Although
European vampire panics died out in the 1700s, America had its share of
scares in the 1800s, particularly in New England, and particularly
during outbreaks of tuberculosis. Some of the dead were dug up and
killed a second time, just to make sure.
The
particulars of the vampire exhumations, though, vary widely. In many
cases, only family and neighbors participated. But sometimes town
fathers voted on the matter, or medical doctors and clergymen gave their
blessings or even pitched in. Some communities in Maine and Plymouth,
Massachusetts, opted to simply flip the exhumed vampire facedown in the
grave and leave it at that. In Connecticut, Rhode Island and Vermont,
though, they frequently burned the dead person’s heart, sometimes
inhaling the smoke as a cure. (In Europe, too, exhumation protocol
varied with region: Some beheaded suspected vampire corpses, while
others bound their feet with thorns.)
Often these rituals were
clandestine, lantern-lit affairs. But, particularly in Vermont, they
could be quite public, even festive. One vampire heart was reportedly
torched on the Woodstock, Vermont, town green in 1830. In Manchester,
hundreds of people flocked to a 1793 heart-burning ceremony at a
blacksmith’s forge: “Timothy Mead officiated at the altar in the
sacrifice to the Demon Vampire who it was believed was still sucking the
blood of the then living wife of Captain Burton,” an early town history
says. “It was the month of February and good sleighing.”
Yes,
it happened in several states, a lot more often than one would suspect
in 19th-century America. Read about these incidents in Smithsonian
magazine's extensive article about American vampires.
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