Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History class from house
Speaker 1: Stuffworks dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. And
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy and we are officially into a little bit
Speaker 1: of Halloween programming. We're getting there. I mean I start
Speaker 1: in July in my personal life, but I held out
Speaker 1: till now for the just tenter hooks. Barely expect some
Speaker 1: scary things, scary people coming up over the next month
Speaker 1: or so. I just think you're fascinating. Uh, It's Halloween
Speaker 1: is my favorite holiday. Um. So today we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about an American phenomenon that happened for about a
Speaker 1: hundred years. It was going on in New England where
Speaker 1: there were these bizarre vampire panics. And while we live
Speaker 1: in an Asian vampires are insanely popular as entertainment, uh,
Speaker 1: and they often become romantic interests, for better or for worse.
Speaker 1: There have certainly been times in human history when fear
Speaker 1: of real and for true, actual vampiresm caused these outright
Speaker 1: panics and for people to really enact some very bizarre
Speaker 1: rituals to try to quell this menace that they perceived
Speaker 1: around them. Every time we every time there's a news
Speaker 1: story that floats by about somebody discovering a quote, vampire
Speaker 1: grave in some place. We get all these requests from
Speaker 1: people talk about that. Yeah, and there have been a
Speaker 1: lot and we'll talk a little bit about one researcher
Speaker 1: who does a lot of work specifically in that field. Uh.
Speaker 1: The word vampire, of course, originated in Slavic Europe in
Speaker 1: the tenth century, and there have been a number of
Speaker 1: vampire panics in Europe as well throughout history, from you know,
Speaker 1: the tenth century right up until roughly the end of
Speaker 1: the eighteenth century. But at that point it kind of
Speaker 1: started to fizzle out, like these instances where people became
Speaker 1: convinced on mass that there was a vampire in their
Speaker 1: midst But US Europeans were moving to North America, a
Speaker 1: lot of their superstitions came along for the ride. And
Speaker 1: it's in New England that we're focusing this lens today. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's actually later in the historical record than people
Speaker 1: might anticipate because it does sound, you know, superstition on
Speaker 1: this level sounds a little wacky, in a little old fashioned,
Speaker 1: but it's a lot more modern than you might think.
Speaker 1: This was happening way more recently than I think most
Speaker 1: people would suspect UH. And so first we're going to
Speaker 1: cover a couple of specific instances of vampire panic that
Speaker 1: happened in New England, and then we'll discuss some of
Speaker 1: the causes and circumstances around this phenomenon that kept repeating.
Speaker 1: And we're first going to start in Jewett City, Connecticut.
Speaker 1: So in the late eighteen forties through the mid eighteen fifties,
Speaker 1: in Jewitt City, there's a vampire panic. So the Ray
Speaker 1: family of Jewitt City experienced the series of tragedies when
Speaker 1: which healthy members of the family, previously healthy members of
Speaker 1: the family just wasted away. And most of the panic
Speaker 1: really was in the eighteen fifties, as this family had
Speaker 1: begun to lose more and more members. So it wasn't
Speaker 1: like a panic that lasted ten years UM, but the
Speaker 1: events leading up to it really lasted that long. So
Speaker 1: first the Ray family's son Lemuel died, and then Henry,
Speaker 1: who was the father of the family, passed away a
Speaker 1: couple of years after that, so this was late eighteen
Speaker 1: forties into early eighteen fifties. And then Elisha was next uh.
Speaker 1: And then the eldest son of the family, Henry Nelson,
Speaker 1: and Will refer to him by both names to keep
Speaker 1: him separate from the father. Henry also fell sick, so
Speaker 1: there was a lot of speculation going on about what
Speaker 1: was causing all of these deaths for this one family,
Speaker 1: and believing that the dead were somehow beating on the living.
Speaker 1: Two of the Ray sons were exhumed on June four.
Speaker 1: Their bodies were burned in this desperate attempt to try
Speaker 1: to end the families bring and we don't really know
Speaker 1: why the Ray family attributed the later deaths to the
Speaker 1: buried relatives, but it appears that they thought that Lemuel
Speaker 1: and alive Show were somehow coming back, possibly as spirits,
Speaker 1: which was part of the vampire lord at the time,
Speaker 1: rather than the modern vampiric concept of the dead actually
Speaker 1: rising from the grave and biting people on the neck uh,
Speaker 1: and that they were draining Henry Nelson, the eldest son.
Speaker 1: It's unclear also why their father, Henry was not a
Speaker 1: suspect in all of this. There was never any indication
Speaker 1: that his grave had been intended to be disturbed, just
Speaker 1: the two sons. We also don't know when Henry Nelson died,
Speaker 1: but it appears that the tuberculosis outbreak which was really
Speaker 1: the culprit ended there. So tuberculosis is an infectious disease,
Speaker 1: as we know now, was not known app time, and
Speaker 1: it's spread through bacteria, So the burn ing of their
Speaker 1: bodies might actually have helped contain the outbreak. Uh So
Speaker 1: this sort of solidified this incorrect notion that what they
Speaker 1: had done had actually stopped the vampires. Yes, so we
Speaker 1: know now that what was going on was that the
Speaker 1: family had what was called at the time consumption. And
Speaker 1: even so, and we'll talk about it, it comes up
Speaker 1: a little bit later that sometimes these cases of consumption
Speaker 1: were actually identified, they were diagnosed, but there was an
Speaker 1: underlying fear about what was causing the illness, right, and
Speaker 1: so because uh, tuberculosis wasn't identified until several decades later,
Speaker 1: even though consumption was identified, it was not known that
Speaker 1: it was bacterial, I mean, it was contagious, didn't quite
Speaker 1: have the germ theory of disease yet, that was not
Speaker 1: quite there yet barely getting started. And if that, like
Speaker 1: the germ theory didn't really spread like it was just
Speaker 1: in its infancy at this point. It wasn't until the
Speaker 1: nine twenties that that really had the idea in their
Speaker 1: heads that germs cause disease. And even so in more
Speaker 1: remote areas, it was entirely possible that that that word
Speaker 1: would not have reached people yet absolutely Uh. And so
Speaker 1: that's the Jewitt City vampire case. And you'll sometimes hear
Speaker 1: them referred to. There's their tours through town, etcetera. And
Speaker 1: you'll hear in um circles of people that like to
Speaker 1: talk about these types of things, Uh, the Jewitt City vampires,
Speaker 1: even though they were not actually vampires. Uh. And the
Speaker 1: next time we're going to talk about so remember that
Speaker 1: one was in the eighteen fifties when that all happened.
Speaker 1: This one is a bit later, and it's quite famous.
Speaker 1: It's the Mercy Brown case. Uh. And so Mercy Lena Brown,
Speaker 1: and she went by Lena was a resident of Exeter,
Speaker 1: Rhode Island, and she died there in eighteen ninety two,
Speaker 1: so much later in the historical record. When she died,
Speaker 1: the town was really struggling. The Civil War had claimed
Speaker 1: a lot of his popular its population, and that was
Speaker 1: really the case everywhere, like the Civil War could just
Speaker 1: eliminate huge numbers of people from a town's population. The
Speaker 1: railroad had also made it really easy for people to
Speaker 1: leave the area to try to find better farmland. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as a brief side note, Exeter was a farm community,
Speaker 1: but it's widely recognized that the soil there is not
Speaker 1: great for farming. That's the case in many parts. It's
Speaker 1: very rocky. So yeah, we kind of talked about a
Speaker 1: similar thing in our Brook Farm episode, that these people
Speaker 1: set up a farm in a place that doesn't have
Speaker 1: a good soil. Right, So, yeah, Exeter was it was
Speaker 1: a farming community that got barely got by before all
Speaker 1: of these deaths and and people wanting to leave started
Speaker 1: to happen, and then it really got rough well, and
Speaker 1: once the railroad made it much easier to move a
Speaker 1: farther distance away, there wasn't a huge draw for people
Speaker 1: to stay there, continuing to struggle to just with another nature. Right.
Speaker 1: From eighteen twenty until the time of Lena's death, the
Speaker 1: population had gone from people to nine d sixty one.
Speaker 1: So yeah, over of course of about seventy years, they
Speaker 1: lost well over half of their population. Now, Lena's mother
Speaker 1: had died ten years earlier in two and Lena's twenty
Speaker 1: year old sister had died the year after their mother,
Speaker 1: so about a decade before Lena became sick. Two other
Speaker 1: women in her family had died, and Lena's brother had
Speaker 1: become sick as well, but he left Exeter. He moved
Speaker 1: to Colorado Springs in the hopes that a climate change
Speaker 1: would cure him. While Lena was dying, her brother Edwin
Speaker 1: came back. He had had some health improvements for a
Speaker 1: little while while he was gone, but eventually he got
Speaker 1: sick again. So the story goes that the neighbors, thinking
Speaker 1: that some sort of evil supernatural happening had reversed Edwin's
Speaker 1: remission when he came home. Uh they approached Lena's father,
Speaker 1: whose named George Brown, and they suggested that an exhamation
Speaker 1: of the family members who had already died and at
Speaker 1: this point Lena had passed, might lead to his son's recovery.
Speaker 1: So they thought we might be able to save Edwin
Speaker 1: if we dig up the dead ladies. So their goal
Speaker 1: was to check the hearts of the deceased to see
Speaker 1: if there was fresh blood in them, and that would
Speaker 1: be an indicator that the corpse was feeding on the
Speaker 1: living people, and George reluctantly agreed to do this. So
Speaker 1: on March seventeenth, his wife and his two daughters were unearthed,
Speaker 1: and I feel like I should mention. George did not
Speaker 1: believe in this nonsense, and he refused to be present
Speaker 1: at the exhamation. He was really most records indicate he
Speaker 1: was just trying to placate his neighbors because they were
Speaker 1: relentless um and Lena, of course, had only been dead
Speaker 1: for about two months at this time. She died in January,
Speaker 1: and because it was winter, she had not decomposed all
Speaker 1: that much, while her mother and sister, again having died
Speaker 1: almost a decade prior, were just skeletal at that point,
Speaker 1: they were just bones. Uh. There was actually a correspondent
Speaker 1: for the Providence Journal on hand for this disinterment, and
Speaker 1: he reported that quote, the body was in a fairly
Speaker 1: well preserved state. He's referring to Lena. At this point,
Speaker 1: the heart and liver were removed, and in cutting open
Speaker 1: the heart, clotted and decomposed blood was found. The town
Speaker 1: doctor was also in attendance for this, as sometimes did
Speaker 1: happen during the exhumations, and he really was also trying
Speaker 1: to be the voice of reason, and he was like, no,
Speaker 1: she's got tuberculosis. She has a long disease. She died
Speaker 1: of this. She's this is not a vampire um. But
Speaker 1: of course that kind of fell on deaf ears, right.
Speaker 1: Mercy Lena Brown's liver and heart were burned there on
Speaker 1: a site, and the ashes were fed to her brother
Speaker 1: and attempt to cure him of tuberculosis, but that of
Speaker 1: course did not work. No, he died like two months later.
Speaker 1: And because this particular vampire panic happened in the late
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds and there was a reporter on hands to
Speaker 1: witness it, the story really spread. It actually ended up
Speaker 1: being picked up by the American Anthropologist Journal UH when
Speaker 1: a gentleman that wrote for them went to study it
Speaker 1: after he had read that initial account, and it ended
Speaker 1: up being talked about far and wide. And some historians
Speaker 1: actually believe that it was the Mercy Brown story that
Speaker 1: inspired bram Stoker's Dracula, which published in although there is
Speaker 1: some debate over it um. Some will say that the
Speaker 1: news that had spread out that led to specifics that
Speaker 1: seemed to parallel bram stoker story, not all of those
Speaker 1: specifics had really become public knowledge by the time he
Speaker 1: would have been working on it, So it's a it's
Speaker 1: an unknown although there are some interesting parallels between the two. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the general reception of this story in the press
Speaker 1: and in public opinion was that really this was all
Speaker 1: just because of ignorance of small communities. Uh. And it
Speaker 1: was even characterized by some as a hoax. By the
Speaker 1: time the man who wrote for the American Anthropologist Journal
Speaker 1: showed up, they thought that people were kind of pulling
Speaker 1: his legs. Uh. And the Boston Globe actually even suggested
Speaker 1: that um inbreeding and intermarrying an exeter had resulted in
Speaker 1: this community that was not so intellectual and that they
Speaker 1: were kind of prone to buy into these crazy superstitions. Uh.
Speaker 1: So the world at large thought a lot of this
Speaker 1: was crazy even earlier than this story. But uh, you know,
Speaker 1: these small communities would get the grip of the panic.
Speaker 1: As a side note, there's an episode of The Memory
Speaker 1: Palace that's about this specific vampire panic you all would
Speaker 1: like to listen, and it's called Mary Mary and Mercy.
Speaker 1: Mercy Brown's story is really quite famous in the Vampire
Speaker 1: lawre and New England law on its own outside of
Speaker 1: um you know, sort of paranormal enthusiasm because it is
Speaker 1: such so late in the game that it is a
Speaker 1: little startled. I think for people in To move on
Speaker 1: to another story, a group of children in Griswold, Connecticut
Speaker 1: stumbled onto a previously unknown burial ground and there had
Speaker 1: actually been a serial killer in the area just prior
Speaker 1: to this, and because of that, a police investigation was
Speaker 1: started and the site that the children had found was
Speaker 1: excavated because initially they had just found like some bones,
Speaker 1: and they weren't police and the authorities were not sure
Speaker 1: if they had found a burial site that this serial
Speaker 1: killer had been using. But it turned out that what
Speaker 1: they had actually unearthed was an interesting part of this
Speaker 1: area's history and New England, for anyone who does not know,
Speaker 1: is actually filled with unmarked burial plots left over from
Speaker 1: the colonial area era, mostly when families would establish these
Speaker 1: burial spaces, but they didn't always keep records of the
Speaker 1: interments and they had eventually grown over with age, you know,
Speaker 1: as as small townships had fallen away and died off
Speaker 1: and been replaced by bigger cities and people moved away.
Speaker 1: These burial plots weren't always uh maintained visibly right, so
Speaker 1: not quite as far back in history as the many, many,
Speaker 1: many bodies that are now under car parks that were
Speaker 1: constantly hearing about from the UK, but kind of similar
Speaker 1: in how people buried their loved ones and then moved
Speaker 1: on for whatever reason announced something else got there. Eventually,
Speaker 1: authorities uncovered twenty nine graves, and most of these were
Speaker 1: just austere graves where people had been buried in very
Speaker 1: simple wooden boxes. There were fifteen children, six adult males,
Speaker 1: and eight adult females, but there were also two stoned
Speaker 1: crips that the state's archaeology team, which was led by
Speaker 1: Nick Valentoni, were particularly interested in, and one of these crips,
Speaker 1: which was labeled Burial number four, when they were doing
Speaker 1: the excavation, revealed a much different in tumbment than those
Speaker 1: that the team had uncovered up to that point, and
Speaker 1: instead of finding a body laid out simply in a
Speaker 1: wooden box with the arms either crossed over the chester
Speaker 1: or at the side, this had a coffin which was
Speaker 1: painted red and it had the initials J B and
Speaker 1: the number fifty five laid out on the lid in
Speaker 1: brass tacks. And while the feet of the deceased were
Speaker 1: exactly where you would expect to find them in the coffin,
Speaker 1: the rest of the body had been completely rearranged into
Speaker 1: a layout that was similar to a Jolly Roger, but
Speaker 1: with the skull turned face down into the rib cage
Speaker 1: and then the leg and arm bones forming the cross
Speaker 1: underneath that. So analysis indicated that the beheading and the
Speaker 1: fracturing of the ribs and the dismemberment of the body
Speaker 1: had all happened several years after this JB had died.
Speaker 1: Paleopathological evidence also revealed that JB had probably died of consumption,
Speaker 1: and two other sets of remains near JB, which were
Speaker 1: labeled IB the number forty six and n B with
Speaker 1: the number thirteen, which we believed to be age indicators,
Speaker 1: had also died of tuberculosis. IB was a woman and
Speaker 1: n B was a child. Uh And now we're going
Speaker 1: to get into kind of the backstory and what happened
Speaker 1: as a result of that find um so to return
Speaker 1: to our backstory for this this family. Michael bell, a
Speaker 1: Rhode Island folklorist and researcher and author of the book
Speaker 1: Food for the Dead on the Trail of New England's Vampires,
Speaker 1: has studied this New England vampire phenomenon for more than
Speaker 1: thirty years, and in that time he's documented six dozen
Speaker 1: incidents of exhumations, and he believes really strongly that there
Speaker 1: were many, many others that just haven't been discovered yet. Yes,
Speaker 1: so when Tracy mentioned earlier that you sometimes read about
Speaker 1: uncovering a random grave, that he thinks that they're probably
Speaker 1: way more cemeteries that we haven't even stumbled upon yet.
Speaker 1: The earliest exhamation that he's recorded is from the late
Speaker 1: seventeen hundreds, and the furthest away from New England that
Speaker 1: he's recorded is happened in Minnesota. For a context, the
Speaker 1: Salem witch Hunts were primarily slotted in the sixteen nineties,
Speaker 1: so this was sometime after that. Yes, so even the
Speaker 1: earliest incident of this vampire panic was roughly a hundred
Speaker 1: years later than the witch hunts had kind of happened
Speaker 1: and and died off. So, you know, I don't know,
Speaker 1: socially it filled a gap of a need for superstitious
Speaker 1: paranormal situation. But scare that Bell has studied actually involved
Speaker 1: a letter from a councilman which was printed in the
Speaker 1: Connecticut Koran and Weekly Intelligencer. And this letter actually warned
Speaker 1: the editor and readers of the paper about a quack
Speaker 1: doctor who was suggesting exhimation and burning of the dead
Speaker 1: to stop consumption, which was believed to be done by
Speaker 1: these dead bodies, like the consumption had been initiated by them.
Speaker 1: Most of the research into this practice of exhuming bodies
Speaker 1: during the vampire scare is based on handwritten records, and
Speaker 1: many grave sites are similar to the ones in the
Speaker 1: grizz Will Discovery that we just talked about, and they're
Speaker 1: unmarked and sort of lost in time. And the genesis
Speaker 1: of the vampire fear that was happening in New England
Speaker 1: in this period really has yet to be pinpointed, but
Speaker 1: as with any folkloric myth, it's likely that there's no
Speaker 1: single starting point. Rather, a small seed of a legend
Speaker 1: fed the lurking and present fear of the unexplained because
Speaker 1: even though they could diagnose consumption, they didn't know what
Speaker 1: caused it, uh And in turn that would all add
Speaker 1: to the mythology and you know, build the legend, and
Speaker 1: that would feed more fear and so on the way
Speaker 1: these things happen, and certainly a doctor suggesting the idea
Speaker 1: like that we should burn these bodies because they're feeding
Speaker 1: off the living, would allow that superstition to gain a
Speaker 1: little bit of ground. So that incident, you know, probably
Speaker 1: added a significant ground swell to what was already likely
Speaker 1: being talked about in communities. Right, and on top of that,
Speaker 1: you're not actually familiar with medicine or anatomy or the
Speaker 1: way bodies decomposed. It's easy to misinterpret normal decomposition through
Speaker 1: this lens of cognitive bias and a lack of medical knowledge.
Speaker 1: It's easy to misinterpret that as some kind of supernatural
Speaker 1: thing going on. So bloated corpses were often described as
Speaker 1: looking like they had just eaten, for example, or blood
Speaker 1: coming from the mouth was held up as proof that
Speaker 1: this dead body had been feeding on a living Yeah.
Speaker 1: When there are accounts of these exhamations and people have
Speaker 1: kept journals are written about them, they do they reference.
Speaker 1: It was clear this must have been happening, because the
Speaker 1: body was bloated, it had just eaten, and the hair
Speaker 1: had continued to grow. They didn't know that that happened
Speaker 1: yet as part of decomposition. And well, it's the it's
Speaker 1: that your skin received It looks like your hair and
Speaker 1: your nails are growing, but that's not what's happening. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they were attributing this to this dead body somehow
Speaker 1: getting you know, nutrition from from uh. These people that
Speaker 1: were dying of consumption and the Jewitt City panic and
Speaker 1: similar incidents had all really taken place in rural, fairly
Speaker 1: isolated areas. They were often small farming communities. There are
Speaker 1: records such as journal juries and even newspaper write ups
Speaker 1: from cities and more metropolitan areas that really suggests that
Speaker 1: when outsiders like would travel through these small towns or
Speaker 1: small settlements, they really kind of chalk this up as
Speaker 1: like crazy superstition and that these were just really overzealous,
Speaker 1: uneducated farm folk who didn't know any better than to
Speaker 1: blame common things on the supernatural. Yeah. And what's interesting
Speaker 1: is that in many instances, the consumption that was actually
Speaker 1: killing people had really been diagnosed by a doctor, but
Speaker 1: because people didn't really know what was causing consumption, it
Speaker 1: was still believed that it was somehow the dead that
Speaker 1: we're doing it. Yeah. I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: tend to assume uh, And it's often not clear when
Speaker 1: you're reading some of these articles uh and accounts of
Speaker 1: what happened. They think that people didn't know that people
Speaker 1: were dying of a disease. They just sort of thought
Speaker 1: suddenly people were dying and they didn't know what caused it.
Speaker 1: And and while they didn't know the cause of consumption
Speaker 1: and that it was bacterial, there were doctors saying, this
Speaker 1: person has consumption, they are going to die. Uh, So
Speaker 1: there is still this Uh. You know, there was a
Speaker 1: certain amount of knowledge, but it wasn't enough. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's worth considering the fact that in the face of
Speaker 1: a disease that was incurable at the time, it's understandable
Speaker 1: that there was likely a strong desire to do something
Speaker 1: anything to try to remedy the situation, even if it
Speaker 1: was the bizarre digging up bodies and burning of corpses
Speaker 1: or parts of corpses and sometimes consuming them, and it all,
Speaker 1: it all is kind of wacky and bizarre and seems extreme.
Speaker 1: But if you just have you can't do anything, but
Speaker 1: you feel a need to do something that seemed like
Speaker 1: their avenue. And because there were people who, you know,
Speaker 1: by some combination of luck in their their constitution, their
Speaker 1: immune system did not die, there was a lot of
Speaker 1: trying to figure out, Okay, why did that person? Right
Speaker 1: with that that clearly there must be something we can
Speaker 1: do because that person survive. And this is something that
Speaker 1: you know, human beings continue to do today. People will
Speaker 1: try all kinds of stuff when you know, told that
Speaker 1: they have something that's not treatable by conventional you know,
Speaker 1: western medicine. Yeah. Well, and it's worth noting that Mercy
Speaker 1: Brown's father who gave into this request to exume his
Speaker 1: family's remains, though he was not there and did think
Speaker 1: it was huie, he never got consumption even though three
Speaker 1: members of his family, four members of his family died
Speaker 1: of it. Uh. And some people said it was because
Speaker 1: he didn't believe that he somehow had you know, magically
Speaker 1: created this talisman for himself of not acknowledging the spirits
Speaker 1: and so they couldn't get him. And in some ways,
Speaker 1: even though scientifically you would say this, you know, supports
Speaker 1: the idea that this wasn't really a functioning, working approach
Speaker 1: to dealing with this disease, some people were able to
Speaker 1: spend his good health as a way to somehow prove
Speaker 1: that in fact, no, no, the spiritual angle is correct.
Speaker 1: As somehow want to do an episode on the history
Speaker 1: of magical thinking, Yeah, but I think it would require
Speaker 1: all of my research for all time forever, and then
Speaker 1: the episode would be like nine minute, million hours long. Well,
Speaker 1: it's and it's hard to find your way into, like
Speaker 1: where you latch in to start something like that, because
Speaker 1: it is that's a long and storied traditions. So while
Speaker 1: they were uh, many many uniting factors in most communities
Speaker 1: that had one of these vampire exhumations take place, they're
Speaker 1: all rural, they're all battling disease outbreaks, the manner in
Speaker 1: which the ritual work was done was not consistent among
Speaker 1: all of these events. Yeah, some in and says a
Speaker 1: vampire exhamation involved a great deal of ritual. One practice
Speaker 1: documented in some cases in Vermont, Connecticut and Rhode Island
Speaker 1: involved burning the dead person's heart, often mixed with herbs,
Speaker 1: and inhaling the smoke as a cure for a disease.
Speaker 1: There's also the eating the ashes ritual that was used
Speaker 1: in the Mercy Brown exhumation. But there were other communities
Speaker 1: that took a really simple approach. They would uh merely
Speaker 1: open the grave, flip the body face down, and then
Speaker 1: rebury it. Yeah, the thinking being, now when this tries
Speaker 1: to get out, it will just be going deeper into
Speaker 1: their correct like it won't it won't understand its orientation.
Speaker 1: People think ghosts are dog smart enough to feed off
Speaker 1: the living, not smart enough to roll over. So Vermont's
Speaker 1: exhumations and burning rituals were much more of a public
Speaker 1: spectacle than anywhere else, and often they took place in
Speaker 1: the town square. This is probably because a lot of
Speaker 1: township in the area at the time had their cemeteries
Speaker 1: close to the center of town rather than weigh out
Speaker 1: on the outskirts as was customary and other places. So
Speaker 1: this minute would be tricky to carry out the whole
Speaker 1: business of addressing this vampire problem in any sort of secret,
Speaker 1: low key way, so instead it just became this extremely
Speaker 1: public practice. Yeah, and most other communities you read about,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a group of strong willed men
Speaker 1: kind of get together in the dead of night and
Speaker 1: they're going to go do this gruesome thing to protect
Speaker 1: a town or protect a family, and they kind of
Speaker 1: kept it on the d l really, but in Vermont
Speaker 1: they were kind of like party of the town square.
Speaker 1: We're gonna burn some vampires, is you know. They can't
Speaker 1: really hide it when it's right there. Yeah, hard to
Speaker 1: dig up a grave and plain site and still keep
Speaker 1: it quiet. And of course there is um the Griswold
Speaker 1: case where the body was exhumed and the bones were
Speaker 1: rearranged in an effort to keep the dead from rising
Speaker 1: up to claim the victims. And so this is a
Speaker 1: little different than most of them more common approaches um uh.
Speaker 1: Two researchers, including Nicholas Belentoni and paul As sled Zick,
Speaker 1: which I hope I pronounced correctly, wrote an article on
Speaker 1: the American Journal of Physical Anthropology in about it, and
Speaker 1: they suggested the idea that since this JB character was
Speaker 1: exhumed approximately five years after his death, decomposition would have
Speaker 1: been so advanced that he probably wasn't any more than
Speaker 1: bones to work with, and since they could not find
Speaker 1: a blood engorged heart or other flesh to burn, the
Speaker 1: exhumers likely improvised this rearrangement into the skull and crossbones style.
Speaker 1: Because there have not been a lot of those found,
Speaker 1: that might be the only one in fact, so uh,
Speaker 1: we have all of this knowledge of these things happening,
Speaker 1: but we don't have a lot of evidence outside from
Speaker 1: personal accounts and written word. And there have been instances
Speaker 1: where there are suspected graves where people think if we
Speaker 1: uh could dig up this old plot we found, we
Speaker 1: might find some more evidence. But some communities are like,
Speaker 1: please don't do that. Um, they're they're not always into
Speaker 1: the idea of just digging up bodies in the interest
Speaker 1: of finding vampire lower. Not everyone is as excited about
Speaker 1: exhumations many steph, you missed the miss classless. We are
Speaker 1: so so far. The Griswold, Connecticut JB is the only
Speaker 1: instance where we actually have a visual confirmation of this
Speaker 1: practice of exuming the dead to deal with a vampire threat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we have lots of historical accounts and journals and articles
Speaker 1: and things, but not so many in the United States
Speaker 1: actual graves. Yeah, well of messed up bones and bodies. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so you know, the Mercy Brown incident was kind
Speaker 1: of considered the book end by many to this bizarre
Speaker 1: panic and outbreak because after that, as we said, it
Speaker 1: got publicized, it got talked about, I mean, news of
Speaker 1: it traveled to London and to Europe, and uh, it
Speaker 1: seems like people suddenly kind of turned the mirror on
Speaker 1: this practice and went, oh yeah, Plus, they were moving
Speaker 1: out of these smaller communities to bigger places to find
Speaker 1: their fortunes and that sort of group think superstition that
Speaker 1: can sometimes happen. This seemed to dissipate around then. So yeah, well,
Speaker 1: in the state of medical knowledge was just so much
Speaker 1: different at the time. And this is something that you
Speaker 1: and I talked about before we recorded our recent episode
Speaker 1: on Phineas Gage that it was really hilarious in a
Speaker 1: way to me to read these accounts from people who
Speaker 1: were writing as though they totally knew what they were
Speaker 1: talking about, but actually had no idea that pathogen's cause
Speaker 1: disease like it's you will read medical documents from you know,
Speaker 1: before the late eight late nineteen, early twentieth century where
Speaker 1: people just seemed to completely know what they're talking about,
Speaker 1: but what they are talking about is not based on
Speaker 1: the reality of medicine as we know it today. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and some of it's just that they didn't have all
Speaker 1: the the data to interpret the data they did have, right,
Speaker 1: so it was easy to kind of, you know, extrampolate
Speaker 1: things down the wrong path. They weren't necessarily using the
Speaker 1: scientific method to approach questions of medicine. If this if
Speaker 1: these stories interest you a lot, there's an awesome podcast
Speaker 1: called saw Bones Maximum fun Um. It is by Sydney
Speaker 1: and Justin Nicklroy, and Sydney is a medical doctor and
Speaker 1: she talks to her husband about just the crazy, ridiculous
Speaker 1: things that used to happen and sometimes still do happen
Speaker 1: in the world of medicine. And they have done lots
Speaker 1: and lots of awesome episodes, including one on John Harvey
Speaker 1: Killogg that actually has some information in it that is
Speaker 1: not an hour one. So even if you the nice
Speaker 1: interlocking yeah, even if you think you know all the
Speaker 1: things about John Harvey Killogg, just give that a listen anyway.
Speaker 1: So that's the scoop on the Vampire. Do you have
Speaker 1: some listener mail to cap this episode off? I do.
Speaker 1: I actually have two pieces. The first one is from
Speaker 1: h Sarah Kate and it's short. She says, hello, gals,
Speaker 1: Holly like you, I so daily. In fact, I first
Speaker 1: heard about the podcast during a mending session. I was
Speaker 1: teaching about darning, and she says, Now I listen to
Speaker 1: the podcast when I sew. She says, I appreciated the
Speaker 1: episode about the invention of the sewing machine and the
Speaker 1: resulting patent disputes. I'd like to hear a podcast about
Speaker 1: mercerized cotton fred or viscos, which I understand to be
Speaker 1: made of, among other things. Would pulp that's correct, heck,
Speaker 1: nylon spandex elastic Now that was a great invention. It
Speaker 1: was even used in corsets before they faded away. And
Speaker 1: why does elastic lose its stretch as rubber bands do?
Speaker 1: Do they become unstretchable? In time? Yours and the Needle
Speaker 1: Arts Sarah Kate and I. She sent us a link
Speaker 1: to her blog which covers her projects which are very cool.
Speaker 1: She does a lot more of sort of heirloom style sewing,
Speaker 1: which is really really lovely. And I wanted to read
Speaker 1: this because, um, while we don't have an immediate plan
Speaker 1: to talk about those things here, uh as most of
Speaker 1: you may know and stuff if you listen to stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your mind. Robert is traveling and so while
Speaker 1: he is in China, which I know he has told
Speaker 1: their listeners he's doing, I'm gonna sub in on one
Speaker 1: of their episodes. And Julie and I've talked about that.
Speaker 1: We want to talk about textiles because nice, that's my jam. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so we are going to talk about some of
Speaker 1: those things. One of the awesome things about working at
Speaker 1: a place that has so many cool podcasts, is that
Speaker 1: when we do have someone who's on leave for some reason,
Speaker 1: well there's all kinds of cool substitutions that people get
Speaker 1: to play with. Yeah, some of our other editors have
Speaker 1: recorded with Julie already, and I'm gonna talk about Velcrow
Speaker 1: a lot because I'm really fascinated by it from a
Speaker 1: scientific point of view. And our other one is from
Speaker 1: our listener Catherine, and I'm not reading her whole email
Speaker 1: because it's lengthy, but it just talks about food, so
Speaker 1: you know, I want to talk about it. She says,
Speaker 1: Dear Holly and Tracy, I've been listening to your podcast
Speaker 1: for a few months now, usually wall fulfilling the less
Speaker 1: brainy aspects of my job as an archivist at the
Speaker 1: Montana Historical Society. Uh. She has lots of reboxing of
Speaker 1: documents and sorting in microfiche. I have worked in archives before.
Speaker 1: I know there are times when your brain is not
Speaker 1: getting stimulated. You know, it seems like you would have
Speaker 1: to be, but not always. I was on a hike though,
Speaker 1: when I finally got around to listening to your podcast
Speaker 1: on ice cream over Labor Day weekend, which may have
Speaker 1: been a poor decision considering the heat of the day
Speaker 1: and the dirts of ice cream atop Mount Helena. Anyway,
Speaker 1: though it's not my area in particular, the history of
Speaker 1: cooking and other quote women's work is something of a
Speaker 1: specialization of a few of our research center and museum staff,
Speaker 1: so I've been exposed to some interesting tidbits about it
Speaker 1: over the past year and a half. Ice cream came
Speaker 1: to Montana before the days of refrigerators. In the summertime,
Speaker 1: homesteaders would sometimes take advantage of hail storms to provide
Speaker 1: the needed ice Okay, that's so cool, that's really say.
Speaker 1: And there's at least one documented case of people going
Speaker 1: up into the mountains to fetch snow to make ice
Speaker 1: cream for a Fourth of July picnic. One of my
Speaker 1: favorite things about working at MHS has been testing historic recipes.
Speaker 1: We had hand cranked ice cream one afternoon in June,
Speaker 1: as well as a pancake breakfast earlier this spring. Uh
Speaker 1: and more than a dozen of us for Pie Day
Speaker 1: made pies from historic recipes found in the Historical Society's
Speaker 1: extensive cookbook collection. Mine was an odd example of a
Speaker 1: non creamy banana pie. From a book printed in and
Speaker 1: of course everyone got to sample the pies once the
Speaker 1: judges had finished their taste tests, and then it talks
Speaker 1: about some other interesting topics that may become a podcast
Speaker 1: for us. But first that just sounds awesome. I would
Speaker 1: love to work in a place with the Brazilian historical cookbooks.
Speaker 1: As a side note that I know from my time
Speaker 1: in libraries, cookbooks are one of the few books that
Speaker 1: pretty consistently gain and appreciating value because so if you
Speaker 1: have an old one that's in good condition, because that's
Speaker 1: part of the problem is that they get used and
Speaker 1: they get food stains on them and butter on the pages.
Speaker 1: They're covered in flour, in grease and everything. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: when um my mother passed away was quite a while ago,
Speaker 1: I was working in the library, and she collected cookbooks,
Speaker 1: and the first thing our library had said was, when
Speaker 1: you are ready, I would like to talk to you
Speaker 1: at your mother's cookbook collection. And so a lot of
Speaker 1: those ended up in the library because no one was
Speaker 1: going to use them in the family, not because they
Speaker 1: weren't cool, but I mean, if you're trying to tackle
Speaker 1: three recipes a day for the rest of your life,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't get through them, ye uh. And that way
Speaker 1: it kind of felt like other people could really benefit
Speaker 1: from it so well. And suddenly I spent this past
Speaker 1: weekend in Nashville, North Carolina, where there is a used
Speaker 1: in mirror bookshop called the Captain's Bookshelf. Now I wish
Speaker 1: I had spent a lot more time looking. There was
Speaker 1: a cookbook section and I kind of looked at it
Speaker 1: potentially and said, you already have a joy of cooking, right, yes, okay,
Speaker 1: And then that that was the end of my thought process.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, man, I wish I had plundered through
Speaker 1: that a lot. Yeah. Yeah. And it's not like every
Speaker 1: um cookbook is going to appreciate in value, particularly now
Speaker 1: that we have multiple printings of popular television personality. Like
Speaker 1: it's unlikely that your Rachel Ray book is going to
Speaker 1: be really valuable in ten years. Not that there's not
Speaker 1: good stuff in it, it's just not the same uh
Speaker 1: sort of uh supply and demand issues that some of
Speaker 1: the older cookbooks that were printed, like in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds have really appreciated in value. If there's a
Speaker 1: good copies to learn out, So just interesting cookbook nursery
Speaker 1: If you would like to write to us about historical
Speaker 1: things you have cooked, or anything you've cooked, or your
Speaker 1: pets or anything we've talked about, uh, you can do
Speaker 1: so at History Podcasts at Discovery dot com. You can
Speaker 1: also connect with us on Twitter at missed in History
Speaker 1: and at Facebook dot com slash history class stuff. You
Speaker 1: can visit us on Tumblr at missed in history dot
Speaker 1: tumbler dot com, and we are on Pinterest pinning away.
Speaker 1: If you would like to learn a little bit more
Speaker 1: about what we've talked about today, you can go to
Speaker 1: our website. Type in the word vampire and you will
Speaker 1: get a lot of things, including how vampires worked and
Speaker 1: a quiz to see if you might be a vampire.
Speaker 1: You can a lot of vampire happening. Yeah. You can
Speaker 1: learn about that and almost anything else you can think of,
Speaker 1: Halloween season related or otherwise at our website, which is
Speaker 1: houseetworks dot com for more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com. Netflix
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