exeter rhode island march 16 1892 george
brown is under siege nearly a decade ago
his wife and eldest daughter had passed
from consumption then last year both
remaining children his son edwin and
daughter mercy also fell ill when it
began it seemed edwin would go first but
the 19 year old mercy rapidly
deteriorated and died in january so much
death said his neighbors a suspicious
amount they began to badger him
insisting that an evil lived under his
family plot a ghastly corpse spirit that
was draining his family and soon would
take others he knows they say what he
must do but george a man never given to
superstition resists as long as possible
but in a small town the neighbors must
be satisfied so he gives his grudging
permission his beloved wife and
daughters will be turned out of their
graves and cut open to see which of them
is secretly an undead killer
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george brown was not the only man who
had to make this decision in 1990 a
group of boys playing in a connecticut
gravel pit unearthed an old cemetery not
too uncommon in new england and the
archaeological team excavating it found
nothing unusual until that is they came
across a red coffin with jb 55 studded
into the lid later analysis identified
this as the likely grave of john barber
a farmer who died in the mid-19th
century but it wasn't barbara's life
that interested them it was that a
decade after barbara's death someone had
exhumed his coffin broken it up and
mangled his body he'd been decapitated
his ribs cut open his skull placed face
down on his chest with his femurs
crossed below it in the shape of an ex
the discovery made international news
because john barbour's grave is the only
archaeological evidence of a phenomenon
that gripped america's east coast during
the 18th and 19th century the great new
england vampire panic during this period
new england suffered an epidemic of
townsfolk exhuming and mutilating the
dead because they believed corpses were
feeding on the living historians and
folklorists have documented over 80
examples in letters diaries and
newspapers with more being discovered
all the time including some in the
midwest and south however this epidemic
of imaginary undead was driven by a very
real medical epidemic that of
tuberculosis beginning in the late 18th
century tuberculosis or tb that known as
consumption ravaged the eastern united
states and at certain points in the 19th
century up to a quarter of new england's
deaths were related to the disease now
back in 2019 thanks to child and teen
checkups we did a whole two-part series
on the development of the tuberculosis
vaccines which you should definitely
check out after this episode if you
already haven't but for now here's what
you need to know tb is a vicious
bacterial infection one that makes its
victims cough blood and seems to consume
them hence the older name consumption it
also had a course that was difficult to
understand in the days before modern
medicine one family member might catch
it and have a protracted illness dying
gradually over months or years though
another might seem to be terminal then
suddenly go into remission for a decade
only to take a quick turn for the worse
later in life or you could die within
weeks of presenting symptoms never
knowing that you'd been asymptomatic for
years this dramatic deadly and
unpredictable nature made consumption
fertile soil for superstition and
folklore as people sought some way to
feel in control of a malady they
couldn't cure predict or understand so
at times they turned toward old beliefs
for an answer but keep in mind those
beliefs probably aren't what you're
imagining right now first off you should
understand that all of the documents we
have on the so-called vampire panic come
from outsiders people observing these
ritual acts or reporting on them for
newspapers and crucially it's those
people who used the term vampire there's
no evidence that participants ever used
that word however there were long
traditions dating back to europe that
corpses had magic properties and that
there was a mystical connection between
dead and living family members in some
places if riga mortis didn't set in
quickly when a family member passed it
was seen as an omen that another
relative would soon die the bodies of
murder victims were said to bleed in
their killer's presence and in the case
of the vampire panic a host of folkloric
beliefs centered around evil spirits
possessing the bodies of the dead and
using them to drain relatives of life so
don't imagine a classical vampire here
no one thought these bodies were rising
from the grave instead in this lore it
seems an evil spirit would enter the
corpse and dwell inside it then come out
at night in order to feed or else simply
use some other mystical connection
between the body and a family member to
siphon off blood in some european
stories this spirit masquerades as an
animal but in others it appears to have
been invisible this was their
explanation for why consumption ripped
through families while also behaving so
oddly to rid a community of such a
harmful spirit took fortitude first they
would need to find it unearthing bodies
of consumption victims until they found
one that showed symptoms of spirit
possession an afflicted corpse would
look plump and well fed perhaps even
have blood trickling from its mouth the
hair and fingernails might have grown
and most crucial of all there would be
liquid blood in the heart now today we
know that these are all natural signs of
decay gas can make a body bloat skin
retreating makes it appear that
fingernails and hair have grown and
especially in tuberculosis victims blood
on the lips is not unusual once
villagers found the host body they would
go about sabotaging it they might simply
turn the corpse over so the confused
spirit would go down into the ground
rather than up towards the living but
they also might decapitate it or bind
its feet and in parts of eastern europe
they'd use a wooden or iron stake to pin
it to the ground then the villagers or
family members would remove and burn the
heart and liver with the spirit's
current victims then inhaling those
vapors in order to heal their
consumption now this didn't work of
course but given the random nature of tb
a remission might be interpreted as
success most of the records we have of
this include local clergy and doctors
condemning this practice or journalists
using it to shock urban readers and that
last one was precisely what happened
with the brown family from the show's
opening see while george brown had
refused to be present at the exhumation
of his family members a newspaper
reporter was there to witness the event
and they would make it internationally
famous while the exeter men found
nothing but bones in the coffins of
george's wife and eldest daughter they
did find mercy's body surprisingly well
preserved with liquid blood still in the
heart though that's not surprising since
she'd only been dead two months and had
been stored in a cold above ground vault
nonetheless they extracted her heart and
liver and burned the organs on a stone
then forming a tonic with the ashes they
had her brother edwin drink the
concoction it didn't save him now first
of all imagine the trauma of that seeing
neighbors mutilate your recently
deceased sister then being talked into
consuming some of her ashes it's hard to
even contemplate the existential fear
and desperation a community has to be
under to even consider that but perhaps
what's more shocking is that this
occurred in 1892
by then not only was germ theory
confirmed but it was a full decade after
robert koch had discovered the bacteria
that causes tuberculosis in fact one of
george brown's conditions was that a
doctor actually performed the autopsies
a doctor who pointed out that mercy's
lungs were full of tuberculosis bacteria
so if all of that is true why did they
still go about desecrating mercy's body
well here's the thing the accepted
scientific explanation it didn't really
help these people while medical
knowledge about tb had increased they
weren't seeing the practical effects of
that yet especially in rural new england
these examinations awful as they were
did offer a sort of narrative closure
for people a feeling of control when
even at a time doctors could name and
see the tb bacterium no one could stop
it which reminds us of two things first
that medical education and outreach is
important but also that it needs to be
practical in the cities there were
anti-tv public information campaigns
urging people to avoid spitting in
public or limit overcrowding things that
explained how tb was transmitted and
helped people feel some agency in
avoiding it while researchers pursued a
working vaccine by contrast in the rural
and economically depressed hamlet of
exeter these messages weren't as present
so they relied on the old beliefs for
comfort at least until 1921 when the
first working tuberculosis vaccine
entered public use few present at
mercy's exhumation would live to see
that day except one george brown who
alone in his family never caught
consumption and passed away in 1922
living just long enough to see the
disease that had taken so much from him
defeated at last
once again thanks so much to the child
and teen checkups program of minnesota
for sponsoring this episode remember
it's important for children to get
annual checkups because they're a great
and proactive way of identifying
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the most legendary thanks to ahmed zion
turk alicia bramble angelo valenciana
arcolite games casey muscha dominic
valenciana joseph blame and kyle
murgatroyd
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