Food for the Dead : On the Trail of New England's Vampires

by Bell, Michael E.

• ISBN13: 9780786708994
• ISBN10: 0786708999
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-10-18
• Publisher: Perseus Books Group

Summary

Forget Bela Lugosi's Count Dracula. In nineteenth-century New England another sort of vampire was relentlessly ravishing the populace, or so it was believed by many rural communities suffering the plague of tuberculosis. Indeed, as this fascinating book shows, the vampire of folk superstition figures significantly in the attempt of early Americans to reasonably explain and vanquish the dreaded affliction then known as consumption. In gripping narrative detail, folklorist Michael E. Bell reconstructs a distant world, where on March 17, 1892, three corpses were exhumed from a Rhode Island cemetery. One of them, Mercy Brown, who had succumbed to consumption, appeared to have turned over in her grave. Mercy's family cut out her heart, which still held clots of blood, burned it on a nearby rock, and fed the ashes to her ailing brother. To Mercy's community she had become a vampire living a spectral existence and consuming the vitality of her siblings. From documents written as early as 1790 to a recent conversation with a descendant of Mercy Brown, Bell investigates twenty cases in which the vampiric dead were exhumed to save the ailing living. He also explores a widespread folk tradition that has survived generations, as ordinary people today strive to battle extraordinary diseases like Ebola or AIDS with a deeply rooted belief in their power to heal themselves. "Bell's absorbing account is ... a major contribution to the study of New England folk beliefs."Boston Globe "Filled with ghostly tales, glowing corpses, rearranged bones, visits to hidden graveyards.... This is a marvelous book."Providence Journal

Author Biography

Michael E. Bell has been the Consulting Folklorist for the Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission since 1980. He has a Ph.D. in folklore from Indiana University, Bloomington, and his recent studies deal with maritime traditions and the magical black cat bone. He lives in Pawtuxet Village, Rhode Island

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Prologue	xi
This Awful Thing	1	(17)
Testing a Horrible Superstition	18	(21)
Remarkable Happenings	39	(19)
The Cause of Their Trouble Lay Before Them	58	(23)
I Am Waiting and Watching for You	81	(28)
I Thought For Sure They Were Coming After Me	109	(25)
Don't Be a Rational Adult	134	(22)
Never Strangers True Vampires Be	156	(22)
Ghoulish, Wolfish Shapes	178	(24)
The Unending River of Life	202	(24)
Relicks of Many Old Customs	226	(26)
A Ghoul in Every Deserted Fireplace	252	(27)
Is That True of All Vampires?	279	(17)
Food for the Dead	296	(9)
Appendix A Chronology of Vampire Incidents in New England	305	(1)
Appendix B Children of Stukeley and Honor Tillinghast	305	(1)
Notes	306	(17)
Works Sited	323	(9)
Index	332	(6)
About the Author	338