:16):
like one family coming through town and saying, WHOA I
remember these from the old country. You've got vampires. He
argues that it probably came from more than one time,
through more than one source, which makes sense to me
because it feels like corroboration. Then right, you've got multiple
people who are seemingly confirming, oh yeah, vampires. That's way
(28:40):
different from one person going I think it's vampires because
somebody else in town walks up and goes, someone say vampires.
I agree, it's kind of I don't want to get
too far ahead of it, but it's it's even further
complicated by like whoa who was used in contemporaneously, Who
was using the term vampire? You know? Was it just
(29:01):
the media, which is what it seems like. It was
mostly a word that was used in media of the time,
but not maybe so much in uh, individual accounts. And
what were they thinking of when they said vampire? You know? Yeah,
that's the thing. It's what's in a word? What did
the word vampire mean to them versus to us today?
(29:24):
And I agree that it's much more like the modern
idea of a zombie. Uh. Look, if if I'm a yes,
if if I could explain it to you and you
tell me if I've got it. Okay. We're in a family,
the Williams ben Bowland, little brilliante, ridiculous history family. Like
we are here in this little studio together, and Low,
(29:44):
great producer as he is, gets sick with consumption. We
do our best. We sent him to a sanitarium, We
send him to Colorado Springs. He seems like he's gonna
get better. He doesn't. He gets all skinny and he's foaming,
and he's got blood coming out, and he's he's not
doing well. He's staying up weird hours of the night.
We're like weirded out by them. And then one day
(30:05):
it's mercifully over. I swear it's allergies. Uh those were
those were his last words, Oh, poor little And so
it's like, you know, the mid seventeen hundreds, late seventeen hundreds.
We want to bury him in the ground, having a
(30:27):
nice Christian funeral, but the ground is frozen. Right. We
stick this guy and above ground to him in a box.
We have the pastor come, say a few nice words,
ashes to ash this dust to dust, and we go
on with the rest of our lives, you know, missing
Low all the while. But then Ben gets sick. I do,
(30:49):
and the same symptoms are happening, the same weird stuff.
His cheeks are getting flushed, he's getting just like eyes
are sunken in even more than usual. He's like coughing
and he's starting to cough blood feel I've lost my
epic diete. And we sent him to the Adirondacks, to
(31:12):
upstate New York because we've got all the money to
send people to all this an I go along to
bring the blood stones, break them in. But Ben's not
getting better. Everything we try, we take one of the
best doctors who do like leeches and blood lighting and whatever.
We're taken with all the best doctors, and it's not working.
And I've tried everything. I want so badly to save
(31:32):
my guest co host. So I don't know. I I guess
I guess I'm your guest co host. But whatever. Uh,
And you know, people in town start saying to me,
you know what it is, right, I mean, you know
what you can't It's because low over there in the
ground is exercising his will from beyond the grave on Ben.
(31:54):
He's literally getting out of the corps, is getting out
of the grave or out of the tomb at night,
probably when no one's looking and coming and praying upon you.
Or is it more of a psychic kind of spiritual
way that it's you know, like he like he's somehow
projecting himself onto you. And so it's is it is it?
(32:18):
Is it physical? Is it? Is it spiritual? Spectral? So
this part, this is interesting because this is where we
get to the first off, excellent rendition tentet I've got
that's more or less the the idea, that is exactly
the idea. And people back then, we're just as intelligent
(32:38):
as people are now. They didn't have access to the
same um level of research or the same like knowledge
of medicine that modern folks have, but they weren't knuckleheads.
You know. There were plenty of skeptical people who would say,
all right, well that's malarkey. But then there were also
people who would say, mmm, maybe I believe in an afterlife,
(33:02):
so maybe this is another part of it that I
am not aware of. And there were people who believe
that they were physics, they were mentally u and through
some in comporeal form, they were traveling to their victims,
drawn by their life force, and they're the fact that
they had known one another in the waking world, or like,
(33:22):
the big question if you're a skeptical at all, is
if someone is physically rising from the grave, why is
the grave not disturbed? Right? That was one of the
big questions. And we see, um, we see accusations of
vampirism in other parts of history when someone had been
prematurely buried, which was becomes a huge conserve, I think
(33:45):
in in Victorian times especially, just check out the inventions
people made with a little I'm not dead bells, that's
what I call them. But uh, but I think he
nailed it because even if you're more skeptical at this point,
if you're surrounded by you've lost multiple people in your community,
you've lost more than one family member, and you think
(34:05):
more might be on the way, maybe your maybe your
last healthy kid isn't looking so healthy. Then you start
to say, ah, I don't know, maybe I'll try anything.
And if you it's a really good point that people
people aren't haven't been all that different at any point
in time, right. You know, it's a it's a crazy
(34:26):
it's a crazy story, a crazy collection of stories. But
you go and you try to look at it empathetically.
And this comes from Bell too, but I mean, you know,
imagine the father who has tried everything for his last
alien kid, and it's like, I guess I'll try this
crazy thing. I'll dig up my dead wife and this
is where we get to the grizzly strange. All two
(34:51):
real stories. We're actually going to make this a two
parter because Alex Lowell and I really want to. Well
again too, the grave of it sounds insensitive, Well we do.
We do want to We do want to give some
real examples, and we want to spend some time here.
So we're going to pause and we'll be back very
(35:13):
soon with part two of the New England Vampire Panic.
In the meantime, I I don't think I've ever done
this before, but thank you to Alex Williams, Thank you
to Lotle, brilliante. Alex, you are going to come back
for the second part of this right fun too, very much,
(35:35):
very much? Clothes? Yeah? Not bad? Uh a little? Are you?
Are you on board to come back? I think you
nailed it with that allergies line? Yeah, let's do it
all right, So hey, let me see if you can
guess this one. We'll go out because we promised some
bad jokes. Hey, Alex, why does Dracula always read the
(35:55):
most popular newspapers always read the most person I don't know, then,
why does it because he likes the ones with good circulation? Alright, alright, well,
we hope that you've weathered that one in YouTube, and
we hope you enjoyed this ridiculous historians. We hope you
tune into part two of this big big thanks to
Alex Williams, Big big thanks to Little Brilliante, big thanks
(36:17):
to Max Williams, big thanks to my rider Die co
host Noel Brown who will be returning soon, and big
thanks to Gabe Lousier. Alex. Where can people find Ephemeral?
Unlike all of the social media's, it's at Ephemeral dot
Show on Instagram. I think some of them don't have
(36:37):
the dot. And then our website is www dot Ephemeral
Dot Show. All right, and a little where can people
find Prodigy? Uh? Whenever they listen to their favorite shows?
All right? Well, with no spoilers, then please do check
out both Prodigy and Ephemeral. Stay safe, folks, we will
talk very soon. In the meantime, let us know what
(36:59):
you or Halloween ideas are. I can't wait to hear
from you. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. H
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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