October 26, 2024 • 55 mins
Abby and Alan discuss the history of the New England Vampire Panic and how it influenced some of the most prominent examples of vampire horror literature, including Bram Stoker's Dracula.
Get Lunatics Merch here. Join the discussion on Discord. Listen to the paranormal playlist I curate for Vurbl, updated weekly! Check out Abby's book Horror Stories. Available in eBook and paperback. Music by Michaela Papa, Alan Kudan & Jordan Moser. Poster Art by Pilar Keprta @pilar.kep.
Listen to our episode on the history of Samhain and All Hallows Eve.
Sources
- Smithsonian Magazine Article by Abigail Tucker: The Great New England Vampire Panic
- A NewEngland.com article by Joe Bills: New England’s Vampire History | Legends and Hysteria
- A NewEngland.com Article: Vampire Mercy Brown | When Rhode Island Was “The Vampire Capital of America”
- A History.com article on Vampire History
- How the Rise of Vampire Fiction Coincided with The Real Life New England Vampire Panic by Nat Brehmer on bloodydisgusting.com
- Thanks to April Brenker for research help!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of
the lunatics Radio Hour podcast.
It is officially our Halloweenepisode.
I am so excited for this veryspooky topic.
I am Abby Brinker sitting herewith Alan Kudan.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Hello.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
And we have finally come to the most magical,
magical time of the year.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
I gotta say our other October content did not seem
spooky.
I know that you think that Iget all.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Actually, I know that you think that, but again, I'm
just going to reiterate thatHitchcock really did so much for
horror that it's a buildingblock for us to.
Why do you say that?
All right, well, you can listento our Hitchcock episode if you
want to go back into thatargument.
However, today we are here totalk about the New England
vampire panic, and I could notbe more excited.
(01:05):
However, I'm going to say rightoff the top, alan has limited
my creativity, as usual, andthus this episode is only going
to focus on the New EnglandVampire Panic.
We're not going to talk thatmuch about vampires broadly and
the mythology throughoutTransylvania and other places.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Well, yeah, because there's a lot of really cool
stuff if you want to get intolike the lore of, like
Transylvania and whatnot, but Ifeel like that's a whole
separate episode.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Yeah, this would be a very long episode.
If we combined everything, weactually have a really early
episode where we coveredvampires broadly.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Well, that's because we did like a whole series on
the universal monsters, whichwas a lot of fun, but to your
point, it was very early and Idon't know that was, I don't
know.
Do we even use the internetthen?
Speaker 1 (01:53):
We use the internet but probably worth revisiting at
some point.
Okay so we've all heard aboutthe Salem witch trials, but the
New England vampire panic feelsa little bit less known to me.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I didn't know about it at all.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
The vampire panic took place a century later, over
a century after the witchtrials, proving that we learned
very little from that tragedy.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
I feel like New England panics about a lot of
things.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Well, so does Europe.
I'll also say that it's reallypart of this is really personal
for me, because a big part ofthis story literally takes place
in the town that I grew up in.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
So that's fascinating and it was really cool to learn
about it, because I kind ofknew that vaguely but I didn't
really know the details of that.
So that was really really cool.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
I don't know where the satanic panic happened, but
I feel like a big chunk of itwas centered in New England.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Well, the satanic panic was really throughout the
whole United States, but NewEngland is part of the United
States, so right Despite,despite, the name Right.
Today's sources.
First of all, I want to saythank you to April Brinker for
all of the help researchingtoday's topic.
We used a Smithsonian Magazinearticle by Abigail Tucker the
Great New England Vampire Panic.
(03:06):
A NewEnglandcom article by JoeBills New England's Vampire
History, legends and Hysteria.
A Historycom article on vampirehistory, how the Rise of
Vampire Fiction Coincided withthe Real-Life New England
Vampire Panic by Matt Bermer onbloodydisgustingcom.
And we will, of course, linkall the sources in the
(03:27):
description of this podcastepisode so that you can follow
along and read those.
If you'd like to do somedigging on your own, hold on.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Back it up.
When did this take place?
What century are we talkingabout?
Speaker 1 (03:40):
We're really talking about the end of the 1700s, mid
1700s, into the 1800s andthroughout, so maybe, like for,
I would say, a solid 100 years.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
That's a long time to be thinking about vampires.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
It's a long time.
And also they, when, when allthis stuff happened and people
were panicking and doing all thethings we're going to talk
about, they weren't reallycalling the entities that they
believed to be vampires vampires.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
What were they calling them?
Speaker 1 (04:06):
They largely called them, I think, corpses, some
newspapers, some historians,other people.
Now, like when you write aboutit, vampire is used and we're
going to talk about all this.
However, when the peopleexperiencing the panic were
going through it, they didn'tnecessarily say oh man, I
believe this person is a vampire.
They believed they were, youknow, coming back after death
(04:29):
and causing a lot of issues, butthey they didn't use that word
hmm, it's kind of cool yeah so.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
So it's like an accuse, your neighbor thing, and
it's like I think you died, butyou're back like that.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Well, guess what the good news for you is?
That I'm about to tell you allabout it.
But before we do, I want toreally atmospherically set the
scene here.
Okay, it's smoky.
Close your eyes for me, okay,all right, not if you're driving
, but close your eyes if you can.
Or walking, skydiving, you'reskydiving, yeah, I mean at that
(05:05):
point, I guess, and close youreyes.
Okay, what?
no, you know, pull the parachuteand just like glide on in you
still what you think it autolands.
If you are listening to thispodcast while you're skydiving,
there's other issues.
It's kind of cool you shouldhear.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
You know like what a way to go out a history podcast
on vampires while you skydive.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
All right, anyway, close your eyes, alan okay you
know the movie the witch rightno, oh uh, yes okay, so that's
kind of the vibe, right oh yeahthey.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
They panic like crazy well I mean kind of
aesthetically.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
So it's nighttime, you're in the new england forest
it's dark there's a you know,colonizer settlement that you're
part of and you're're living in, you know, a very sort of
rudimentary 1700s home.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Okay, what does that mean?
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Everything is lit by candles.
You probably you and yourfamily built this home yourself.
There's no electricity.
Obviously there's no plumbing.
You have to go outside to usethe bathroom.
You know, this is where we are.
We're living in the world ofthe witch.
Suddenly, your mom gets sickand she starts to develop kind
of weird symptoms that nobodycan really understand, and after
(06:10):
months of being ill and beingin bed, she passes.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
What was it?
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Next, your sister gets sick.
Oh sort of the same thingdifferent symptoms, perhaps
vague, ambiguous.
It's really hard to kind ofdescribe what they are, but
after a few more months shepasses.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
I'm feeling quite helpless.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Quite helpless.
Maybe your younger brother alsogoes through this, so now maybe
it's just you and your dad.
The rest of your family hasdied.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
That's our whole family.
I have a family of five.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
That's right.
And there's other people intown that live near you, in the
village, that are going throughsimilar things.
Some people are surviving, somepeople are dying.
There's no way to reallyunderstand how this illness is
spreading what it is.
It's kind of very, very slowlycreeping its way around.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
What's the state of the animals?
Do we have animals?
Speaker 1 (07:04):
The animals are okay.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
You have animals.
Didn't see that coming.
The animals are okay, and soyou're not really sure what's
going on, right?
Speaker 2 (07:12):
No.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
But then a neighbor comes over, an old, elderly
neighbor, and they explain toyou that there's some belief,
some old world belief that maybeyou didn't know about, that
there must be some sort of curseor plague on your family and
that you will be next right.
You could see the pattern oneby one, very slowly, this is
(07:34):
coming for your family.
So the only way to counteractand to save the life of you and
your dad is to check the gravesof the family members that
you've buried to make sure justto make sure that they're really
dead, because this is somethingthat this old neighbor has seen
before, and the only way tosave your life is to go and
exhume those bodies and makesure that they're okay, so say
(07:57):
make sure they're okay make surethey're decomposed, that
they're dead, that there's nosigns that they could be undead.
So you say, okay, you know what?
This is maybe a little bit folktale-y to me, a little bit folk
magic, but you know what, justto feel better, now that this
seed has been planted in mybrain, I'm going to agree to
just visually look at thesebodies and make sure everybody
(08:20):
in the town knows my family isnot undead.
Right, we're all okay.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Do you have to like do this in front of witnesses?
Speaker 1 (08:26):
So well.
You need a lot of people tocome and help you dig up these
graves.
It's manual work, so a bunch ofmen from town come, they meet
you at their local burial ground.
They bring their shovels.
Maybe they dig up the body ofyour mother first, right, and
she looks okay.
She looks very decomposed,exactly as expected.
There's no signs that she'srising from her grave every
(08:49):
night, right.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
This still feels rather traumatic.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Oh, certainly Then.
Okay, we go to the next grave,we go to your older sister, we
dig her up.
She looks fine, same as yourmother right Now.
Here's the thing maybe theydied in the summer, but maybe
your little brother died injanuary.
We dig him up.
He looks perfectly preserved.
He's not decomposed at all.
In fact, there's still blood inhis heart we check the heart.
(09:15):
We check the heart, we cut himopen and check if there's blood
in the heart because when helooks perfectly preserved, the
neighbor says, okay, see thedifference, see how he looks
like he's not dead at.
Okay, see the difference, seehow he looks like he's not dead
at all compared to the other two.
And so you say, yes, I see thedifference.
You agree to check the organsand you see there's still fresh
blood in the heart.
(09:35):
And so the older neighbor says,okay, this is the culprit.
The only way to save the lifeof you and your father is to
remove the heart from yourlittle brother, to grind it up,
burn it, turn it into a tonic todrink.
It's the only way to reallykill your brother.
How do you?
Speaker 2 (09:53):
burn it and then turn it into a tonic.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Well, you take the ashes.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
You make an ash tonic .
Yeah, that's gross.
Yeah, I guess it's moresanitary than not burning it.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
But you're convinced, you have no other explanation.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
I'm sold.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
You have no other explanation of this disease, of
what's happening.
You agree?
Give me the tonic.
This happens hundreds of timesin the New England Vampire Panic
.
How many family members am Igoing to lose?
You can open your eyes now.
I'm saying two hundreds offamilies.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
That's crazy.
There's clearly that one personthat was like hey, you know
what we should?
Um, we should turn that uhheart into a drink you would be
that person like someone hadthat idea first, yeah, and said
this needs, we need to do thiswell, let's talk about someone's
weird fetish got turned into acultural practice.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Though the belief in entities similar to vampires
dates back to the earliestcivilizations, the term vampire
came about in the 1700s.
Around that time is when thefolklore as we know it today
started to solidify.
Even before the 1700s, therewere various folk beliefs across
Eastern Europe and China.
For instance, in both Slavicand Chinese folklore, an animal
(11:06):
jumping over a corpse was fearedto be undead.
In Russian folklore, vampireswere thought of as witches who
had defected from the RussianOrthodox Church.
So even before the word vampireexisted, there was this fear
that a loved one who died couldturn into the undead or
something evil post-death right.
I'm just really talking hereabout some of these old folk
(11:31):
beliefs that could have migratedto New England right over the
years and that some of thesepeople were calling upon when
this strange, bizarre illnessstarted to take hold.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Just made me think of I don't know where this bit
came from Vampires, you know,immortal beings, and they, you
know they're existing forthousands and thousands of years
.
And then one day some guy showsup holding two sticks into the
sign of the cross, and thensuddenly it's your downfall.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Oh, they hate that, they hate that Apparently.
So, but actually that's areally timely example because,
right, I just said, in Russiathis really came about as an
evolution from believing thatwitches were people who defected
from the church, right?
So some things like that carrythrough that.
Okay, there's this belief thatpeople who reject religion for
whatever reason are othered orevil and they must be a witch or
(12:19):
a vampire, right?
So that's part of that throughline that you just brought up as
a joke.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Typical colonizer talk.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
And, in turn, traditions arose that were meant
to prevent the turning of acorpse into something sinister,
for example, burying a bodyupside down or planting scythes
or sickles around the gravemeant to satisfy approaching
demons.
Approaching demons Similar tothe ancient Greek method of
(12:47):
placing an obelisk in the mouthof a deceased person as a way to
pay the passage along the riverStyx, or the idea of putting a
coin in the body to keep evilentities away.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
I see, I thought you put the coin in the mouth so
that they have money.
I guess an obelisk is money.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Right, it's sort of like, I guess in a mini way
similar to the Egyptian pyramidsfull of wealth.
Right, it's like setting themup for the afterlife.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Well I mean yeah, that's just because they wanted
their money later.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Right, this is like a superstition micro version of
that.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Right, otherwise they have to like what.
I feel like there was some kindof like waiting period as
opposed to like you're justfucked forever or you had to
swim.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
I forget what it was.
It was something, but it wasn'tgreat.
Wasn't there some anime aboutthis we were watching recently?
Speaker 2 (13:31):
anime involving the river styx.
Yeah, I don't know.
I know they talk a lot about itin lost gods by brahm and so
like.
For me it's pretty visual there.
Maybe, but animated huh,obviously, in the game Hades,
which you wouldn't associatewith.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
No, it's too hard.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
I don't know if they did it in Blood of Zeus.
I think you watched a littlebit of that too.
That's a fun one.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Well, if anyone knows what I'm thinking about, please
let me know.
Once vampire tradition startedto form, some of these practices
turned into things like puttinga cross on the body to keep the
body from becoming a vampire.
Right?
So it went from putting a coinin the body to protect it from
demons in the afterlife toputting a cross on the body to
protect it from becoming avampire.
So you can very clearly see howthese things evolve and start
(14:18):
to take shape, right.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
I think they should have just carried around their
dead family with them at alltimes, just to make sure that no
vampires got them well, that'sreally like sleeping with the
enemy.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
What then?
They're closer to you and theybecome a vampire and turn on you
.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
You just watch them 24 7.
That's not you have to sleep,or you just.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
You just lock people are like fucking tilling the
fields, like they're not justsitting around playing video
games, they have like verymanual jobs.
What?
Speaker 2 (14:45):
if you just lock their coffin.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
No one thought of that no one thought of that.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
That's brilliant, yeah.
Well, how are they gonna getout?
Huh wait, what was the theory?
That they were coming out ofthe grave and doing things?
Speaker 1 (14:57):
yeah, that was the theory that they were exiting
the grave and causing chaoscan't they just make sure the
ground was fine?
Speaker 2 (15:04):
No, no.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Because they did believe that they had obviously
supernatural powers to do that,you know.
So maybe, like their essencewas exiting or whatever, Should
have just tied them all together.
Another example of this wassevering the tendon of the
deceased to make sure theycouldn't become a vampire and
leave their grave and cause harm.
There's also a curious culturalpractice related to this, which
(15:26):
was putting poppy seeds on theground outside of the grave.
The idea here was that thevampire would become obsessed
with counting the seeds and itwould keep them busy.
This is thought of as a linkbetween some of the vampire
folklore and Sesame Street andthe condition of arithmomania,
which is very similar to ocd.
(15:47):
And this wasn't only a europeanbelief.
Strangely, in china there was avery similar belief, that if a
vampire encountered a bag ofrice, it would need to count
each grain.
So, again, some of these earlyvampire traditions evolved from,
like this, fear of other, rightthis like someone has ocd or
some kind of, they must be evilwell, yeah, you're not even
(16:08):
going to acknowledge my sesamestreet comment it was a good
funny joke because of count,count you.
What's his name?
Count the count, the count.
Yes, he's a vampire and hecounts things yes, what was?
Speaker 2 (16:18):
there's a very serious vampire movie where,
like somebody, just like no, orsomeone just like throws a bunch
of crap and the and the vampirehas to count them.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Oh, interesting.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
What is that?
Speaker 1 (16:30):
We're really batting O for O today on remembering pop
culture references.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
It's terrible, but that happens in a movie that
I've seen.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
All right, so you're hip with what I'm saying.
Yes, I love to hear that thatI've seen.
All right, so you're hip withwhat I'm saying.
Yes, I love to hear that.
Not to suck the fun and mysteryout of vampire mythology, but
it very clearly is rooted in themisunderstanding of disease and
the misunderstanding of thedecaying human body, especially
in the Middle Ages.
This is something that we'veseen on other episodes of this
(17:00):
podcast, most recently with thedancing plague of 1518, where
there's really just amisconception around something
that we're really hyper aware oftoday.
Right, science has caught up.
We understand how humansdecompose and we understand how
epidemics, plagues, illnessesare spread.
We don't need to createmythology to explain those
(17:20):
things.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
I love how somehow every episode somehow gets
linked back to Dancing Plaguenow.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
I just really miss it .
Speaker 2 (17:26):
I really love that time of our lives.
Yeah, those were happy times.
Yep, that was our peak.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
So, as we discussed right, there's this pre-existing
superstition and folklore thatfollows people as they
immigrated to the United Statesand really sets the stage here.
Once disease and plague hit, itwas easy for those physical
symptoms to be interpreted assomething sinister.
So, for instance, right, thebubonic plague caused bleeding
(17:52):
mouths and in turn it wasbelieved that those victims were
vampires.
As the hysteria and panic grew,it became more common for folks
with a wide range of physicalor mental conditions to be
labeled as a vampire.
And there's going to be a ton ofthemes and a ton of lessons I
think we can kind of extractfrom this topic.
But one of them is also that,in general, when we talk about
(18:14):
things like werewolves, vampire,panics, witches, we're really
talking about people who wereothered for some reason, and
that's true of a lot of folkloreacross cultures.
But it's just something to keepin mind.
That it was especially in youknow, not to make it political
but especially in the times oftoday Alan's giving me the eyes
(18:36):
I think it's important for usall to try and understand people
instead of just putting them ina box.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Oh, there we go.
There it is, that's all I'mgoing to say.
I would love to put andunderstand people instead of
just putting them in a box.
Ah, there we go.
There it is, that's all I'mgoing to say.
I would love to put people in abox and lock it, because that
is the only way that you stopthem from becoming vampires.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
I'll keep that in mind when you die.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Also I just Googled and the instances of someone
defending themselves by throwinga bunch of crap at a vampire
and having them count them areDracula 2, the Ascension, which
I have not seen, Okay, Dracula2000, which I have seen, so
possibly there.
But also an X-Files episodeknown as Bad Blood, where Fox
(19:18):
Mulder throws a bunch ofsunflower seeds at the supposed
vampire, who is then forced tocount them.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
X-Files always gets it right.
They always do their historicalresearch.
So I want to quote from theHistorycom article on vampire
history Quote Many researchershave pointed to porphyria a
blood disorder that can causesevere blisters on skin that's
exposed to sunlight, as adisease that may have been
linked to the vampire legend.
Some symptoms can betemporarily relieved by
(19:47):
ingesting blood.
Other diseases blamed forpromoting the vampire myth
include rabies or goiter.
Goiter is a swelling in theneck that occurs when a thyroid
gland enlarges.
It can be like a big lump.
Yeah, sounds it Okay?
Back to the quote here.
When a suspected vampire died,their bodies were often
disinterred to search for signsof vampirism.
(20:10):
In some cases a stake wasthrust through the corpse's
heart to make sure they stayeddead.
Other accounts describe thedecapitation and the burning of
the corpses of suspectedvampires well into the 19th
century End quote.
So that's really setting thestage.
That kind of stuff is happeningacross Europe.
That really plays a large partinto overall vampire mythology.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Okay, we're done setting the stage.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Now we're going to talk about the New England
vampire panic.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
So I can finally open my eyes.
You can open your eyes, thankyou.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Despite Vlad the Impaler's fame and renown for
inspiring Bram Stoker'scharacter of Dracula, it's
actually Mercy Brown from Exeter, Rhode Island, who did the most
for vampire mythology.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
What.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
When tuberculosis came to southeastern Connecticut
and Rhode Island in the 1730s,it wasn't immediately clear what
was happening.
By the 1800s, when the vampirepanic was in full swing,
tuberculosis, or consumption,was the number one cause of
death throughout New England,responsible for about 25% of all
deaths.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Wow, I thought it was going to be heart disease.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Tuberculosis spread in a very different way than
some of the illnesses that weare used to.
The symptoms were differentacross different people.
Some people were totally spared, and the example I gave at the
beginning is a very common onethat one or two people survive
and every other member of ahousehold dies, and so it kind
(21:35):
of also creates this confusionaround why are you spared?
Why am I not spared?
Why did it take you and not meright?
In some people the disease laydormant for a very long time
before symptoms set in, evenyears.
The New England vampire paniccame after similar panics in
Europe, including the greatwerewolf panic.
Tuberculosis was also known asconsumption, because it appeared
(21:57):
to consume a victim's body.
Deceased loved ones were oftenblamed as turning into vampires
and then spreading the illnesseven further to their surviving
family members, which means thatmost often the folks who were
accusing someone of being avampire were related to that
person.
It was a hysteria that threwall etiquette around not
(22:19):
speaking well of the dead outthe window.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
That's mean.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
I'm going to quote from the Smithsonian article by
Abigail Tucker.
Quote the particulars of thevampire exhumations, though very
widely.
In many cases only family andneighbors participated, but
sometimes town fathers voted onthe matter or medical doctors
and clergymen gave theirblessings or even pitched in.
Some communities in Maine andPlymouth, massachusetts, opted
(22:44):
to simply flip the exhumedvampire face down in the grave
and leave it at that.
In Connecticut, rhode Islandand Vermont, though, they
frequently burned the deadperson's heart, sometimes
inhaling the smoke as a cure.
In Europe, too, exhumationprotocol varied within region.
Some beheaded suspected vampirecorpses, while others bound
their feet with thorns.
(23:05):
End quote.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
You gotta do what you gotta do.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
In most states this ritual was secretive, often done
at night, with the exception ofmany disinterments in Vermont,
which were sometimes turned intoa reason to celebrate.
There is documentation of asuspected vampire heart being
burned on the town green inWoodstock, vermont, in 1830.
And even earlier, in the late1700s, hundreds of people
(23:29):
attended a heart burning at ablacksmith's forge in Manchester
.
Quoting again from Tucker'sSmithsonian article, quote Bell
attributes the openness of theVermont exhumations to colonial
settlement patterns.
Rhode Island has about 260cemeteries per 100 square miles
versus Vermont's mere 20 per 100square miles.
Rhode Island's cemeteries weresmall and scattered among
(23:52):
private farms, whereas Vermont'stended to be much larger, often
located in the center of town.
In Vermont it was much harderto keep a vampire hunt.
Hush-hush end.
Quote.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
I just imagine, hey Rodney, you coming to the
heartburn later.
I'd love to.
I got to work though.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
See if I can get off.
I don't want to be offensive,but it is very Vermont of them.
You know Vermont very like openhippy-dippy, like let's all do
it in the community, let's havea festival.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Let's hands, let's hold hands, burn this guy's
heart.
Yeah, connecticut, rhode island.
A little snippier, littleuppity, typical, do things you
know keep.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Keep it within the family.
Yeah, I mean, they're justburning their hearts, eating
their ben and jerry's.
The story of the new englandvampire panic really starts in
vermont in 1790 with the deathof rachel harris.
Harris died of tuberculosisthat year, and a year later her
widowed husband, captain IsaacBurton, married her stepsister
Hulda, and it didn't take longfor Hulda to start to
demonstrate similar symptoms toher late sister.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
I mean, did you not expect trouble from marrying the
stepsister named Hulda?
Speaker 1 (24:58):
I know, very spooky.
It was assumed that Rachel wascausing Hulda's illness from
beyond the grave because ofjealousy, obviously.
Quoting from the New Englandarticle by Joe Bills quote In
February 1793, more than 500Manchester residents braved
frigid temperatures to watch theliver, heart and lungs be
(25:18):
removed from Rachel's exhumedcorpse and burned on a
blacksmith's forge.
How do they?
Speaker 2 (25:23):
do that?
How do they exhume parts infront of everyone?
Speaker 1 (25:27):
They literally crack the rib cage, cut them open and
pull it out.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Do they like?
String her up like jaws.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
No, they just pull her out of the grave and do
those things and probably throwthe body back in the grave and
then take the heart to the forge, where everyone comes to watch
it be burned.
Back to the quote here.
Everyone comes to watch it beburned back to the quote here.
According to some versions ofthe tale, portions of the organs
were preserved to make amedicine for holda.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Regardless, she died that september do you think
they're giving her dead bodypart medicine?
Speaker 1 (25:56):
following her death did the good people of
manchester realize the error oftheir ways?
Sort of they reasoned thatperhaps rachel hadn't been a
vampire at all, but rather awitch ah, end quote.
Good of course, so obvious andthat's something that happened
so often.
Like so often there was reasonto doubt that this would work
(26:17):
right.
It's not that it ever worked.
There were so many times wherethey're like okay, we have one
family member left, we have todo this, and still that person
died.
But it didn't stop the panicfrom being the way that this was
dealt with.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
I just imagine, like you know, the guy being like oh
sorry, my bad Called it wrong,she was not a vampire, she was a
witch.
Oh, of course, it's all right.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Yeah, we should have handled this with the other set
of superstitions that we havefor witches.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
We should have handled this with the other set
of superstitions that we havefor witches.
You'll get them next time,Rodney.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
One account of the New England vampire panic comes
to us from the diary ofnaturalist and writer Henry
David Thoreau.
Thoreau wrote, quote the savagein man is never quite
eradicated.
I have just read of a family inVermont who, several of its
members having died ofconsumption, just burned the
lungs and the heart and theliver of the last deceased in
(27:04):
order to prevent any more fromhaving it end.
Quote the diary is even datedSeptember 26, 1859, though it is
believed to reference an eventinvolving the Spalding family
from Dumberson, vermont.
From 1790.
After six of his 11 childrenhad died from tuberculosis,
lieutenant Leonard Spalding waswilling to try anything once the
(27:25):
seventh child became ill, andthus one of his deceased
children, the most recentlypassed, was dug up and their
organs were burned.
I'm going to quote from thebloody, disgusting article.
Quote Maine unfortunately hadthe least amount of documented
cases of vampirism.
This probably doesn't mean itwas happening any less, only
that it wasn't making it intothe town records as often.
(27:48):
Still there are a few, andwhile they're less detailed,
they're not remotely small.
For example, in 1862, reportsof vampirism swept the community
of Saco so strongly that almostevery deceased resident was dug
up and reburied.
Every corpse was apparently asuspect.
In Maine, however, thesesituations were handled a little
(28:08):
differently.
Rather than go through thehassle of removing the heart or
organs and burning them, thedead were simply dug up and
reburied face down in the hopesthat it would keep them from
getting up.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
End quote Okay, you've been to a lot of very,
very early American cemeteries.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
Have you ever encountered evidence in a
graveyard, placards or any kindof notation that indicated that
a grave had been dug up andreburied because of this?
Speaker 1 (28:39):
No, but there are a few famous graves, one really in
particular that have becomefamous because of this, which
we're going to talk about in alittle bit, and what the
cemetery had to do was add metalbars because it was such a risk
that somebody would steal thestone because it was so famous.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Oh, oh.
So To protect the stone, theheadstone.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Yeah, the headstone, yeah, the headstone I thought
you were saying they had to putmetal bars over the grave so
that it would keep the body inno, but I have seen graves like
that, like not so much in the us, but there are graves in
certain cemeteries, especiallyin like the uk, where there's
like metal bars, like cages overthem, dating back hundreds of
years, because they were afraidof that corpse getting out for
(29:24):
some reason.
That's crazy I don't think it'srelated to just cut the tendons
just cut the tendons.
Yeah, I've been saying that foryears other families in new
england would behead corpses inan effort to keep them from
rising again or shatter theirbones.
Just take the bones, make somejewelry can't move, you don't
got bones.
That's true, that's fact In1854, the locals living in
(29:46):
Jewett City, which is the dirttown directly next to where I
grew up.
It's where my post office andlibrary were located.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Druid City.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Jewett City.
Jewett, my town, was so smallthere was no post office, police
department or library, and Iwas about a four second drive
from the border with jewett cityor griswold, and so that's
really like was an extension ofour town and and we're going to
talk about one of the kind ofcreepiest examples of vampire
(30:17):
panic evidence.
We don't actually know a tonabout the family, but the
evidence of those graves werefound and they're very bizarre.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
So 1854, locals living in Jewett City, which is
in Connecticut, had exhumed anumber of corpses because they
were suspicious that thedeceased were actually vampires
and as vampires they werebelieved to rise from their
graves and kill those that werestill alive in the community
rise from your grave.
And so how it kind of happenedwas that, I believe in the year
(30:49):
1990 they were, I think it waslike from like they realized
there was graves because theywere building something, some
construction was happening andlike near an old mill or an old
factory, something like that,they stumbled upon these graves
like unmarked or whatever.
They dig them up and they lookat them and I think they like
the whole construction right,they get a historian to come and
(31:10):
see what they have.
So the researchers found thatbodies had been put back into
graves post organ removal withbroken ribs Right, that's how we
know that they would break theribs and take the organs out.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
But in strange patterns.
So, for example, one of them,which really became the famous
grave here was the person wasput back in the pattern of a
skull and crossbones.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
What does that mean?
So when the picture of skulland crossbones in your head.
Oh, I guess they already havethe skull Right and they have
the bones.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
So they put them back in that pattern in, you know,
the 1800s.
And when people in 1990 openedthe grave 150 years later, why
would they do that?
Because they were building athing.
They found the graves, theyopened them up, they wanted to
know if they could move them tocontinue building the thing, and
they were put together in thatway.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Because it was a vampire.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Right, it was like a protection thing.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Did it have fangs?
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Doesn't say in the article.
Perhaps New England's mostfamous suspected vampire was
Mercy Brown.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
They made a whole show about her.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
What show?
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Murphy Brown.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
No, mercy Brown, Not Murphy Brown.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
That's different.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
I bet Mercy Brown would wear both straps of her
overalls strapped.
Why do you say?
Speaker 2 (32:22):
that I bet Mercy Brown would wear both straps of
her overalls strapped.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Why do you say that Murphy Brown would always wear
like one of her overall strapsunstrapped?
I understand as like a look.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Please continue.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
The Brown family lived in Exeter, Rhode Island, a
border town often referred toas deserted Exeter.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
What does that mean?
Speaker 1 (32:37):
Just that it was a farming community that was
founded on land without muchfertile soil which we see a lot
kind of at this time and so itwas really hard to kind of build
a lasting community there,because it was really hard to
actually grow anything.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
That's why they have to be nomadic.
Yeah, or do slash and burnfarming.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
And a lot of the local population was also lost
to the Civil War.
So it kind of just became thisalmost like ghost town.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
Well, they need more vampires then.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
In the mid to late 1800s, tuberculosis eviscerated
the Brown family, starting withMother Mary Eliza.
The disease found its way todaughter Mary Olive in 1882.
Quoting from Mary Olive'sobituary quote the last few
hours she lived was of greatsuffering, yet her faith was
firm and she was ready for thechange.
End quote what doestuberculosis do to your body?
Speaker 2 (33:34):
I imagine it's not good.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
So the main thing was a cough.
A cough that would last for avery, very long time.
It would start with phlegm andcould eventually turn into
coughing up blood.
Sure, chest pain, severe weightloss.
There were fevers, sweats, thatkind of stuff.
Pretty severe weakness andtiredness, fatigue, just like no
longer being interested in food, having chills from the fever
(33:58):
and then swelling.
That kind of wouldn't go awayever.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
So it's a.
It's a lung infection that justends up wrecking the rest of
the body.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Right, it's an airborne respiratory disease.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
Like COVID.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
Yeah, like COVID, but different.
So the son gets sick, right,edwin gets sick.
He ends up living withtuberculosis for a very, very
long time, but he gets sick, andso he goes to Colorado Springs
in the hope to find naturalistichealing.
And this is something Iactually remember from our
Waverly Hills episode.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
What was that.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
We did an episode with our friend bob dawn, on
their kind of hauntedexperiences going to this old
tuberculosis ward which is veryfamous called waverly hills, oh
yeah, and with the ball down thehall.
With the ball down the hall,and it's interesting because
like the belief then was like,okay, people needed fresh air
which is so funny because they,all of these people, only had
(34:53):
fresh air at this time but theywould like put them in these
hospitals and like put themoutside.
Like the idea is they just needto go to the country, like they
just need some fresh air andthat will be the cure.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
Well, it does stand to reason that people are
getting more sick.
When they were in confinedspaces because we know how
airborne illnesses travel, yeah,and when there was like lots of
ventilation, then there's agood chance that people didn't
get sick.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
Right.
So, anyway, he goes to ColoradoSprings, kind of seeking fresh
air In 1892, a decade after thedeath of her mother and sister.
So this is what I mean aboutthe illness sitting dormant in
somebody for a really long timeDaughter Mercy Lena fell ill and
ultimately perished.
While Mercy was still suffering, her brother returned to town.
(35:37):
So she's really, really sick.
He comes back, he's in terribleshape and he would also
eventually pass away.
Pre-existing superstition inthe area had laid the groundwork
for attributing so many deathsin one family to the undead.
It felt targeted, though theterm vampire again wasn't used
here.
Friends and neighbors startedto suspect that one of the
(35:57):
deceased Brown family memberswas in essence a vampire.
Not only was it believed thatone of the Browns were a vampire
, but that they had caused theillness and passed it on to
Edwin.
So at this point, right, you'rethe dad, you're George Brown,
your wife, two of your daughtershave died.
You have a very sick son.
What are you going to do, right?
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Dig them all up.
Puree the hearts, Smoke themright, you're exactly right.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
After much convincing , the father of the family,
george Brown, allowed for thedisinterment of several family
members so that they couldreview their bodies, and on the
morning of March 17, 1892, agroup of men gathered at the
cemetery and picked up theirshovels.
The bodies of the deceasedBrown women were dug up and
examined.
So Mary Eliza and Mary Olive,mother and daughter, looked to
(36:46):
be decomposing at an expectedrate.
But by comparison, mercyBrown's body seemed to have
barely decomposed at all andthere was actually still blood
in her heart.
The country folk were alsosuspicious that her hair and
nails had grown post-death.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
Again, they had the heart and they're like OK, do
you think they cut it open?
I think they used a knife, ordo you think they?
Speaker 1 (37:10):
just like give it a little squeeze.
You're so gross and weird.
They obviously cut it open.
What do you think we're doinghere?
Give it a little squeeze.
Or maybe when they pulled itout, like blood got on their
hands, you know, and they werelike oh, there's blood in here.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
I mean it would have 100% coagulated.
I don't think it's going topump.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
No, it's not going to pump.
It's not going to.
It was a liquid.
That was the point.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Blood can't sit for more than like a couple hours.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Well, just let me get through this.
Okay, maybe I'll explain it toyou.
Maybe, if you're really lucky,I'll give you an answer.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
Yeah, if I'm lucky, I'll get an answer on this one,
thanks, and thus Mercy Brown wasdecided to be the culprit.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
But here's the thing Mercy Brown, as a reminder, died
a decade after her mother andsister, and she had died only a
few months before she wasexhumed.
So to compare the rate ofdecomposition of her mother and
sister, who had died 10 yearsearlier, to the decomposition of
Mercy, who not just died a fewmonths earlier but also died in
(38:08):
the middle of winter, is not thesame thing, because her body
was kept in a frozen.
There's some debate whether shewas in kind of this, like built
up outdoor tomb, because theground was too frozen to bury
her for a few months, or if shewas in you know, buried.
But either way she was outsidein the freezing, freezing,
frigid temperatures so her bodywas incredibly preserved.
(38:32):
She's in a meat locker, exactly.
So they were like oh man, lookat her.
Compared to her mom, she's avampire.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
I've always referred to New England as the meat
locker.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
That's true.
So in an effort to save thelife of poor sick Edwin, mercy's
heart and liver were removedfrom her body and burned.
The ashes were turned into atonic or a drink for Edwin and
the hopes to cure his illness.
What do you think happened,alan?
Speaker 2 (38:57):
They drank it.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
Yep Did Edwin survive .
Speaker 2 (39:01):
No, because how could he?
That was like hundreds of yearsago.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
Well, did he survive to see a full?
Speaker 2 (39:08):
life To be to the ripe old age of 23?
Speaker 1 (39:11):
Probably not no.
He died two months later.
Mercy's body was buried in thechurchyard of the Baptist Church
in Exeter, rhode Island.
Today it's known as ChestnutHill Cemetery.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Have you been there?
Speaker 1 (39:21):
I have not, though it's also very close to where I
grew up.
The incident caused RhodeIsland to be known as the
Vampire Capital of America.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
By whom?
Who gave that title?
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Some newspaper man.
Rhode Island is also the homeof the vampire legend of Nellie
L Vaughn from 1889, who died atthe age of 19.
Nellie was laid to rest in whatis known as Rhode Island's
historical cemetery number two,and local urban legend tells us
that her grave is cursed.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
And here we have Rhode Island's historic cemetery
number two.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
I'm going to quote here from a New England article
by Charles Robinson.
Quote one local universityprofessor who studied vampirism
claimed that no vegetable orlichen would grow on Nellie's
grave, despite numerous attemptsto plant there.
And people are still takenaback by the inscription along
the bottom of Nellie's tombstone.
The curious words read I amwaiting and watching for you.
(40:16):
End quote who?
I fucking love that.
Give me a quote like that on mygravestone.
Who makes the people trying toplant lichen because there's
this folklore.
So they're like, okay, there'sthis weird urban legend, we're
gonna disprove it, and theycan't really how do you do that?
Well, the lichen is probablyrelated to werewolf mythology.
I would assume obviously no Alichenthrope.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
Sure, it's a similar name, but it's just like a moss
that grows on rocks.
It's really slow.
I don't think you can plantlichen.
I mean, I don't know much aboutplanting.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
Yes, you can encourage lichens to grow in
your garden.
How Create a damp and shadyarea.
Likens to grow in your garden.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
How Create a damp and shady area?
Sure you can encourage.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Tuck it into fallen debris.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
Okay, so basically make a graveyard.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Mix it with moist substances.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
Yeah, so all these things are already done.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
Right, it's not growing.
There's a vampire afoot.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
I mean sure that's suspicious.
If lichen's growing, though,it's a very good sign of the
ecosystem.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
It's actually one of the good benchmarks, but it's
not growing.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
Clearly they have a poor ecosystem.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
Yeah, they need more moisture.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
And less vampires.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
George Brown never got tuberculosis and he lived
long enough until 1922 to seethe discovery of the vaccine.
In all of these cases and thereare many, many more it was
typically older family membersor neighbors that would convince
the grieving family that avampire or undead family member
was to blame.
There was a continuation of theold folklore beliefs that
(41:43):
persisted.
Couple extreme loss andunexplained devastation with old
folklore and mythology and youget the New England vampire
panic.
It's not so different from therise of spiritualism during the
Civil War.
People need an explanation,they need to be able to
understand during extreme lossand horror and they need some
way to move through that andfeel like they're in control.
(42:04):
But when Bram Stoker wroteDracula in 1897, he used
newspaper articles about MercyBrown in his research.
One of the biggest reasons thatwe chose this topic is because
the rise in vampire literatureseems to correlate quite
perfectly with the rise invampire mythology and panics in
the United States.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
It seems very after hearing all this, the whole
vampires being having to sleepin coffins makes a lot more
sense.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
This topic is incredibly exciting to me
because it's such a clear caseof history impacting horror,
which, of course, is what we aimto explore on this podcast.
On an infamous rainy vacationin Geneva, mary Shelley wrote
Frankenstein and John Polidoriwrote the Vampire, which
predated Dracula by 78 years.
(42:52):
The Vampire was released in1819 and is generally thought of
as the kindling that firststarted the vampire literature
movement.
Also in 1819 was a story calledthe Black Vampire, a legend of
Saint Domingo.
Between 1845 and 1847, 876pages of a vampire serial called
(43:14):
varney the vampire or feast ofblood was released in penny
dreadfuls the same year thatvarney the vampire was released,
which is the longest epicvampire story maybe to date
varney the vampire yeah, so thevery same year that it was
released does he teach morallessons to kids?
(43:34):
No, it seems to have very littleto do with children actually.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
I was making a joke, because the alliteration makes
him seem like he'd be friendly.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
Yeah, he sounds cartoonish.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
Very cartoonish Varney the vampire.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
But the very same year that Varney was released,
lemuel Ray of GriswoldConnecticut again shout out to
my hometown was released.
Lemuel Ray of GriswoldConnecticut again shout out to
my hometown along with hisfather and brother, all of whom
had died from an illness, weredisinterred, their hearts
removed and one of the three hadbeen reburied in a skull and
crossbone pattern.
In 1872, one of my favoritestories, carmilla, was released.
(44:08):
Carmilla also kick-started thelesbian vampire tradition, which
has since erupted into a majorsubgenre.
Carmilla was written bySheridan LaFonu and is often
considered one of the mostinfluential stories on Bram
Stoker's Dracula.
Have you read it?
I've read it multiple times.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
Do you like it?
I do.
I have not read it.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
I have a copy if you'd like it.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
I'll give it a thought.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
I actually read it in Transylvania on our trip to
Romania this month.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
We're not allowed to talk about that until our Vlad
the Impaler episode, I think wecan say that we went there.
We did go there.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
It's pretty clear on social media that we went there.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
What's social media?
Speaker 1 (44:43):
And finally, in 1897, dracula was released.
And, as we know, dracula hasendured and influenced vampire
horror far more than other works.
Quoting again from the Bloody,disgusting article, quote
Throughout the 1800s, vampirismhad begun to pick up steam as a
recurring theme in Gothicliterature, becoming the focal
point of more and more stories.
(45:04):
Before Dracula finally cementedthe vampire as a cornerstone of
popular culture once and forall, it was a century that saw
the undead grow stronger andstronger as a fictional
tradition.
End quote Dracula is anepistolary novel that takes
place in Transylvania and whilewe cannot deny the influence
that Vlad the Impaler and otherlocal Wallachian folklore had
(45:25):
here, we also have to understandthat one, bram Stoker did not
invent vampire mythology and,two, he was influenced by Mercy
Brown when he was writing thenovel, in addition to other
Slavic traditions.
Speaker 2 (45:37):
He invented some.
Speaker 1 (45:39):
Not broadly.
I just referenced like three orfour works that predated
Dracula.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
Yeah, but he invented some vampire mythology that I
think that's the first instanceof vampires controlling wolves.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
Okay, well, we'll fact check that.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
It's a wild, baseless claim.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
Yeah, I know.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
How about vampires turning into smoke?
Speaker 1 (46:01):
We'll have to check it out While I'm trying to get
out of the habit of quotingWikipedia.
This is a really goodexplanation of Stoker's
influences.
Speaker 2 (46:08):
Since when are you trying to get out of the habit
of quoting Wikipedia?
You say that every time.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
This is from the Dracula entry.
You've never said this before.
End quote.
Dracula was mostly written inthe 1890s.
Stoker produced over 100 pagesof notes for the novel, drawing
extensively from Transylvanianfolklore and history.
Some scholars have suggestedthat the character of Dracula
was inspired by historicalfigures like the Wallachian
(46:32):
prince Vlad the Impaler or theCountess Elizabeth Bathory, but
there is a widespreaddisagreement.
Stoker's notes mention neitherfigure.
So his notes do not mentionVlad the Impaler, but they do
mention Mercy Brown.
Back to the quote.
He found the name Dracula inWhitby's public library while on
holiday, thinking it meantdevil in Romanian end quote.
(46:55):
So we know, because we justwent, that there's act.
The word Dracula is alsoassociated with Vlad the Impaler
.
His father was Vlad Dracul,dracula's son of Dracul, and
we'll talk about that on thisother episode when we get to it.
But Bram Stoker didn't know anyof that.
He found the word dracula in adictionary.
Yeah, I went in a dictionary inwhippy's public library while
(47:19):
on holiday typical and again hethought that it meant devil in
romanian.
The rise of the new englandvampire panic was very entangled
with the earliest versions ofvampire literature, and tracing
the folklore behind thismythology is a topic for another
episode.
Though these stories seemoutdated to us now and historic,
we do have to acknowledge thatthe 1800s are far more recent
(47:43):
than the Salem Witch Trials of1690.
And especially in today'spolitical climate, again it's a
good reminder that we don't knoweverything about how the world
works and sometimes it's betterto try and force ourselves to
take a look at something in anew way.
I'm going to quote one finaltime from the Bloody Disgusting
article Quote.
During that time frame,vampires were being established
(48:04):
as a cornerstone of horrorfiction and at the same time New
England was gripped by agenuine panic as people were
digging up and desecrating theirloved ones out of fear that
they were rising from the dead.
It is absolutely fascinatingthat these two things, which
should be polar opposites, werehappening simultaneously.
One can't help but look atthese dates so close together
(48:25):
and wonder how it was evenpossible.
How did a boom of vampirefiction and a resurgence in the
belief of vampires happen at thesame time?
It sounds completelycontradictory.
In some ways it is and in someways it isn't.
End quote.
There's a socioeconomic answerto this.
(48:45):
The writers of these storieswere all from affluent and
educated backgrounds and thefolks in New England digging up
their dead loved ones not tominimize and whatever.
But they were not looking atthis through this educated lens,
right, they were going throughsomething horrifying and they
were desperate.
You really do have twodifferent types of people living
(49:06):
in two different worlds.
You don't have local people inNew England whose family members
are mysteriously dying,creating vampire horror fiction.
That's happening in Europe andin other places.
So I think it's a really goodpoint that the article makes
about how wild it is that thesethings are happening at the same
time.
You really just have to look atthe world, hypothetically
(49:29):
speaking, that each of thosegroups were living in.
Right.
John Palidori vacationing inGeneva with Mary Shelley and
Percy Bysshe Shelley and LordByron is a totally separate
thing than being in colonial NewEngland and everybody's dying,
your food is failing and you'rejust kind of fucked, you know.
Speaker 2 (49:49):
It's not fun.
Speaker 1 (49:50):
And that, my friends, is the history of the New
England vampire panic and how itinfluenced the rise of horror
vampire tradition.
Speaker 2 (50:00):
Are there any movies on this?
I don't think I've seen a likecolonial horror vampire movie.
Speaker 1 (50:07):
I actually just assumed that there weren't,
because I can't think of anyeither, and just a quick Google
I don't really see anythingcoming up beyond documentaries.
Speaker 2 (50:17):
I don't know.
I feel like colonial horror iskind of cool, expensive to make,
of course, but I don't knowPeople like the Witch.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
People love the Witch .
You also have Scooby-Doo andthe Witch's Ghost.
Speaker 2 (50:28):
Which is not colonial horror.
Speaker 1 (50:29):
Well, it takes place in Plymouth.
You're craving new englandvampire panic specific horror.
The good news is that we aregoing to have one more episode
this month, if you can believeit, and we will present to you
three vampire themed horrorstories are they good?
Speaker 2 (50:49):
they're excellent.
Well, that's great.
Speaker 1 (50:51):
The other thing that I want to say is that our friend
, the very, very talented PilarKep, designed a beautiful
illustration of the New EnglandVampire Panic.
In my opinion, it is our bestand scariest design that you can
find in our merch store.
So if you head tolunaticsprojectcom and click on
merch, you can take a look atwhat's available there.
We also are sending outpostcards and stickers with the
(51:16):
beautiful design on it.
If you'd like one and you'renot already in touch, please
reach out to us on social mediaand we have some extras to send
out this year.
Speaker 2 (51:23):
Abby said that if she sells 1 million stickers she'll
get the design as a tattoo.
Speaker 1 (51:28):
Absolutely no problem .
Does it matter where, what bodypart I get it on?
Speaker 2 (51:32):
Forehead.
Speaker 1 (51:33):
No, I'm not going to get my forehead, but I will get
it.
I have to ask Pilar permission.
Speaker 2 (51:38):
Oh, that's right, Otherwise you have to pay your
licensing every time someonelooks at you.
Speaker 1 (51:41):
That's right.
It's not sustainable.
Speaker 2 (51:44):
All right, Well, I hope Alan did this scratch your
Halloween itch a little bit moreSlightly more than Hitchcock,
despite the fact that there areno movies, which is a bummer
yeah, it is a bummer, I do.
Speaker 1 (51:57):
I already have a plan for next year and I think
you're gonna like it.
I think you're right, alan,that this, this topic, doesn't
call upon specific horror films.
However, it calls upon dracula,you know.
Speaker 2 (52:09):
It kind of goes back a layer uh, sure, yes, and
Dracula being a Halloween staple, I will give you that.
Speaker 1 (52:16):
And if we were going to broaden this up and just talk
about vampires in general, thenof course we'd have like an
infinite number of movies towatch.
Speaker 2 (52:22):
Did we do a series?
It was just on vampires, right,it wasn't Dracula.
Speaker 1 (52:27):
Well, it was part of the Universal Monster series.
Speaker 2 (52:42):
So I think it kind of had like a focus on Dracula,
but we talked about justgenerally how vampire mythology
developed, I understand.
So, okay, I have a better scopeof our upcoming encapsulation
of future vampire related topics.
Speaker 1 (52:47):
There you go, as always.
Thank you all so much for beinghere.
Hope you are enjoying thespookiest and last days of
October and, of course, we willtalk to you one more time before
the end of this month and onthe holiest of days, when the
veil is absolutely the thinnest,and I hope everyone goes out
there and really communes withyour loved ones who have passed,
as is tradition.
Speaking of which, I also justwant to say episode 49, which is
(53:10):
quite old.
The Samhain episode remains oneof my favorites.
We had our friend Miranda Orzelon to really talk about pagan
history.
If you're wondering what thehistory of Halloween is, I'll
link that episode in thedescription as well, but I
really, really love thatexploration on the history of
Halloween going back thousandsof years.
So just a little if you'retrying to get in the Halloween
(53:32):
spirit and learn something new.
But, as always, thank you guysso much for being here.
Stay safe, stay spooky, don'tforget to vote and we'll talk to
you soon.
Speaker 2 (53:39):
Bye, bye you.
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of
the lunatics Radio Hour podcast.
It is officially our Halloweenepisode.
I am so excited for this veryspooky topic.
I am Abby Brinker sitting herewith Alan Kudan.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Hello.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
And we have finally come to the most magical,
magical time of the year.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
I gotta say our other October content did not seem
spooky.
I know that you think that Iget all.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Actually, I know that you think that, but again, I'm
just going to reiterate thatHitchcock really did so much for
horror that it's a buildingblock for us to.
Why do you say that?
All right, well, you can listento our Hitchcock episode if you
want to go back into thatargument.
However, today we are here totalk about the New England
vampire panic, and I could notbe more excited.
(01:05):
However, I'm going to say rightoff the top, alan has limited
my creativity, as usual, andthus this episode is only going
to focus on the New EnglandVampire Panic.
We're not going to talk thatmuch about vampires broadly and
the mythology throughoutTransylvania and other places.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Well, yeah, because there's a lot of really cool
stuff if you want to get intolike the lore of, like
Transylvania and whatnot, but Ifeel like that's a whole
separate episode.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Yeah, this would be a very long episode.
If we combined everything, weactually have a really early
episode where we coveredvampires broadly.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Well, that's because we did like a whole series on
the universal monsters, whichwas a lot of fun, but to your
point, it was very early and Idon't know that was, I don't
know.
Do we even use the internetthen?
Speaker 1 (01:53):
We use the internet but probably worth revisiting at
some point.
Okay so we've all heard aboutthe Salem witch trials, but the
New England vampire panic feelsa little bit less known to me.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I didn't know about it at all.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
The vampire panic took place a century later, over
a century after the witchtrials, proving that we learned
very little from that tragedy.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
I feel like New England panics about a lot of
things.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Well, so does Europe.
I'll also say that it's reallypart of this is really personal
for me, because a big part ofthis story literally takes place
in the town that I grew up in.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
So that's fascinating and it was really cool to learn
about it, because I kind ofknew that vaguely but I didn't
really know the details of that.
So that was really really cool.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
I don't know where the satanic panic happened, but
I feel like a big chunk of itwas centered in New England.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Well, the satanic panic was really throughout the
whole United States, but NewEngland is part of the United
States, so right Despite,despite, the name Right.
Today's sources.
First of all, I want to saythank you to April Brinker for
all of the help researchingtoday's topic.
We used a Smithsonian Magazinearticle by Abigail Tucker the
Great New England Vampire Panic.
(03:06):
A NewEnglandcom article by JoeBills New England's Vampire
History, legends and Hysteria.
A Historycom article on vampirehistory, how the Rise of
Vampire Fiction Coincided withthe Real-Life New England
Vampire Panic by Matt Bermer onbloodydisgustingcom.
And we will, of course, linkall the sources in the
(03:27):
description of this podcastepisode so that you can follow
along and read those.
If you'd like to do somedigging on your own, hold on.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Back it up.
When did this take place?
What century are we talkingabout?
Speaker 1 (03:40):
We're really talking about the end of the 1700s, mid
1700s, into the 1800s andthroughout, so maybe, like for,
I would say, a solid 100 years.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
That's a long time to be thinking about vampires.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
It's a long time.
And also they, when, when allthis stuff happened and people
were panicking and doing all thethings we're going to talk
about, they weren't reallycalling the entities that they
believed to be vampires vampires.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
What were they calling them?
Speaker 1 (04:06):
They largely called them, I think, corpses, some
newspapers, some historians,other people.
Now, like when you write aboutit, vampire is used and we're
going to talk about all this.
However, when the peopleexperiencing the panic were
going through it, they didn'tnecessarily say oh man, I
believe this person is a vampire.
They believed they were, youknow, coming back after death
(04:29):
and causing a lot of issues, butthey they didn't use that word
hmm, it's kind of cool yeah so.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
So it's like an accuse, your neighbor thing, and
it's like I think you died, butyou're back like that.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Well, guess what the good news for you is?
That I'm about to tell you allabout it.
But before we do, I want toreally atmospherically set the
scene here.
Okay, it's smoky.
Close your eyes for me, okay,all right, not if you're driving
, but close your eyes if you can.
Or walking, skydiving, you'reskydiving, yeah, I mean at that
(05:05):
point, I guess, and close youreyes.
Okay, what?
no, you know, pull the parachuteand just like glide on in you
still what you think it autolands.
If you are listening to thispodcast while you're skydiving,
there's other issues.
It's kind of cool you shouldhear.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
You know like what a way to go out a history podcast
on vampires while you skydive.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
All right, anyway, close your eyes, alan okay you
know the movie the witch rightno, oh uh, yes okay, so that's
kind of the vibe, right oh yeahthey.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
They panic like crazy well I mean kind of
aesthetically.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
So it's nighttime, you're in the new england forest
it's dark there's a you know,colonizer settlement that you're
part of and you're're living in, you know, a very sort of
rudimentary 1700s home.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Okay, what does that mean?
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Everything is lit by candles.
You probably you and yourfamily built this home yourself.
There's no electricity.
Obviously there's no plumbing.
You have to go outside to usethe bathroom.
You know, this is where we are.
We're living in the world ofthe witch.
Suddenly, your mom gets sickand she starts to develop kind
of weird symptoms that nobodycan really understand, and after
(06:10):
months of being ill and beingin bed, she passes.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
What was it?
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Next, your sister gets sick.
Oh sort of the same thingdifferent symptoms, perhaps
vague, ambiguous.
It's really hard to kind ofdescribe what they are, but
after a few more months shepasses.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
I'm feeling quite helpless.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Quite helpless.
Maybe your younger brother alsogoes through this, so now maybe
it's just you and your dad.
The rest of your family hasdied.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
That's our whole family.
I have a family of five.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
That's right.
And there's other people intown that live near you, in the
village, that are going throughsimilar things.
Some people are surviving, somepeople are dying.
There's no way to reallyunderstand how this illness is
spreading what it is.
It's kind of very, very slowlycreeping its way around.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
What's the state of the animals?
Do we have animals?
Speaker 1 (07:04):
The animals are okay.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
You have animals.
Didn't see that coming.
The animals are okay, and soyou're not really sure what's
going on, right?
Speaker 2 (07:12):
No.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
But then a neighbor comes over, an old, elderly
neighbor, and they explain toyou that there's some belief,
some old world belief that maybeyou didn't know about, that
there must be some sort of curseor plague on your family and
that you will be next right.
You could see the pattern oneby one, very slowly, this is
(07:34):
coming for your family.
So the only way to counteractand to save the life of you and
your dad is to check the gravesof the family members that
you've buried to make sure justto make sure that they're really
dead, because this is somethingthat this old neighbor has seen
before, and the only way tosave your life is to go and
exhume those bodies and makesure that they're okay, so say
(07:57):
make sure they're okay make surethey're decomposed, that
they're dead, that there's nosigns that they could be undead.
So you say, okay, you know what?
This is maybe a little bit folktale-y to me, a little bit folk
magic, but you know what, justto feel better, now that this
seed has been planted in mybrain, I'm going to agree to
just visually look at thesebodies and make sure everybody
(08:20):
in the town knows my family isnot undead.
Right, we're all okay.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Do you have to like do this in front of witnesses?
Speaker 1 (08:26):
So well.
You need a lot of people tocome and help you dig up these
graves.
It's manual work, so a bunch ofmen from town come, they meet
you at their local burial ground.
They bring their shovels.
Maybe they dig up the body ofyour mother first, right, and
she looks okay.
She looks very decomposed,exactly as expected.
There's no signs that she'srising from her grave every
(08:49):
night, right.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
This still feels rather traumatic.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Oh, certainly Then.
Okay, we go to the next grave,we go to your older sister, we
dig her up.
She looks fine, same as yourmother right Now.
Here's the thing maybe theydied in the summer, but maybe
your little brother died injanuary.
We dig him up.
He looks perfectly preserved.
He's not decomposed at all.
In fact, there's still blood inhis heart we check the heart.
(09:15):
We check the heart, we cut himopen and check if there's blood
in the heart because when helooks perfectly preserved, the
neighbor says, okay, see thedifference, see how he looks
like he's not dead at.
Okay, see the difference, seehow he looks like he's not dead
at all compared to the other two.
And so you say, yes, I see thedifference.
You agree to check the organsand you see there's still fresh
blood in the heart.
(09:35):
And so the older neighbor says,okay, this is the culprit.
The only way to save the lifeof you and your father is to
remove the heart from yourlittle brother, to grind it up,
burn it, turn it into a tonic todrink.
It's the only way to reallykill your brother.
How do you?
Speaker 2 (09:53):
burn it and then turn it into a tonic.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Well, you take the ashes.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
You make an ash tonic .
Yeah, that's gross.
Yeah, I guess it's moresanitary than not burning it.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
But you're convinced, you have no other explanation.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
I'm sold.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
You have no other explanation of this disease, of
what's happening.
You agree?
Give me the tonic.
This happens hundreds of timesin the New England Vampire Panic
.
How many family members am Igoing to lose?
You can open your eyes now.
I'm saying two hundreds offamilies.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
That's crazy.
There's clearly that one personthat was like hey, you know
what we should?
Um, we should turn that uhheart into a drink you would be
that person like someone hadthat idea first, yeah, and said
this needs, we need to do thiswell, let's talk about someone's
weird fetish got turned into acultural practice.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Though the belief in entities similar to vampires
dates back to the earliestcivilizations, the term vampire
came about in the 1700s.
Around that time is when thefolklore as we know it today
started to solidify.
Even before the 1700s, therewere various folk beliefs across
Eastern Europe and China.
For instance, in both Slavicand Chinese folklore, an animal
(11:06):
jumping over a corpse was fearedto be undead.
In Russian folklore, vampireswere thought of as witches who
had defected from the RussianOrthodox Church.
So even before the word vampireexisted, there was this fear
that a loved one who died couldturn into the undead or
something evil post-death right.
I'm just really talking hereabout some of these old folk
(11:31):
beliefs that could have migratedto New England right over the
years and that some of thesepeople were calling upon when
this strange, bizarre illnessstarted to take hold.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Just made me think of I don't know where this bit
came from Vampires, you know,immortal beings, and they, you
know they're existing forthousands and thousands of years
.
And then one day some guy showsup holding two sticks into the
sign of the cross, and thensuddenly it's your downfall.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Oh, they hate that, they hate that Apparently.
So, but actually that's areally timely example because,
right, I just said, in Russiathis really came about as an
evolution from believing thatwitches were people who defected
from the church, right?
So some things like that carrythrough that.
Okay, there's this belief thatpeople who reject religion for
whatever reason are othered orevil and they must be a witch or
(12:19):
a vampire, right?
So that's part of that throughline that you just brought up as
a joke.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Typical colonizer talk.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
And, in turn, traditions arose that were meant
to prevent the turning of acorpse into something sinister,
for example, burying a bodyupside down or planting scythes
or sickles around the gravemeant to satisfy approaching
demons.
Approaching demons Similar tothe ancient Greek method of
(12:47):
placing an obelisk in the mouthof a deceased person as a way to
pay the passage along the riverStyx, or the idea of putting a
coin in the body to keep evilentities away.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
I see, I thought you put the coin in the mouth so
that they have money.
I guess an obelisk is money.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Right, it's sort of like, I guess in a mini way
similar to the Egyptian pyramidsfull of wealth.
Right, it's like setting themup for the afterlife.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Well I mean yeah, that's just because they wanted
their money later.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Right, this is like a superstition micro version of
that.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Right, otherwise they have to like what.
I feel like there was some kindof like waiting period as
opposed to like you're justfucked forever or you had to
swim.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
I forget what it was.
It was something, but it wasn'tgreat.
Wasn't there some anime aboutthis we were watching recently?
Speaker 2 (13:31):
anime involving the river styx.
Yeah, I don't know.
I know they talk a lot about itin lost gods by brahm and so
like.
For me it's pretty visual there.
Maybe, but animated huh,obviously, in the game Hades,
which you wouldn't associatewith.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
No, it's too hard.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
I don't know if they did it in Blood of Zeus.
I think you watched a littlebit of that too.
That's a fun one.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Well, if anyone knows what I'm thinking about, please
let me know.
Once vampire tradition startedto form, some of these practices
turned into things like puttinga cross on the body to keep the
body from becoming a vampire.
Right?
So it went from putting a coinin the body to protect it from
demons in the afterlife toputting a cross on the body to
protect it from becoming avampire.
So you can very clearly see howthese things evolve and start
(14:18):
to take shape, right.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
I think they should have just carried around their
dead family with them at alltimes, just to make sure that no
vampires got them well, that'sreally like sleeping with the
enemy.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
What then?
They're closer to you and theybecome a vampire and turn on you
.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
You just watch them 24 7.
That's not you have to sleep,or you just.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
You just lock people are like fucking tilling the
fields, like they're not justsitting around playing video
games, they have like verymanual jobs.
What?
Speaker 2 (14:45):
if you just lock their coffin.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
No one thought of that no one thought of that.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
That's brilliant, yeah.
Well, how are they gonna getout?
Huh wait, what was the theory?
That they were coming out ofthe grave and doing things?
Speaker 1 (14:57):
yeah, that was the theory that they were exiting
the grave and causing chaoscan't they just make sure the
ground was fine?
Speaker 2 (15:04):
No, no.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Because they did believe that they had obviously
supernatural powers to do that,you know.
So maybe, like their essencewas exiting or whatever, Should
have just tied them all together.
Another example of this wassevering the tendon of the
deceased to make sure theycouldn't become a vampire and
leave their grave and cause harm.
There's also a curious culturalpractice related to this, which
(15:26):
was putting poppy seeds on theground outside of the grave.
The idea here was that thevampire would become obsessed
with counting the seeds and itwould keep them busy.
This is thought of as a linkbetween some of the vampire
folklore and Sesame Street andthe condition of arithmomania,
which is very similar to ocd.
(15:47):
And this wasn't only a europeanbelief.
Strangely, in china there was avery similar belief, that if a
vampire encountered a bag ofrice, it would need to count
each grain.
So, again, some of these earlyvampire traditions evolved from,
like this, fear of other, rightthis like someone has ocd or
some kind of, they must be evilwell, yeah, you're not even
(16:08):
going to acknowledge my sesamestreet comment it was a good
funny joke because of count,count you.
What's his name?
Count the count, the count.
Yes, he's a vampire and hecounts things yes, what was?
Speaker 2 (16:18):
there's a very serious vampire movie where,
like somebody, just like no, orsomeone just like throws a bunch
of crap and the and the vampirehas to count them.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Oh, interesting.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
What is that?
Speaker 1 (16:30):
We're really batting O for O today on remembering pop
culture references.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
It's terrible, but that happens in a movie that
I've seen.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
All right, so you're hip with what I'm saying.
Yes, I love to hear that thatI've seen.
All right, so you're hip withwhat I'm saying.
Yes, I love to hear that.
Not to suck the fun and mysteryout of vampire mythology, but
it very clearly is rooted in themisunderstanding of disease and
the misunderstanding of thedecaying human body, especially
in the Middle Ages.
This is something that we'veseen on other episodes of this
(17:00):
podcast, most recently with thedancing plague of 1518, where
there's really just amisconception around something
that we're really hyper aware oftoday.
Right, science has caught up.
We understand how humansdecompose and we understand how
epidemics, plagues, illnessesare spread.
We don't need to createmythology to explain those
(17:20):
things.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
I love how somehow every episode somehow gets
linked back to Dancing Plaguenow.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
I just really miss it .
Speaker 2 (17:26):
I really love that time of our lives.
Yeah, those were happy times.
Yep, that was our peak.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
So, as we discussed right, there's this pre-existing
superstition and folklore thatfollows people as they
immigrated to the United Statesand really sets the stage here.
Once disease and plague hit, itwas easy for those physical
symptoms to be interpreted assomething sinister.
So, for instance, right, thebubonic plague caused bleeding
(17:52):
mouths and in turn it wasbelieved that those victims were
vampires.
As the hysteria and panic grew,it became more common for folks
with a wide range of physicalor mental conditions to be
labeled as a vampire.
And there's going to be a ton ofthemes and a ton of lessons I
think we can kind of extractfrom this topic.
But one of them is also that,in general, when we talk about
(18:14):
things like werewolves, vampire,panics, witches, we're really
talking about people who wereothered for some reason, and
that's true of a lot of folkloreacross cultures.
But it's just something to keepin mind.
That it was especially in youknow, not to make it political
but especially in the times oftoday Alan's giving me the eyes
(18:36):
I think it's important for usall to try and understand people
instead of just putting them ina box.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Oh, there we go.
There it is, that's all I'mgoing to say.
I would love to put andunderstand people instead of
just putting them in a box.
Ah, there we go.
There it is, that's all I'mgoing to say.
I would love to put people in abox and lock it, because that
is the only way that you stopthem from becoming vampires.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
I'll keep that in mind when you die.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Also I just Googled and the instances of someone
defending themselves by throwinga bunch of crap at a vampire
and having them count them areDracula 2, the Ascension, which
I have not seen, Okay, Dracula2000, which I have seen, so
possibly there.
But also an X-Files episodeknown as Bad Blood, where Fox
(19:18):
Mulder throws a bunch ofsunflower seeds at the supposed
vampire, who is then forced tocount them.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
X-Files always gets it right.
They always do their historicalresearch.
So I want to quote from theHistorycom article on vampire
history Quote Many researchershave pointed to porphyria a
blood disorder that can causesevere blisters on skin that's
exposed to sunlight, as adisease that may have been
linked to the vampire legend.
Some symptoms can betemporarily relieved by
(19:47):
ingesting blood.
Other diseases blamed forpromoting the vampire myth
include rabies or goiter.
Goiter is a swelling in theneck that occurs when a thyroid
gland enlarges.
It can be like a big lump.
Yeah, sounds it Okay?
Back to the quote here.
When a suspected vampire died,their bodies were often
disinterred to search for signsof vampirism.
(20:10):
In some cases a stake wasthrust through the corpse's
heart to make sure they stayeddead.
Other accounts describe thedecapitation and the burning of
the corpses of suspectedvampires well into the 19th
century End quote.
So that's really setting thestage.
That kind of stuff is happeningacross Europe.
That really plays a large partinto overall vampire mythology.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Okay, we're done setting the stage.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Now we're going to talk about the New England
vampire panic.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
So I can finally open my eyes.
You can open your eyes, thankyou.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Despite Vlad the Impaler's fame and renown for
inspiring Bram Stoker'scharacter of Dracula, it's
actually Mercy Brown from Exeter, Rhode Island, who did the most
for vampire mythology.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
What.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
When tuberculosis came to southeastern Connecticut
and Rhode Island in the 1730s,it wasn't immediately clear what
was happening.
By the 1800s, when the vampirepanic was in full swing,
tuberculosis, or consumption,was the number one cause of
death throughout New England,responsible for about 25% of all
deaths.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Wow, I thought it was going to be heart disease.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Tuberculosis spread in a very different way than
some of the illnesses that weare used to.
The symptoms were differentacross different people.
Some people were totally spared, and the example I gave at the
beginning is a very common onethat one or two people survive
and every other member of ahousehold dies, and so it kind
(21:35):
of also creates this confusionaround why are you spared?
Why am I not spared?
Why did it take you and not meright?
In some people the disease laydormant for a very long time
before symptoms set in, evenyears.
The New England vampire paniccame after similar panics in
Europe, including the greatwerewolf panic.
Tuberculosis was also known asconsumption, because it appeared
(21:57):
to consume a victim's body.
Deceased loved ones were oftenblamed as turning into vampires
and then spreading the illnesseven further to their surviving
family members, which means thatmost often the folks who were
accusing someone of being avampire were related to that
person.
It was a hysteria that threwall etiquette around not
(22:19):
speaking well of the dead outthe window.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
That's mean.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
I'm going to quote from the Smithsonian article by
Abigail Tucker.
Quote the particulars of thevampire exhumations, though very
widely.
In many cases only family andneighbors participated, but
sometimes town fathers voted onthe matter or medical doctors
and clergymen gave theirblessings or even pitched in.
Some communities in Maine andPlymouth, massachusetts, opted
(22:44):
to simply flip the exhumedvampire face down in the grave
and leave it at that.
In Connecticut, rhode Islandand Vermont, though, they
frequently burned the deadperson's heart, sometimes
inhaling the smoke as a cure.
In Europe, too, exhumationprotocol varied within region.
Some beheaded suspected vampirecorpses, while others bound
their feet with thorns.
(23:05):
End quote.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
You gotta do what you gotta do.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
In most states this ritual was secretive, often done
at night, with the exception ofmany disinterments in Vermont,
which were sometimes turned intoa reason to celebrate.
There is documentation of asuspected vampire heart being
burned on the town green inWoodstock, vermont, in 1830.
And even earlier, in the late1700s, hundreds of people
(23:29):
attended a heart burning at ablacksmith's forge in Manchester
.
Quoting again from Tucker'sSmithsonian article, quote Bell
attributes the openness of theVermont exhumations to colonial
settlement patterns.
Rhode Island has about 260cemeteries per 100 square miles
versus Vermont's mere 20 per 100square miles.
Rhode Island's cemeteries weresmall and scattered among
(23:52):
private farms, whereas Vermont'stended to be much larger, often
located in the center of town.
In Vermont it was much harderto keep a vampire hunt.
Hush-hush end.
Quote.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
I just imagine, hey Rodney, you coming to the
heartburn later.
I'd love to.
I got to work though.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
See if I can get off.
I don't want to be offensive,but it is very Vermont of them.
You know Vermont very like openhippy-dippy, like let's all do
it in the community, let's havea festival.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Let's hands, let's hold hands, burn this guy's
heart.
Yeah, connecticut, rhode island.
A little snippier, littleuppity, typical, do things you
know keep.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Keep it within the family.
Yeah, I mean, they're justburning their hearts, eating
their ben and jerry's.
The story of the new englandvampire panic really starts in
vermont in 1790 with the deathof rachel harris.
Harris died of tuberculosisthat year, and a year later her
widowed husband, captain IsaacBurton, married her stepsister
Hulda, and it didn't take longfor Hulda to start to
demonstrate similar symptoms toher late sister.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
I mean, did you not expect trouble from marrying the
stepsister named Hulda?
Speaker 1 (24:58):
I know, very spooky.
It was assumed that Rachel wascausing Hulda's illness from
beyond the grave because ofjealousy, obviously.
Quoting from the New Englandarticle by Joe Bills quote In
February 1793, more than 500Manchester residents braved
frigid temperatures to watch theliver, heart and lungs be
(25:18):
removed from Rachel's exhumedcorpse and burned on a
blacksmith's forge.
How do they?
Speaker 2 (25:23):
do that?
How do they exhume parts infront of everyone?
Speaker 1 (25:27):
They literally crack the rib cage, cut them open and
pull it out.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Do they like?
String her up like jaws.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
No, they just pull her out of the grave and do
those things and probably throwthe body back in the grave and
then take the heart to the forge, where everyone comes to watch
it be burned.
Back to the quote here.
Everyone comes to watch it beburned back to the quote here.
According to some versions ofthe tale, portions of the organs
were preserved to make amedicine for holda.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Regardless, she died that september do you think
they're giving her dead bodypart medicine?
Speaker 1 (25:56):
following her death did the good people of
manchester realize the error oftheir ways?
Sort of they reasoned thatperhaps rachel hadn't been a
vampire at all, but rather awitch ah, end quote.
Good of course, so obvious andthat's something that happened
so often.
Like so often there was reasonto doubt that this would work
(26:17):
right.
It's not that it ever worked.
There were so many times wherethey're like okay, we have one
family member left, we have todo this, and still that person
died.
But it didn't stop the panicfrom being the way that this was
dealt with.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
I just imagine, like you know, the guy being like oh
sorry, my bad Called it wrong,she was not a vampire, she was a
witch.
Oh, of course, it's all right.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Yeah, we should have handled this with the other set
of superstitions that we havefor witches.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
We should have handled this with the other set
of superstitions that we havefor witches.
You'll get them next time,Rodney.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
One account of the New England vampire panic comes
to us from the diary ofnaturalist and writer Henry
David Thoreau.
Thoreau wrote, quote the savagein man is never quite
eradicated.
I have just read of a family inVermont who, several of its
members having died ofconsumption, just burned the
lungs and the heart and theliver of the last deceased in
(27:04):
order to prevent any more fromhaving it end.
Quote the diary is even datedSeptember 26, 1859, though it is
believed to reference an eventinvolving the Spalding family
from Dumberson, vermont.
From 1790.
After six of his 11 childrenhad died from tuberculosis,
lieutenant Leonard Spalding waswilling to try anything once the
(27:25):
seventh child became ill, andthus one of his deceased
children, the most recentlypassed, was dug up and their
organs were burned.
I'm going to quote from thebloody, disgusting article.
Quote Maine unfortunately hadthe least amount of documented
cases of vampirism.
This probably doesn't mean itwas happening any less, only
that it wasn't making it intothe town records as often.
(27:48):
Still there are a few, andwhile they're less detailed,
they're not remotely small.
For example, in 1862, reportsof vampirism swept the community
of Saco so strongly that almostevery deceased resident was dug
up and reburied.
Every corpse was apparently asuspect.
In Maine, however, thesesituations were handled a little
(28:08):
differently.
Rather than go through thehassle of removing the heart or
organs and burning them, thedead were simply dug up and
reburied face down in the hopesthat it would keep them from
getting up.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
End quote Okay, you've been to a lot of very,
very early American cemeteries.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
Have you ever encountered evidence in a
graveyard, placards or any kindof notation that indicated that
a grave had been dug up andreburied because of this?
Speaker 1 (28:39):
No, but there are a few famous graves, one really in
particular that have becomefamous because of this, which
we're going to talk about in alittle bit, and what the
cemetery had to do was add metalbars because it was such a risk
that somebody would steal thestone because it was so famous.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Oh, oh.
So To protect the stone, theheadstone.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Yeah, the headstone, yeah, the headstone I thought
you were saying they had to putmetal bars over the grave so
that it would keep the body inno, but I have seen graves like
that, like not so much in the us, but there are graves in
certain cemeteries, especiallyin like the uk, where there's
like metal bars, like cages overthem, dating back hundreds of
years, because they were afraidof that corpse getting out for
(29:24):
some reason.
That's crazy I don't think it'srelated to just cut the tendons
just cut the tendons.
Yeah, I've been saying that foryears other families in new
england would behead corpses inan effort to keep them from
rising again or shatter theirbones.
Just take the bones, make somejewelry can't move, you don't
got bones.
That's true, that's fact In1854, the locals living in
(29:46):
Jewett City, which is the dirttown directly next to where I
grew up.
It's where my post office andlibrary were located.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Druid City.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Jewett City.
Jewett, my town, was so smallthere was no post office, police
department or library, and Iwas about a four second drive
from the border with jewett cityor griswold, and so that's
really like was an extension ofour town and and we're going to
talk about one of the kind ofcreepiest examples of vampire
(30:17):
panic evidence.
We don't actually know a tonabout the family, but the
evidence of those graves werefound and they're very bizarre.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
So 1854, locals living in Jewett City, which is
in Connecticut, had exhumed anumber of corpses because they
were suspicious that thedeceased were actually vampires
and as vampires they werebelieved to rise from their
graves and kill those that werestill alive in the community
rise from your grave.
And so how it kind of happenedwas that, I believe in the year
(30:49):
1990 they were, I think it waslike from like they realized
there was graves because theywere building something, some
construction was happening andlike near an old mill or an old
factory, something like that,they stumbled upon these graves
like unmarked or whatever.
They dig them up and they lookat them and I think they like
the whole construction right,they get a historian to come and
(31:10):
see what they have.
So the researchers found thatbodies had been put back into
graves post organ removal withbroken ribs Right, that's how we
know that they would break theribs and take the organs out.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
But in strange patterns.
So, for example, one of them,which really became the famous
grave here was the person wasput back in the pattern of a
skull and crossbones.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
What does that mean?
So when the picture of skulland crossbones in your head.
Oh, I guess they already havethe skull Right and they have
the bones.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
So they put them back in that pattern in, you know,
the 1800s.
And when people in 1990 openedthe grave 150 years later, why
would they do that?
Because they were building athing.
They found the graves, theyopened them up, they wanted to
know if they could move them tocontinue building the thing, and
they were put together in thatway.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Because it was a vampire.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Right, it was like a protection thing.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Did it have fangs?
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Doesn't say in the article.
Perhaps New England's mostfamous suspected vampire was
Mercy Brown.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
They made a whole show about her.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
What show?
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Murphy Brown.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
No, mercy Brown, Not Murphy Brown.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
That's different.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
I bet Mercy Brown would wear both straps of her
overalls strapped.
Why do you say?
Speaker 2 (32:22):
that I bet Mercy Brown would wear both straps of
her overalls strapped.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Why do you say that Murphy Brown would always wear
like one of her overall strapsunstrapped?
I understand as like a look.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Please continue.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
The Brown family lived in Exeter, Rhode Island, a
border town often referred toas deserted Exeter.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
What does that mean?
Speaker 1 (32:37):
Just that it was a farming community that was
founded on land without muchfertile soil which we see a lot
kind of at this time and so itwas really hard to kind of build
a lasting community there,because it was really hard to
actually grow anything.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
That's why they have to be nomadic.
Yeah, or do slash and burnfarming.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
And a lot of the local population was also lost
to the Civil War.
So it kind of just became thisalmost like ghost town.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
Well, they need more vampires then.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
In the mid to late 1800s, tuberculosis eviscerated
the Brown family, starting withMother Mary Eliza.
The disease found its way todaughter Mary Olive in 1882.
Quoting from Mary Olive'sobituary quote the last few
hours she lived was of greatsuffering, yet her faith was
firm and she was ready for thechange.
End quote what doestuberculosis do to your body?
Speaker 2 (33:34):
I imagine it's not good.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
So the main thing was a cough.
A cough that would last for avery, very long time.
It would start with phlegm andcould eventually turn into
coughing up blood.
Sure, chest pain, severe weightloss.
There were fevers, sweats, thatkind of stuff.
Pretty severe weakness andtiredness, fatigue, just like no
longer being interested in food, having chills from the fever
(33:58):
and then swelling.
That kind of wouldn't go awayever.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
So it's a.
It's a lung infection that justends up wrecking the rest of
the body.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Right, it's an airborne respiratory disease.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
Like COVID.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
Yeah, like COVID, but different.
So the son gets sick, right,edwin gets sick.
He ends up living withtuberculosis for a very, very
long time, but he gets sick, andso he goes to Colorado Springs
in the hope to find naturalistichealing.
And this is something Iactually remember from our
Waverly Hills episode.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
What was that.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
We did an episode with our friend bob dawn, on
their kind of hauntedexperiences going to this old
tuberculosis ward which is veryfamous called waverly hills, oh
yeah, and with the ball down thehall.
With the ball down the hall,and it's interesting because
like the belief then was like,okay, people needed fresh air
which is so funny because they,all of these people, only had
(34:53):
fresh air at this time but theywould like put them in these
hospitals and like put themoutside.
Like the idea is they just needto go to the country, like they
just need some fresh air andthat will be the cure.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
Well, it does stand to reason that people are
getting more sick.
When they were in confinedspaces because we know how
airborne illnesses travel, yeah,and when there was like lots of
ventilation, then there's agood chance that people didn't
get sick.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
Right.
So, anyway, he goes to ColoradoSprings, kind of seeking fresh
air In 1892, a decade after thedeath of her mother and sister.
So this is what I mean aboutthe illness sitting dormant in
somebody for a really long timeDaughter Mercy Lena fell ill and
ultimately perished.
While Mercy was still suffering, her brother returned to town.
(35:37):
So she's really, really sick.
He comes back, he's in terribleshape and he would also
eventually pass away.
Pre-existing superstition inthe area had laid the groundwork
for attributing so many deathsin one family to the undead.
It felt targeted, though theterm vampire again wasn't used
here.
Friends and neighbors startedto suspect that one of the
(35:57):
deceased Brown family memberswas in essence a vampire.
Not only was it believed thatone of the Browns were a vampire
, but that they had caused theillness and passed it on to
Edwin.
So at this point, right, you'rethe dad, you're George Brown,
your wife, two of your daughtershave died.
You have a very sick son.
What are you going to do, right?
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Dig them all up.
Puree the hearts, Smoke themright, you're exactly right.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
After much convincing , the father of the family,
george Brown, allowed for thedisinterment of several family
members so that they couldreview their bodies, and on the
morning of March 17, 1892, agroup of men gathered at the
cemetery and picked up theirshovels.
The bodies of the deceasedBrown women were dug up and
examined.
So Mary Eliza and Mary Olive,mother and daughter, looked to
(36:46):
be decomposing at an expectedrate.
But by comparison, mercyBrown's body seemed to have
barely decomposed at all andthere was actually still blood
in her heart.
The country folk were alsosuspicious that her hair and
nails had grown post-death.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
Again, they had the heart and they're like OK, do
you think they cut it open?
I think they used a knife, ordo you think they?
Speaker 1 (37:10):
just like give it a little squeeze.
You're so gross and weird.
They obviously cut it open.
What do you think we're doinghere?
Give it a little squeeze.
Or maybe when they pulled itout, like blood got on their
hands, you know, and they werelike oh, there's blood in here.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
I mean it would have 100% coagulated.
I don't think it's going topump.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
No, it's not going to pump.
It's not going to.
It was a liquid.
That was the point.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Blood can't sit for more than like a couple hours.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Well, just let me get through this.
Okay, maybe I'll explain it toyou.
Maybe, if you're really lucky,I'll give you an answer.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
Yeah, if I'm lucky, I'll get an answer on this one,
thanks, and thus Mercy Brown wasdecided to be the culprit.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
But here's the thing Mercy Brown, as a reminder, died
a decade after her mother andsister, and she had died only a
few months before she wasexhumed.
So to compare the rate ofdecomposition of her mother and
sister, who had died 10 yearsearlier, to the decomposition of
Mercy, who not just died a fewmonths earlier but also died in
(38:08):
the middle of winter, is not thesame thing, because her body
was kept in a frozen.
There's some debate whether shewas in kind of this, like built
up outdoor tomb, because theground was too frozen to bury
her for a few months, or if shewas in you know, buried.
But either way she was outsidein the freezing, freezing,
frigid temperatures so her bodywas incredibly preserved.
(38:32):
She's in a meat locker, exactly.
So they were like oh man, lookat her.
Compared to her mom, she's avampire.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
I've always referred to New England as the meat
locker.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
That's true.
So in an effort to save thelife of poor sick Edwin, mercy's
heart and liver were removedfrom her body and burned.
The ashes were turned into atonic or a drink for Edwin and
the hopes to cure his illness.
What do you think happened,alan?
Speaker 2 (38:57):
They drank it.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
Yep Did Edwin survive .
Speaker 2 (39:01):
No, because how could he?
That was like hundreds of yearsago.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
Well, did he survive to see a full?
Speaker 2 (39:08):
life To be to the ripe old age of 23?
Speaker 1 (39:11):
Probably not no.
He died two months later.
Mercy's body was buried in thechurchyard of the Baptist Church
in Exeter, rhode Island.
Today it's known as ChestnutHill Cemetery.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Have you been there?
Speaker 1 (39:21):
I have not, though it's also very close to where I
grew up.
The incident caused RhodeIsland to be known as the
Vampire Capital of America.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
By whom?
Who gave that title?
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Some newspaper man.
Rhode Island is also the homeof the vampire legend of Nellie
L Vaughn from 1889, who died atthe age of 19.
Nellie was laid to rest in whatis known as Rhode Island's
historical cemetery number two,and local urban legend tells us
that her grave is cursed.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
And here we have Rhode Island's historic cemetery
number two.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
I'm going to quote here from a New England article
by Charles Robinson.
Quote one local universityprofessor who studied vampirism
claimed that no vegetable orlichen would grow on Nellie's
grave, despite numerous attemptsto plant there.
And people are still takenaback by the inscription along
the bottom of Nellie's tombstone.
The curious words read I amwaiting and watching for you.
(40:16):
End quote who?
I fucking love that.
Give me a quote like that on mygravestone.
Who makes the people trying toplant lichen because there's
this folklore.
So they're like, okay, there'sthis weird urban legend, we're
gonna disprove it, and theycan't really how do you do that?
Well, the lichen is probablyrelated to werewolf mythology.
I would assume obviously no Alichenthrope.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
Sure, it's a similar name, but it's just like a moss
that grows on rocks.
It's really slow.
I don't think you can plantlichen.
I mean, I don't know much aboutplanting.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
Yes, you can encourage lichens to grow in
your garden.
How Create a damp and shadyarea.
Likens to grow in your garden.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
How Create a damp and shady area?
Sure you can encourage.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Tuck it into fallen debris.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
Okay, so basically make a graveyard.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Mix it with moist substances.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
Yeah, so all these things are already done.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
Right, it's not growing.
There's a vampire afoot.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
I mean sure that's suspicious.
If lichen's growing, though,it's a very good sign of the
ecosystem.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
It's actually one of the good benchmarks, but it's
not growing.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
Clearly they have a poor ecosystem.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
Yeah, they need more moisture.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
And less vampires.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
George Brown never got tuberculosis and he lived
long enough until 1922 to seethe discovery of the vaccine.
In all of these cases and thereare many, many more it was
typically older family membersor neighbors that would convince
the grieving family that avampire or undead family member
was to blame.
There was a continuation of theold folklore beliefs that
(41:43):
persisted.
Couple extreme loss andunexplained devastation with old
folklore and mythology and youget the New England vampire
panic.
It's not so different from therise of spiritualism during the
Civil War.
People need an explanation,they need to be able to
understand during extreme lossand horror and they need some
way to move through that andfeel like they're in control.
(42:04):
But when Bram Stoker wroteDracula in 1897, he used
newspaper articles about MercyBrown in his research.
One of the biggest reasons thatwe chose this topic is because
the rise in vampire literatureseems to correlate quite
perfectly with the rise invampire mythology and panics in
the United States.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
It seems very after hearing all this, the whole
vampires being having to sleepin coffins makes a lot more
sense.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
This topic is incredibly exciting to me
because it's such a clear caseof history impacting horror,
which, of course, is what we aimto explore on this podcast.
On an infamous rainy vacationin Geneva, mary Shelley wrote
Frankenstein and John Polidoriwrote the Vampire, which
predated Dracula by 78 years.
(42:52):
The Vampire was released in1819 and is generally thought of
as the kindling that firststarted the vampire literature
movement.
Also in 1819 was a story calledthe Black Vampire, a legend of
Saint Domingo.
Between 1845 and 1847, 876pages of a vampire serial called
(43:14):
varney the vampire or feast ofblood was released in penny
dreadfuls the same year thatvarney the vampire was released,
which is the longest epicvampire story maybe to date
varney the vampire yeah, so thevery same year that it was
released does he teach morallessons to kids?
(43:34):
No, it seems to have very littleto do with children actually.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
I was making a joke, because the alliteration makes
him seem like he'd be friendly.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
Yeah, he sounds cartoonish.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
Very cartoonish Varney the vampire.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
But the very same year that Varney was released,
lemuel Ray of GriswoldConnecticut again shout out to
my hometown was released.
Lemuel Ray of GriswoldConnecticut again shout out to
my hometown along with hisfather and brother, all of whom
had died from an illness, weredisinterred, their hearts
removed and one of the three hadbeen reburied in a skull and
crossbone pattern.
In 1872, one of my favoritestories, carmilla, was released.
(44:08):
Carmilla also kick-started thelesbian vampire tradition, which
has since erupted into a majorsubgenre.
Carmilla was written bySheridan LaFonu and is often
considered one of the mostinfluential stories on Bram
Stoker's Dracula.
Have you read it?
I've read it multiple times.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
Do you like it?
I do.
I have not read it.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
I have a copy if you'd like it.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
I'll give it a thought.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
I actually read it in Transylvania on our trip to
Romania this month.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
We're not allowed to talk about that until our Vlad
the Impaler episode, I think wecan say that we went there.
We did go there.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
It's pretty clear on social media that we went there.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
What's social media?
Speaker 1 (44:43):
And finally, in 1897, dracula was released.
And, as we know, dracula hasendured and influenced vampire
horror far more than other works.
Quoting again from the Bloody,disgusting article, quote
Throughout the 1800s, vampirismhad begun to pick up steam as a
recurring theme in Gothicliterature, becoming the focal
point of more and more stories.
(45:04):
Before Dracula finally cementedthe vampire as a cornerstone of
popular culture once and forall, it was a century that saw
the undead grow stronger andstronger as a fictional
tradition.
End quote Dracula is anepistolary novel that takes
place in Transylvania and whilewe cannot deny the influence
that Vlad the Impaler and otherlocal Wallachian folklore had
(45:25):
here, we also have to understandthat one, bram Stoker did not
invent vampire mythology and,two, he was influenced by Mercy
Brown when he was writing thenovel, in addition to other
Slavic traditions.
Speaker 2 (45:37):
He invented some.
Speaker 1 (45:39):
Not broadly.
I just referenced like three orfour works that predated
Dracula.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
Yeah, but he invented some vampire mythology that I
think that's the first instanceof vampires controlling wolves.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
Okay, well, we'll fact check that.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
It's a wild, baseless claim.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
Yeah, I know.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
How about vampires turning into smoke?
Speaker 1 (46:01):
We'll have to check it out While I'm trying to get
out of the habit of quotingWikipedia.
This is a really goodexplanation of Stoker's
influences.
Speaker 2 (46:08):
Since when are you trying to get out of the habit
of quoting Wikipedia?
You say that every time.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
This is from the Dracula entry.
You've never said this before.
End quote.
Dracula was mostly written inthe 1890s.
Stoker produced over 100 pagesof notes for the novel, drawing
extensively from Transylvanianfolklore and history.
Some scholars have suggestedthat the character of Dracula
was inspired by historicalfigures like the Wallachian
(46:32):
prince Vlad the Impaler or theCountess Elizabeth Bathory, but
there is a widespreaddisagreement.
Stoker's notes mention neitherfigure.
So his notes do not mentionVlad the Impaler, but they do
mention Mercy Brown.
Back to the quote.
He found the name Dracula inWhitby's public library while on
holiday, thinking it meantdevil in Romanian end quote.
(46:55):
So we know, because we justwent, that there's act.
The word Dracula is alsoassociated with Vlad the Impaler
.
His father was Vlad Dracul,dracula's son of Dracul, and
we'll talk about that on thisother episode when we get to it.
But Bram Stoker didn't know anyof that.
He found the word dracula in adictionary.
Yeah, I went in a dictionary inwhippy's public library while
(47:19):
on holiday typical and again hethought that it meant devil in
romanian.
The rise of the new englandvampire panic was very entangled
with the earliest versions ofvampire literature, and tracing
the folklore behind thismythology is a topic for another
episode.
Though these stories seemoutdated to us now and historic,
we do have to acknowledge thatthe 1800s are far more recent
(47:43):
than the Salem Witch Trials of1690.
And especially in today'spolitical climate, again it's a
good reminder that we don't knoweverything about how the world
works and sometimes it's betterto try and force ourselves to
take a look at something in anew way.
I'm going to quote one finaltime from the Bloody Disgusting
article Quote.
During that time frame,vampires were being established
(48:04):
as a cornerstone of horrorfiction and at the same time New
England was gripped by agenuine panic as people were
digging up and desecrating theirloved ones out of fear that
they were rising from the dead.
It is absolutely fascinatingthat these two things, which
should be polar opposites, werehappening simultaneously.
One can't help but look atthese dates so close together
(48:25):
and wonder how it was evenpossible.
How did a boom of vampirefiction and a resurgence in the
belief of vampires happen at thesame time?
It sounds completelycontradictory.
In some ways it is and in someways it isn't.
End quote.
There's a socioeconomic answerto this.
(48:45):
The writers of these storieswere all from affluent and
educated backgrounds and thefolks in New England digging up
their dead loved ones not tominimize and whatever.
But they were not looking atthis through this educated lens,
right, they were going throughsomething horrifying and they
were desperate.
You really do have twodifferent types of people living
(49:06):
in two different worlds.
You don't have local people inNew England whose family members
are mysteriously dying,creating vampire horror fiction.
That's happening in Europe andin other places.
So I think it's a really goodpoint that the article makes
about how wild it is that thesethings are happening at the same
time.
You really just have to look atthe world, hypothetically
(49:29):
speaking, that each of thosegroups were living in.
Right.
John Palidori vacationing inGeneva with Mary Shelley and
Percy Bysshe Shelley and LordByron is a totally separate
thing than being in colonial NewEngland and everybody's dying,
your food is failing and you'rejust kind of fucked, you know.
Speaker 2 (49:49):
It's not fun.
Speaker 1 (49:50):
And that, my friends, is the history of the New
England vampire panic and how itinfluenced the rise of horror
vampire tradition.
Speaker 2 (50:00):
Are there any movies on this?
I don't think I've seen a likecolonial horror vampire movie.
Speaker 1 (50:07):
I actually just assumed that there weren't,
because I can't think of anyeither, and just a quick Google
I don't really see anythingcoming up beyond documentaries.
Speaker 2 (50:17):
I don't know.
I feel like colonial horror iskind of cool, expensive to make,
of course, but I don't knowPeople like the Witch.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
People love the Witch .
You also have Scooby-Doo andthe Witch's Ghost.
Speaker 2 (50:28):
Which is not colonial horror.
Speaker 1 (50:29):
Well, it takes place in Plymouth.
You're craving new englandvampire panic specific horror.
The good news is that we aregoing to have one more episode
this month, if you can believeit, and we will present to you
three vampire themed horrorstories are they good?
Speaker 2 (50:49):
they're excellent.
Well, that's great.
Speaker 1 (50:51):
The other thing that I want to say is that our friend
, the very, very talented PilarKep, designed a beautiful
illustration of the New EnglandVampire Panic.
In my opinion, it is our bestand scariest design that you can
find in our merch store.
So if you head tolunaticsprojectcom and click on
merch, you can take a look atwhat's available there.
We also are sending outpostcards and stickers with the
(51:16):
beautiful design on it.
If you'd like one and you'renot already in touch, please
reach out to us on social mediaand we have some extras to send
out this year.
Speaker 2 (51:23):
Abby said that if she sells 1 million stickers she'll
get the design as a tattoo.
Speaker 1 (51:28):
Absolutely no problem .
Does it matter where, what bodypart I get it on?
Speaker 2 (51:32):
Forehead.
Speaker 1 (51:33):
No, I'm not going to get my forehead, but I will get
it.
I have to ask Pilar permission.
Speaker 2 (51:38):
Oh, that's right, Otherwise you have to pay your
licensing every time someonelooks at you.
Speaker 1 (51:41):
That's right.
It's not sustainable.
Speaker 2 (51:44):
All right, Well, I hope Alan did this scratch your
Halloween itch a little bit moreSlightly more than Hitchcock,
despite the fact that there areno movies, which is a bummer
yeah, it is a bummer, I do.
Speaker 1 (51:57):
I already have a plan for next year and I think
you're gonna like it.
I think you're right, alan,that this, this topic, doesn't
call upon specific horror films.
However, it calls upon dracula,you know.
Speaker 2 (52:09):
It kind of goes back a layer uh, sure, yes, and
Dracula being a Halloween staple, I will give you that.
Speaker 1 (52:16):
And if we were going to broaden this up and just talk
about vampires in general, thenof course we'd have like an
infinite number of movies towatch.
Speaker 2 (52:22):
Did we do a series?
It was just on vampires, right,it wasn't Dracula.
Speaker 1 (52:27):
Well, it was part of the Universal Monster series.
Speaker 2 (52:42):
So I think it kind of had like a focus on Dracula,
but we talked about justgenerally how vampire mythology
developed, I understand.
So, okay, I have a better scopeof our upcoming encapsulation
of future vampire related topics.
Speaker 1 (52:47):
There you go, as always.
Thank you all so much for beinghere.
Hope you are enjoying thespookiest and last days of
October and, of course, we willtalk to you one more time before
the end of this month and onthe holiest of days, when the
veil is absolutely the thinnest,and I hope everyone goes out
there and really communes withyour loved ones who have passed,
as is tradition.
Speaking of which, I also justwant to say episode 49, which is
(53:10):
quite old.
The Samhain episode remains oneof my favorites.
We had our friend Miranda Orzelon to really talk about pagan
history.
If you're wondering what thehistory of Halloween is, I'll
link that episode in thedescription as well, but I
really, really love thatexploration on the history of
Halloween going back thousandsof years.
So just a little if you'retrying to get in the Halloween
(53:32):
spirit and learn something new.
But, as always, thank you guysso much for being here.
Stay safe, stay spooky, don'tforget to vote and we'll talk to
you soon.
Speaker 2 (53:39):
Bye, bye you.
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