The New England Vampire Panic

Nearly a century after the Salem Witch Trials plunged New England into hysteria, a new fear gripped the region: vampires. As a mysterious illness spread, leaving its victims pale, feverish, and coughing up blood, many came to believe something far darker than disease was at work. Frightened New Englanders believed the dead were rising from their graves to drain the life from the living, sparking what is now known as the New England Vampire Panic.

The Vampire Disease

Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, New England was ravaged by tuberculosis, a deadly bacterial infection that often attacks the lungs, causing the sick to develop a bloody cough. Those afflicted with the illness also experience weight loss, fatigue, and loss of appetite.

Lacking the medical understanding we have today, many New Englanders believed those wasting away were not sick at all but victims of vampires draining their life. As fear spread, communities resorted to desperate and gruesome measures to stop the supposed undead. An excerpt from a report to the Massachusetts State Board of Health in 1873 highlighted the panic’s grim reality:

“… they resorted to that horrible relic of superstition, the burning of the heart, etc. of the dead, and the ashes were swallowed by the survivors, in the hope that the fatal demon would be exorcised from the family…”

Vampires Abound

One of the earliest recorded “vampire” cases in New England centered on Rachel Harris, who passed away in 1790 from tuberculosis. Harris’ husband, Captain Isaac Brown, remarried shortly after her death, but before long, his new wife began showing the same alarming symptoms Harris had suffered.

Convinced that Harris had risen from her grave to drain the life from Brown’s new wife, hundreds of Manchester residents gathered in February 1793 to take action. They exhumed Harris’ body, removed her heart, liver, and lungs, and burned them in a desperate attempt to kill the suspected vampire. Despite the gruesome ritual, Brown’s second wife died later that year.

In another chilling case, the siblings of Sarah Tillinghast, who died of tuberculosis, claimed she was still visiting them at night after her death. After five more children in the family died, all of them were exhumed. Mysteriously, each child was in an advanced stage of decomposition except Sarah. Believing she was a vampire feeding on her family, locals removed her heart and burned it.

One of the most well-documented cases involved Mercy Brown, whose mother died from tuberculosis in 1883. Shortly after, Mercy’s sister died. Eventually, Mercy fell ill and died as well. Desperate to save his surviving children, Mercy’s father, George, agreed to exhume the bodies of his deceased family members in search of the cause of their suffering.

On March 21, 1892, The Providence Journal reported:

“Dr. Harold Metcalf, the medical examiner of the district, who examined the bodies … is not one to believe in the vampire superstition … He made his examination … without exceptional results, according to his own belief, but found in one of the bodies, to the satisfaction of many of the people down there, a sign which they regarded as proof … When he removed the heart and liver from [Mercy’s] body, a quantity of blood dripped therefrom. ‘The vampire,’ the attendants of the doctor said — and then, conforming to the theory of the necessity of destroying the vampire, burned the heart and liver.”

Many bodies were exhumed by the time the Vampire Panic died down around 1882, when Robert Koch, a German doctor and microbiologist, discovered the cause of tuberculosis: a germ called Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

1. Early New Englanders suspected vampires were killing their friends and family in the 18th and 19th centuries.
2. The Vampire Panic was caused by tuberculosis, a deadly disease.
3. Many New Englanders believed the only way to stop the vampires was to exhume their bodies and burn their organs.