The Last of the Vampires by Horrifying History

[00:00:00] Listener discretion is advised. Hello and welcome to Scary Time, the podcast that helps you find new, emerging and undiscovered scary and paranormal podcasts. I'm Greg, the host and curator of Scary Time. Today's episode is from Horrifying History. Horrifying history is where history, science, folklore and the supernatural collide.

[00:00:24] If you like today's episode, make sure to check out the episode description for links to subscribe. Alright, let's get this show started. Begin. Dark cast network. The light shines brightest on our indie podcasts.

[00:01:20] My name is Brenda and welcome to Horrifying History where you will hear about the unexplained, paranormal and supernatural happenings that have stained the pages of history. Today my spooky friends, the episode you will hear will sound like a Halloween legend, but it is not.

[00:01:37] A dark and grisly vampire hysteria gripped New England in the 18th and 19th centuries and it resulted in the macabre history that you will hear today. It also resulted in several people to be forever known as a vampire.

[00:01:52] Just a heads up here my dear listeners, today we will be talking about Desecration of the Dead. Listener discretion is advised. Welcome to episode 119, The Last of the Vampires. Vampires are considered to be a regular part of popular culture.

[00:02:20] People flock to theaters to watch movies of vampires seducing innocents and battling werewolves. We love to watch TV shows of vampire slayers kicking vampires butts, but many of these stories seem to center around the US state of Maine.

[00:02:35] The state of Maine has the nickname of Vacationland for a reason. It's a beautiful place with its deep dark woods and breathtaking coastlines. It is a place where nature balances with urban living and well, they also have lobster rolls, which all in combination makes this a vacation paradise.

[00:02:54] This seems to conflict with some of the tales that use this place as a backdrop. For example, the 1960s TV show Dark Shadows tells the tale of Maine vampire Barnabas Collins and the 1975 Stephen King novel Salem's Lot revolves around a vampire coven also in Maine.

[00:03:12] But the thing is that the New England area of the United States has a very long vampire history. In fact, at one time it was considered to be the vampire capital of America. Believe it or not, New England's vampire hysteria started a full century after the

[00:03:29] region's famous witch trials and it wasn't localized. It was throughout the region. This panic started in the 1890s after similar hysterias occurred in Europe. These happened during times where people struggled for explanations of what is now known as infectious diseases before these illnesses were scientifically understood.

[00:03:50] During the time a New England's vampire panic, the disease that we know today as tuberculosis was running rampant. What they called consumption had no cure in those days. It is a disease that is caused by bacteria that is spread from person to person through

[00:04:06] tiny droplets released into the air. People who get tuberculosis suffer from delays, weakness, weight loss, fever and night sweats. This disease usually affects the lungs which creates coughing, chest pain and soon the afflicted will start to cough up blood.

[00:04:23] But this disease can affect other areas of the body such as the brain, kidneys or even the spine and this results in the symptoms being different if different parts of the body were affected.

[00:04:34] Today, those who have tuberculosis can be treated by taking several drugs for about 6-12 months but in the time of the vampire panics, diagnostics and drugs were not available. When people would see their loved ones suffering from the classic symptoms of a bloody cough,

[00:04:51] fever and weight loss it appeared to them that their loved one was slowly withering away or perhaps being consumed. Based on what they saw and with their lack of knowledge of this disease, it was believed that a supernatural creature or the devil himself must be responsible.

[00:05:08] But not everyone believed this. In June of 1784, a town councilman wrote a letter to the editor of the Connecticut Current and Weekly Intelligencer. He cautioned readers that they were being misled by what he called a quack doctor who

[00:05:23] was encouraging local families to dig up and burn their dead loved ones to stop consumption from spreading. This idea came from the legend that it is best to stop a vampire by digging it up and burning its vital organs. FYI, this didn't work.

[00:05:39] But it sure did help spread that vampire legend and hysteria throughout New England. One of the earliest cases known of New England vampirism to have a name attached to it was of a woman named Rachel Harris.

[00:05:52] Rachel was the first wife of Captain Isaac Burton who died from tuberculosis in 1790 in the town of Manchester. Those who knew her saw her as a healthy and beautiful girl, but soon after she was married her health began to decline.

[00:06:07] She passed away a year later from consumption and the following year Isaac married Rachel's sepsister, Hala. But soon after Isaac and Hala were married, Hala also became ill. When she started to exhibit symptoms similar to Rachel's, friends and family started to believe that Rachel must be the cause.

[00:06:26] They were persuaded by those who lived around them that Rachel must be a vampire, and if her organs could be burned on a charcoal fire, an elixir could be made for Hala that can cure her from her affliction.

[00:06:39] They all quickly became convinced that Rachel was a demon vampire who came back from the dead to suck the life out of Hala. So what did they do? They dug up Rachel who had been buried for about three years at this point.

[00:06:52] They desecrated her corpse by removing what was left of her lungs, liver and heart. They brought them then to a local blacksmith's forge and with about 500 people present, they burned them using the remains to create an elixir for Hala. So did this elixir work? Of course not!

[00:07:09] Hala died a short time afterwards. So did the townsfolk recognize the error of their ways? Of course not! They decided that the reason this didn't work was because Rachel was not a vampire after all, but she must have been a witch.

[00:07:23] None of this stopped the spread of this disease. In another case that took place in Cumberland Road Island in 1796, Abigail Staples became quite ill. Her death was caused by tuberculosis, but that is not what those who were in her life believed.

[00:07:39] This was because shortly after her death, her sister Lavina Chase also came down with consumption. As her body started to waste away, Lavina would tell her husband Steven of her fever dreams in which she felt smothered by a shadowy figure.

[00:07:54] She would then wake up with a start and yell out the name Abigail before she would fall back into a fitful sleep. When this would happen, Steven would just reassure his wife that it was just a dream, but in actuality he didn't think so.

[00:08:08] He decided to tell his father-in-law Steven Staples. Both men quickly came to the conclusion that it wasn't a disease that Lavina was suffering from, a vampire must be responsible and that vampire had to be Abigail.

[00:08:23] Not knowing that it's a symptom of tuberculosis that makes a person feel like they have a heavy chest and also feel like they're being smothered, the two men came up with a plan. The two men decided that they had to dig up Abigail and possibly destroy her

[00:08:37] body in attempts to cure Lavina, but the two men did not just go out and dig her up. What they did was to officially petition the town council of Cumberland for a request to dissenter Abigail with their promise of when they were done desecrating her

[00:08:51] body they would re-inter her body in respectful manner. The council was not convinced that this was a good idea at all, but they thought that this could result in the peace of mind of those in the community. They then issued the following order. And I quote.

[00:09:06] But a town council held at Cumberland in the county of Providence being specially called and held on the 8th of February 1796. Mr. Stephen Staples of Cumberland appeared before this council and prayed that he

[00:09:19] might have the liberty granted on to him to dig up the body of his daughter Abigail Staples, later Cumberland, single woman, deceased, in order to try an experimental on Lavina Chase, wife of Stephen Chase, which said Lavina was sister to said Abigail, deceased.

[00:09:36] Which being duly considered, it is voted and resolved the said Stephen Staples have liberty to dig up the body of said Abigail, deceased. And after trying this experiment, as foresaid that he bury the body of the said Abigail in a decent manner. So what happened next?

[00:09:53] Well, we actually don't know for sure. There is no official records of what did occur, but there is local legend. According to this, when Abigail's coffin was opened, her widowed husband ran from the graveyard in a complete panic.

[00:10:07] He never spoke about what he witnessed, but from that point forward, it is said that he was a changed man. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that he saw the decomposing corpse of the woman he loved in a casket, but many say that it was

[00:10:20] due to he saw her in vampire form. So what happened to Lavina? Nothing is known about her fate either, but we do know that Abigail was reburied in the Rhode Island Historical Cemetery, Cumberland number 17 in the Staples family plot.

[00:10:35] Interestingly, there also is no records currently known that tell us where Lavina was laid to rest. Our next tale today starts with a journal entry. On September 26, 1859, a man named Henry David Thoreau wrote, The savage in man is never quite eradicated.

[00:10:54] I have just read of a family in Vermont who several of its members having died from consumption just burned the lungs and heart and liver of the last deceased in order to prevent any more from having it. Now, the ironic thing about this statement was that Henry

[00:11:10] himself was suffering from tuberculosis. He would die three years later without anyone suspecting that a vampire was involved, but the case he was talking about became quite famous in vampire circles. This sad tale starts the man named Lieutenant Leonard Spalding. In the 1790s, Leonard was desperate.

[00:11:30] Six of his 11 adult children died from consumption and now another of his daughters fell ill. He watched as the disease slowly sucked the life out of them and as each their caskets were buried. Now what makes this case different than the previous ones

[00:11:46] is that it was thought that these family members' deaths were caused by a cursed vine. This vine allegedly burrowed itself along the family's plot in the local cemetery and each time it would touch a coffin of a deceased family member, another Spalding would die.

[00:12:02] So what does an alleged cursed vine have to do with vampirism? Through history, there've been accounts of predatory plants and one of the beliefs in this area at that time was that vines had grown between buried caskets and when burials in a plot become connected,

[00:12:17] another family member would die. Desperate to save his daughter, Leonard decided to act. The body of his most recently deceased child was dug up and burnt. They also cut the vine up that ran towards the grave, but that didn't work. When Leonard's son Rubin passed away in 1794,

[00:12:36] Leonard made sure that he was laid to rest apart from his other family members in hopes to break the curse that was stealing his children away from him. The Life of a Good-Natured Man Farmer's Struckly-Tilling Haast was known to be a good-natured man who loved his family.

[00:13:04] He was also a great provider since he was selling his farm's apples throughout Rhode Island. His wife, Honor, ran the household and watched over their many children as they worked daily in their orchards. As the years passed, the older children married

[00:13:18] and started their own lives as new babies were still being born into their large family. Struckly and Honor thought their lives were perfect. That was until the autumn of 1799. This is when Struckly started to have the same terrifying nightmare. In his dream, Struckly was working in the orchards

[00:13:38] when he heard his daughter Sarah call for him. When he turned towards her voice, a cold wind started to blow up the apple tree leaves around him to a point he couldn't see. When the wind stopped, he looked around for Sarah. She was nowhere to be found.

[00:13:53] He turned back towards the orchard to see the leaves of the trees had turned brown and the apples were rotting on the branches. The smell of decay and rotting fruit surrounded him and he'd wake up in a panic. After having this dream night after night,

[00:14:08] Struckly thought that this was an omen. He was so disturbed that Struckly decided to speak to his pastor who told him it was likely caused by anxiety about his upcoming harvest. Struckly decided that the pastor was probably right and soon this dream began to fade from his mind.

[00:14:26] Meanwhile, Struckly's daughter Sarah had just turned 19 years old and she had her whole life in front of her. She was a bit of an introvert and mostly kept to herself. She preferred to spend her time reading or doing needlework, but soon she would just stay in her room

[00:14:41] and only come down for meals. It became very clear that Sarah was quite ill and she was soon diagnosed with consumption. A few short weeks later, Sarah passed away but then her nine-year-old brother became ill. He started to complain about his chest was hurting and when asked where,

[00:14:59] James would point to his heart and say, here where Sarah touched me. Soon, James met Sarah in death. After James died, Struckly's daughters, Andreas and Ruth also became sick. They also said that Sarah was visiting them at night, telling them that she was so cold

[00:15:16] and she needed them to become warm again. Soon they died too and Struckly in honor came to the conclusion that an evil spirit was cursing their family. Struckly once again asked his pastor for advice. He tried to convince Struckly that there was no curse.

[00:15:31] It was an illness and everything will be well with them, but soon another one of Struckly's children allegedly saw Sarah. Hannah was the oldest in the family and she lived a short distance away with her husband. She would soon come to her parents home

[00:15:45] to help with her six siblings and soon after that she saw Sarah. She too became ill and she died. The next one to see Sarah was her mother, honor and soon she was gone too. Then it was son Isaiah and Struckly knew that he had to act

[00:16:00] to save what was left of his family. You see, one of his farmhands had recently told him a story about a nearby town and how the dead came out of their graves to torment another family who lived there and he also told them how they dealt

[00:16:13] with the evil spirits. This is when Struckly knew what he had to do. He went to the family's grave plot and dug up all of his children who were in various stages of decay, that is, except for Sarah. Allegedly, Sarah who had been buried at this time

[00:16:28] for about six months had no sign of decay. In fact, she looked like she was resting. Her eyes were wide open and glassy. Her skin was flushed and Struckly was heartbroken because he knew what he had to do next. As tears flowed down Struckly's face,

[00:16:44] he used his knife to remove his daughter's heart. He placed it on a rock and then poured oil inside, lit a fire and burnt the heart to ash. From that day on, no one in the family claimed to have visions of Sarah,

[00:16:57] but this didn't help her sick brother. As soon as his sister's heart was burnt, Isaiah died from consumption. He was just too far gone, but Struckly's daughter, Honor, who was named after her mother, was able to pull through. She not only survived,

[00:17:12] but went on to have two more children. It was about this time that Struckly remembered the nightmares he suffered from. He realized that the dream was a prophecy. Half of his children were dead, just like half of the orchard was dead in his dream.

[00:17:28] Our next tale also starts on a bountiful farm. Levi Young and his wife Anna's farm was near Providence, Rhode Island. The corn, potatoes and onions that his farm produced along with the preserves that Anna made fetched a great price at local markets

[00:17:42] and this provided the family a very steady income. As Levi and Anna's family grew, the couple brought their oldest daughter Nancy in to help manage the books for the farm. Nancy was known to be a very smart woman with quick wit and a calm temperament

[00:17:57] and this is why Levi and Anna trusted her to do all the accounting. But soon, tragedy struck when Nancy became deathly ill with consumption. While Nancy fought her fast advancing illness, her daughter Elmyra temporarily took over her sister's duties. But sadly on April 6th, 1827, Nancy passed away.

[00:18:19] The family did not have much time to mourn since a short time later, Elmyra, she fell ill too. Terrified for his daughter, Levi reached out to the best known doctors in the region to try to get some help. Even though her disease was progressing much slower than Nancy's,

[00:18:35] he couldn't wait after what happened to his older child. After Elmyra was assessed, Levi was told the same thing over and over. Nothing they tried could remedy this situation. Then one morning, Levi went to his daughter's room to see how she was doing.

[00:18:51] He was surprised to see her sitting up in bed. Elmyra told her father that she thought she was getting better, even though Levi thought she looked extremely pale and weak. This is when Elmyra told her dad that she had a dream about Nancy.

[00:19:06] According to Elmyra, Nancy looked bright like an angel and she told Elmyra that the pain would go away very soon. This dream greatly disturbed Levi. After all, the medicine and the doctors of the time couldn't help, so Levi had recently started to look into alternatives

[00:19:23] of why his children could be dying. He had looked into local folklore about evil spirits from the grave who would pray on the living. After hearing about Elmyra's dream, he became convinced that this is what was happening to his family.

[00:19:37] So, Levi decided to meet with the town elders to see what their thoughts were and if they could help him. To his surprise, the town elders agreed that Levi's family was being tormented by an evil vampire and it must be immediately driven out of their home

[00:19:51] and away from the village. So the group came up with a plan. A small group of townsfolk went to the graveyard where Nancy lay at rest. One of these was a man named Nathan Lennox who went by the name of Doc. Now Doc wasn't a real doctor,

[00:20:05] but he was an expert in the local lore and superstitions. He ordered the group to start gathering wood, build a pyre and start digging up Nancy, but Levi, he said no. He said it was his responsibility to exhume his daughter. By sunset, Levi finished his heartbreaking task

[00:20:22] and Nancy's casket was pulled out of the ground. So what makes this story different than the others you heard today? Well, no one actually opened Nancy's casket. It was placed on top of the wood, which was set on fire. As her casket and body was burning,

[00:20:37] Doc ordered the members of Levi's family to stand around that fire so the smoke and vapors from the fire could cleanse them of the evil that was taking over their household. Doing as ordered, the family joined hands as they encircled the blaze to let the smoke cover them.

[00:20:53] But by morning, there was nothing left but ash. Now my spooky friends, you're probably asking yourself, what happened to Levi and his family? Did the disease stop after what the family did? The answer to that is no. This act did not stop consumption

[00:21:08] from continuing its attack on the family. Shortly after this happened, Elmira died. Within the next several years, four more of Levi and Anna's children were dead due to consumption. I personally think that perhaps Levi, Anna and the rest of the family realized

[00:21:23] that what they did to Nancy couldn't stop this disease since none of the remaining children were exhumed. In a cemetery located in Jewette City in Connecticut, you will find the resting place of the Ray family. Before tragedy struck this family, it consisted of Father Henry, his wife Lucy

[00:21:41] and their four sons. March 9th, 1845 was the day where the first of them passed away from tuberculosis. On this day, 24-year-old Lemmel died. Next was Father Henry who died just before his 53rd birthday. Next son, Elijah, died at the age of 26.

[00:22:00] Within six years, half the family was now gone. The family tried everything they could to get a diagnosis and to treat those falling ill, but they had no luck. This is when the surviving family members decided to have a meeting. They voiced their fears that the undead

[00:22:17] was terrorizing their family and their community as a whole. They spoke about how vampires must be feeding on their family, causing them to turn into the undead themselves. When son Henry Jr. became ill in 1854, the local community were panicked and desperate.

[00:22:35] They too shared the belief that the Ray family was in danger while hungry vampires were still intact and they were also at risk. So on May 8th, 1854, the surviving Ray family members, their friends and community members all gathered in the Jewette City Cemetery.

[00:22:51] This meeting was not any sort of celebration of life that we know today. The goal was to stop the evil that was killing the Ray family one by one. To do so, the bodies of the children were exhumed and burned on the grounds. When the flames died away,

[00:23:06] the community took the bones and reburied them for good. They thought this would work, but it didn't. Henry Jr. died the same year along with his wife and his children, but soon consumption moved out of the area and the community thought it was safe from a vampire invasion.

[00:23:23] Now, believe it or not, my dear listeners, even though this was witnessed by a large crowd of people and was written about in the local newspapers, people became convinced in the years following that this must have been a made-up folktale. But they were very wrong.

[00:23:38] In the early 1990s, two boys from a nearby town were sliding down a gravel bank when they noticed their actions uncovered some strange-looking round objects. So the boys decided to do a little digging to see what they found and they were shocked to realize they found human skulls.

[00:23:55] The boys immediately told their parents who reached out to authorities. Within days, archeologists discovered a long-forgotten cemetery and one of these graves was very interesting. In one grave was a coffin that was marked JB 55. Inside was a body of an adult male who was completely dismembered.

[00:24:15] His skull was pulled away from his spine and placed just inside his chest cavity. His femur bones were crossed in an X-formation just below the skull placement. This grave was discovered to have all the identifying marks of local legend that indicated the person inside

[00:24:32] was thought to be a vampire. Researchers believed that the man inside laid at rest for about five years after he was buried in the late 1800s and he was then dug up and desecrated to prevent him from rising. It proved for the first time

[00:24:46] that vampire scares in this area was a real thing. The other thing that was able to be proven was the cause of that scare. Analysis of these bones showed that JB 55 had tuberculosis which caused his death. It would only be a short few years after this

[00:25:03] that people would realize that the real evil of the community was disease and fear. Our last vampire tale today is probably the most famous, the tale of Mercy Brown. This case is considered to be one of the best documented cases of exhuming a body to stop a vampire.

[00:25:22] Before Mercy's death in 1892, tuberculosis was the leading cause of death in the United States. Since doctors didn't know what caused it, there was no way to treat it other than get some rest and try to get some exercise. Clearly this didn't work

[00:25:37] since the death rate concerning consumption was 80%. Everything started when farmer George Brown lost his beloved wife, Mary Eliza, to tuberculosis. Soon, Mary Eliza was followed to the grave by her oldest daughter, Mary Olive. Then in 1891, George's daughter, Mercy and son Edwin also became deathly ill.

[00:25:59] Edwin decided to travel to Colorado Springs with the hope that he would be able to recover in a better climate. But he returned the following year to their home in Exeter an even worse shape. Soon, Mercy passed away at the age of 19 and Edwin was deteriorating quite quickly.

[00:26:16] George was now desperate since nothing medical seemed to be helping. He started to listen to some of the local townsfolk who would tell George about the legends of vampires and how they fed on the living in bad health. They told him when the members of the same family

[00:26:31] started to waste away from consumption, it was caused by one of the deceased draining the life force from their living relatives. In the beginning, George didn't listen but as he kept losing his loved ones, he finally decided to have the bodies

[00:26:45] of his dead family members exhumed and examined under the direction of Dr. Harold Metcalf. On the morning of March 17th, 1892, the doctor exhumed each of the bodies with the help from the locals. Inside the dug up caskets, they found the decomposed remains of all the dead family members

[00:27:05] but Mercy's body was different. Her nine week old remains looked normal and undecayed. They even found blood remaining in her heart and liver. Now, instead of thinking that this could be due to the fact that they didn't involve people like they do now and she was buried

[00:27:21] when it was quite cold outside, they were instantly convinced that what this really meant was Mercy was a vampire. It was she that was responsible for sucking out the life of her relatives. Now not all people believe that Mercy was a vampire. In fact, Dr. Metcalf didn't.

[00:27:37] He tried to explain that Mercy's perceived state was normal since she was buried during the winter months but this logic meant nothing. The locals immediately removed Mercy's liver and heart, burnt them before reburying her and then took the ashes. They mixed Mercy's ashes with water

[00:27:53] to make a tonic for Edwin which they believed would save his life. Well, that didn't work out like they hoped when Edwin died two months later. The case of Mercy Brown is now considered to be the last vampire case in New England. After desecrating her body,

[00:28:09] the townspeople reburied her heart and liverless body in Exeter's Chestnut Hill Cemetery where a weathered tombstone marks her grave. If there is one lesson that we all can learn from these cases is that rumors never lead to anything good. As said once by George Washington, and I quote,

[00:28:27] "'Serious misfortunes originating in misrepresentation "'frequently flow and spread before they can be dissipated "'by truth.'" Thank you all for joining me for our latest episode of Horrifying History. Join us on Facebook at Horrifying History, on Instagram at Horrifying Underscore History, on Twitter at HorrifyingHIST1,

[00:28:58] or reach out to us by email at HorrifyingHistoryatoutlook.com and tell us your thought on Vampire Panics. Do you think if we were able to give today's explanation on what tuberculosis is and how it works that these events would have ever happened?

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