Vampyr: The Age of Consumption21:11 Jan 04 2023
Times Read: 130
Hello, dear wanderers!
Welcome to my hut, where dream and reality clash.
I am but a mere witch, gathering the golden nuggets of the past. Ah, yes, what beautiful nuggets they are.
Shall we look at the fine detail of this fragment? It's labeled "Entry #908967297894387783783 - The New England Vampire Panic".
Let's peek into the world that is this golden nugget.
Did you know that us witches and vampires share the same birth? We're but siblings in the cosmic order of things. Our mother?
It's fear. Fear of death. But while witches were born of the fear of the living, causing death to us, vampires were of the fear of death, caused by the dead.
The year is 1883. George Brown - a father, a husband and a... man, became victim to great tragedy. First, his wife, Mary Eliza, passed away at the age of 36 years old. She died of consumption. Next year, their daughter Mary Olive died the same way. In 1891, their son Edwin, contracted the disease and was sent away, hoping more fresh air would help him heal. His sister, Mercy Brown, contracted the galloping consumption - a very aggressive form of the illness. She passed at the age of 19.
Edwin's health was getting worse. The fresh air didn't help. He was sent back home to die.
When the neighbors heard that Edwin was returning, they started pressuring George to exhume his wife and daughters...
Why?
Well...
Because one of the corpses was believed to be a vampire.
New Englanders didn't ascribe to popular branches of Christianity, like Puritanism. So they were very much socially cut off from everyone else. They could only rely on their own beliefs and common knowledge.
Killing a vampire was medicine. A cure for consumption. The disease was the leading cause of death in New England. Tuberculosis was really no joke. Seeing your family and community rapidly die was probably shocking enough to suspect the supernatural at that point.
In March of 1892, Mary Eliza, Mary Olive and Mercy Brown were exhumed. They discovered that Mary Eliza and Mary Olive had been decomposed to the point of no blood being in their bodies. Mercy Brown, however, was described as fairly well preserved and in a different position. Her liver and heart were full of blood - clotted and decomposed.
Her heart and liver were burned on a rock in the same cemetery. The ashes, mixed with water, were fed to Edwin, but he did not improve and died shortly after.
It's but one story of exhumation due to vampirism and a mass panic outbreak due to an invisible airborne illness, slaughtering entire communities.
Now the reason Mercy's body was described as so well preserved was due to a couple of factors. One is, it was the middle of winter when she was buried. Before that, her body was kept in a freezer chamber, so in all sense and purposes, she was fresh when buried.
However, Mercy's story inspired possibly the greatest vampire story ever - Bram Stoker's Dracula. The character of Lucy, being very much inspired by Mercy. And the vampire lore taken from Rhode Island, New England.
So, thank you, America, for shaping vampires as we know them today.
This Golden Nugget is brought to you by the Witch of Decomposition, Caitlin Doughty, so credits to her video for inspiring this post. Her YouTube channel is called Ask a Mortician.
COMMENTS
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HisFelina
21:17 Jan 04 2023
I love these kinds stories, things that really helped to shape the vampire mythos into what it is today. Also, Ask A Mortician is great! I love her videos.
Vilea
11:19 Jan 11 2023
Caitlin is a treasure. I happened upon one of her books and was beyond delighted when I found her channel on YouTube. Thanks for the retelling of this story. No matter how many times I hear it, I'm never not fascinated. And you are quite adept at that whole 'usage of words' thing!