A History of Vampires in New England Page 2

  Some parents dealt with the inevitable fact of child death by turning a hard cheek when it came to emotional attachment. It was difficult for many parents to become attached to an infant knowing full well that the child might not live more than a few years for a number of reasons. This also led to lack of proper nurturing to help the child develop a distinct personality within the household. It was not uncommon for toddlers to be referred to as “it” by parents and older siblings. It was also common for families to name several of their children by the same name after another had died. This act ensured that a certain family name would live on to be passed down to the next generation, but at the same time it also perpetuated the indifference parents had toward establishing separate identities for each child. The names, however, became a link to family history. Should one survive to raise his own children, he could continue the seemingly all-important family name. In searching through historical cemeteries, Arlene and I found several graves bearing the same name; some, judging by the dates, were passed down through generations, while others were those of infants who died and the name was then passed on to another member of the family in hopes someone would live long enough to perpetuate that title.

  Other threats, such as Indian attacks and wild beasts, also lingered in the minds of New Englanders during this time. Diseases were too many to count, and the New England families knew well that death lurked around every corner. It is little wonder that the preternatural would also become a fear for these people. Customs and superstitions began to link themselves together, some carried from the Old World and others born in the new one. If a black cat crossed one’s path, it meant ill fortune in Europe, but I once read that this was not the case in North America. In fact, it was reported to be the exact opposite—if a white cat strolled across one’s lane of travel, it could be most unsettling. Why a white cat? Was this concocted after our independence from Great Britain to separate our culture from theirs? Did a white cat really cause some calamity in America once, or could it be that white cats were much harder to come across, thus securing a more favorable and unlikely chance of stumbling upon such an ill omen in the New World?

  Customs we would think ludicrous today were genuinely feared as superstition and were heeded by early New Englanders. Many were even carried over to modern times by some of the rural folks still living in the bucolic farming communities of the region. Some common superstitions included opening all the doors and windows after a death so the soul of the departed could easily find its way to the next world or not standing by the foot of the bed of a dying person so as not to obstruct the departing spirit. Some believed that the spirit of the deceased could become trapped inside a mirror; therefore, it was the job of the oldest living relative in the house to turn the mirrors toward the wall or cover them until the body was taken to the burial ground. Some folks believed that if they saw their reflection in the mirror before this was done, they would die within six months. The deceased was always taken out of the house feet first for fear that his spirit might gaze back through the threshold and glimpse a living soul. This would cause whoever was glimpsed to soon follow the deceased to the grave. It was also customary to cover everything in the house with white linen, especially the mirrors and pictures. In rural areas, beehives would be turned, and the oldest child of the family would tell the bees the sad news. It was believed that if this act went ignored, the bees would attack a member of the deceased’s family. Another strange ritual was the act of allowing a relative to inhale the dying breath of the deceased.

  Many things we would today consider vile or grotesque were accepted as common custom or practice in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Painting the portrait of a relative or loved one after he or she died was a common practice before the advent of the camera and even after its invention. Having a family photograph taken around the casket of the deceased was also customary in some cultures and survives to this day. Surely, exhuming family members in search of a spectral bloodsucker seems outlandish now, but it was a harsh part of the reality these New England families once faced. Some farmers believed that they must tend to their crops or plant only while the moon was waxing; if they did not, they would meet a horrible fate or their crops would fail. Some people continue to adhere to these antiquated beliefs, which seem to still grip the northwestern portion of Rhode Island’s rural towns. This micro-superstition ranks among countless little regional fallacies that areas adopted to rationalize fortunes and misfortunes. On the other hand, the belief that vampires were the cause of consumption can be termed a macro-superstition because it settled within the pith of a large region—namely, New England.

  Micro- and macro-superstitions intertwine to create an immeasurable number of combined ideas that the New England people adopted as common practice. There is an old legend that has been related in front of many campfires and woodstoves in country stores and is also mentioned in Michael Bell’s Food for the Dead. It says that if a gravestone is tilted, it is an indication that a demon or devil has escaped or risen from the grave. The tales of New England legends and folklore are vast and interesting. Their origins are in many cultures that slowly blended into the beliefs and yarns that have made this region so charming and peculiar. It is amusing to see how many have survived to this day in the rural areas, from planting and harvest predictions to old-time medicinal remedies still tried—and yes, true.

  In understanding the thought process of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century families affected by consumption, we must, for a moment, travel back in time and look at a few aspects of how they coped with the fragility of their mortal tenure upon this earth. The notion of death was offset by their extreme faith in religion and the afterlife. They held comfort in the fact that death was but a temporary separation of loved ones. The early inscriptions of cold, straightforward epitaphs were replaced with warmer, subtler writings in order to comfort the living, reminding them that death, although imminent, was not the eternal end.

  Puritan funerals were treated as festivals, and liquor was always served. In fact, funerals were regarded as important social events. Children were required to attend at an early age in order to become accustomed to the ceremony. It was customary in many parts of New England for the family to send a pair of gloves as an invitation to the funeral of a loved one. In some cases, gold rings with death heads, winged skulls and other engravings also found on early tombstones were handed out as mementos at funerals. These practices survived past Puritan times well into the Victorian era.

  The cost of liquor served at funerals could easily outweigh the coffin and burial expenses. Even the children sometimes imbibed a libation or two. The book Social Life in Old New England by Mary Caroline Crawford tells that Judge Sewall wrote of how his children served as pallbearers during a funeral and afterward were allowed to drink in the same manner as the adults. Another instance tells of children who acted as pallbearers in the funeral of another child and were given a tumbler of gin, water and sugar each to quaff. During many funeral processions, bottles circulated freely and were enjoyed by bearers, who took turns carrying the coffin—and the liquor—to the burying yard.

  Painting a quick picture of life in New England helps one to understand why people felt the way they did. It is important to note that all of the documented vampire cases in New England take place in rural, remote areas where certain education, superstition and customs were handed down from generation to generation. In many cases, doctors and proper medicine were few and far between, and some superstitions, being much older than known medicines at the time, were certainly known to the people in one form or another. In Monson Center, New Hampshire, Dr. John Brown was the only medical physician the town ever had. He lived there from 1750 to 1766 before removing to Plymouth, New Hampshire. According to accounts, Thomas Benton, a bright and precocious young man, was sent to medical school with proceeds from the townspeople on the premise that he would return and become the official, and only, physician of Benton, New Hampshire.

  When tuberc
ulosis actually melded its way into superstition is a matter of conjecture that also varies from culture to culture. In medieval Hungary, it was thought that the illness was caused by a doglike demon eating away at the lungs, and when the victim coughed, it was the demon barking. The disease, causing its victims to become gaunt and pale, also gave rise to many other superstitions. Strange remedies were instituted for the disease. One English remedy was to swallow live baby frogs before breakfast. Another was to have the afflicted person sleep where he would be exposed to the breath of cattle. Some sufferers were made to drink broths made by stewing the body of a dead cat or rooster. A cure for dropsy was to drink toad ashes every morning for three days while the moon was waxing. This was known to be a surefire cure for the ailment.

  Such barbaric and grotesque remedies have their place in the origins of what led New Englanders to create the cure they thought was the most effective. An interesting New England cure for a sore throat or cough was to wear a sprig of garlic around one’s neck. This seems very much in conjunction with repelling a vampire and the tradition of being bitten on the neck by one. Is it coincidence, or was there more to this cure than is actually mentioned? Tea made with coltsfoot and flaxseed sweetened with honey was deemed to be a powerful prophylactic for consumption. Hyssop was thought to be a powerful medicine against colds and lung disorders as well. These remedies were obviously not always effective, and in the event of their failure, there had to be a reason far beyond the natural thought. The idea of vampirism, as we now know it, did not just pop into the minds of New England families. There had to be some preconceived idea and knowledge of historic value brought from their lands of origin that amalgamated in New England and made people believe they were under the influence of some spectral, disease-spreading demon.

  Antoine Augustin Calmet, a French Benedictine theologian and scholar, produced many writings on religion. One treatise in particular, written in 1746, focused on the belief in vampires. In this very thorough and well-thought-out piece of literature, Calmet actually supports the possible existence of the bloodsucking creatures, citing several cultures and countries and detailing how one might be labeled as a vampire. Vampire scares in Europe were all too real throughout history. Countries such as Prussia, Austria and Serbia had documented cases of vampire epidemics during the first half of the eighteenth century.

  In 1725, a Serbian peasant named Peter Plogojowitz died at sixty-two years of age. When nine locals died in rapid succession, they feared the work of a vampire. Victims claimed they were visited by Plogojowitz in the dark hours of the night, and he sucked the life from them. Even Plogojowitz’s wife and son were subject to his nightly visitations. The corpse of Plogojowitz returned to his home and demanded sustenance from his son. When the younger refused, he was found dead from a massive loss of blood. Authorities were called in to end the terror. The body of Plogojowitz was exhumed, and when examined, signs of vampirism were present: the hair and nails appeared to have grown, and there were signs of blood in the mouth. The villagers drove a stake through Plogojowitz’s heart, and fresh blood spurted from the corpse. They then burned the body.

  Arnold Paole, another Serbian citizen, claimed he had been attacked by a vampire years before. In 1726, while out in his field, he suddenly died. After that, his neighbors began taking ill and dropping off one by one. It was concluded that Paole was now a vampire feeding on their blood.

  These cases reached the New World through immigration and probably held some weight in people’s minds. A certain writing that stands out almost puts the final nail in the coffin, so to speak, of how New Englanders linked consumption to what we now call vampires. This work is by Francois-Marie Arouet (November 21, 1694–May 30, 1777), a French philosopher and author who wrote under the pen name of Voltaire. Voltaire penned many famous quotes that still reverberate through oral tradition and prose. He also wrote a bit on vampires.

  Voltaire’s literature states that the vampire was a corpse that sucked the blood from the living, extracting it from the neck or the stomach. The victims, over a short period of time, grew pale and ashen in complexion while becoming weak and gaunt in appearance, until they finally contracted consumption from their weakness and wasted away. The corpse, on the other hand, flourished in the grave, remaining fresh, preserved and nourished from the juice of life it had streamed from the living. Voltaire’s perception that vampire victims would contract consumption as a byproduct of their affliction is a most compelling statement. Somehow, when his cache of quotes sailed across the Atlantic with those immigrating to the new world, this one narrative, like a parasite, may have been hidden among them, waiting for someone to unleash its dogma upon the settlers. In writing, and in reality, they had taken with them from the Old World a vampire, or some sort of spectral creature of the night, which became the sole culprit for the contraction of the horrible wasting disease.

  When the Providence Journal printed an article on vampires in Rhode Island on March 21, 1892, the first few paragraphs caught my attention, drawing me to read more, but the comments in quotes near the beginning—“I always heard it was so,” and especially, “My father and grandfather always said so”—led me to wonder how far back the belief in spectral night stalkers and family ghouls actually stems. It was probably passed down through generations by word of mouth.

  My grandparents were born around the turn of the twentieth century, which means their parents and grandparents lived during the nineteenth century. Here we are in the twenty-first century, and my parents—even my brothers and sisters, along with myself—still hold fast to much of what my grandparents taught us. Their influence on cooking, holidays and possessions (passed down through the generations) while we were growing up still make for warm family solidarity and strength. We continue to use my grandmother’s favorite sayings from time to time, and of course, we all have some of her possessions around the house. This goes to show how far back customs and traditions can be traced. Think about your family roots for a moment and about how many things you still hold on to that came from your parents or grandparents. Chances are, those customs, traditions, sayings and habits come from a long line of ancestry. It’s not hard to understand how superstitions, especially during a time when diseases like consumption were devastating families, would also become part of the mix.

  So many beliefs that were once common among our ancestors were quickly swept under the rug at the turn of the twentieth century for fear of ridicule. Perhaps even within your family history lies an undocumented incident that was all but forgotten with the advent of modern medicine and education. Was there once a vampire in your family? You never know.

  VAMPNRES IN NEW ENGLAND

  Folklore has many roads. With diverse cultures mingling and migrating across this great country, it is no wonder that the legends and superstitions we have come to adhere to have become a sundry of relics passed down from generation to generation.

  We all know that black cats were regarded as witch’s familiars throughout history, but modern intelligence and reasoning has assuredly put that fear to rest. Folklore is deeply rooted in every society and often takes a front seat to reason. When folklore works in the place of reason and intelligence, it can become the new medicine of the day. That is what appears to have occurred in New England when a disease called consumption, now known as tuberculosis, ran rampant across the region. The medical doctors of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries had no cure or effective treatment for the disease. There was no pill or shot to eradicate the deadly infliction. Connecticut state archaeologist Dr. Nicholas Bellantoni informed me that consumption was the number one killer of people before the Civil War. With nowhere else to turn, it became a major health issue, and people were desperate for a cure. Many did not realize at the time that coughing on food at the table or sleeping several to a bed was perpetuating the disease. They were not yet aware that the malady was, indeed, contagious. The proximity of many of these early New England families in such cramped conditions provided an ideal
breeding ground for consumption.

  Dr. Michael Bell put it best in the 2002 PBS documentary Ghosts and Vampire Legends of Rhode Island when he stated that the medical profession of the times was “grasping at straws” in regard to treatment. This most likely gave impetus to folklore and superstition as a focal point in the treatment of the disease.

  Consumption victims were gaunt, pale and often spit up blood while coughing profusely. Their wasting away gave rise to the theory that perhaps there was something more sinister at work. Perhaps it was not just a dreadful disease but also a supernatural force that continually fed on them before eventually taking them to the grave.

  The New England vampire was deemed the victim of a mystical force that made him return from the dead to feed on the living. The families knew, of course, that the dead were not actually digging themselves out of the grave each night and physically attacking their prey. The concluded that the spirit of the deceased was rising from the tomb and making its way to the bedchambers of his kin, sucking the life out of them in order to nourish the physical body that lay in repose. Many of the sick complained of how the deceased family member sat on a part of their body, causing great pain and suffering. It is a stretch of the imagination in today’s society, but when one considers the times and the hardships families faced fighting for survival in an untamed environment and against countless diseases, it makes sense that folklore and superstition were part of their coping methods.

  Families running out of hope of eradicating consumption from their homes looked at the idea of banishing a spectral ghoul in the family as treatment and found, in some cases, that it worked. Of course, in such cases, the afflicted person most likely overcame the illness through natural means, but this was not the belief, especially when such drastic measures as exhumation and cremation of the vitals had taken place.