Dubbed “The Great New England Vampire Panic,” This Chaotic Period Had Villagers Gripped With Fear Two Centuries After The Salem Witch Trials
Two centuries after the Salem Witch Trials, a new kind of monster rose into existence. The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were a period of terror and chaos as New England villagers were gripped by an intense fear of vampires. This era was dubbed the New England Vampire Panic.
It all began due to an outbreak of tuberculosis, otherwise known as consumption. Those afflicted with it came down with dreadful symptoms.
The disease affects the lungs, causing a chronic cough, fever, weight loss, and bloody mucus that could drip from a person’s mouth.
It also gave people an ashen complexion and sunken eyes. And worst of all, it spread easily from person to person.
Tuberculosis claimed around two percent of the region’s population from 1786 to 1800. Back then, people were unaware of how disease spread.
So, the widespread belief was that when a victim of consumption died, they consumed the lives of their surviving family members, who also became ill.
Eventually, the people of New England began to blame vampires for all the death and suffering. They believed that their relatives would rise out of their graves, return home, and feed on their living family members, slowly sucking the life out of them until they, too, would meet a horrific end.
To counter the vampire attacks, people would dig up dead bodies to examine them for any vampiric traits. Vampiric traits were determined through the freshness of a corpse.
If there wasn’t much decay or liquid blood was found in the organs, the dead person was deemed a vampire.
Bnetto – stock.adobe.com- illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
After a vampire was identified, villagers wanted to make sure the creature wouldn’t return to harm the living. They participated in vampire rituals, where they burned the organs of the deceased or decapitated them and reburied their remains.
One of the most notable cases is the Mercy Brown vampire incident. In 1892, George Brown, a farmer in Rhode Island, watched as his family died from consumption. First, his wife Mary was infected and died, followed by his two daughters. Then, his son Edwin fell ill as well.
The villagers urged Brown to give them permission to exhume his family’s bodies. Nothing was left of his wife’s body and one of his daughters except for bones. But Mercy, who had died two months prior in the middle of winter, showed almost no signs of decomposition–most likely due to the frigid temperatures.
Mercy’s heart was sliced out and burned. The ashes were given to Edwin to drink in the hopes that he would recover. But in the end, he passed away.
In 1882, German physician Robert Koch proved that tuberculosis was caused by a bacterium. After that, the vampire rituals mostly fell out of fashion.
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