by Bob Curran
From the days of the pilgrim fathers in 1620, the early colonies of America framed their world through religious experience and supernatural intervention. Thus, in 1692, Massachusetts Bay Colony was facing its most serious political and religious crisis, and their anxiety was expressed, not in political activity, but through a series of witchcraft trials at Salem. Therefore, the early Colonial world was heavily influenced by faith and signs, and wonders were all around.
In the 1740s, the radical preacher George Whitefield traveled along the American coast preaching to packed congregations in the beginning of what was called The First Great Awakening, sometimes dismissively referred to as the New Light Stir. From this emerged groups with radical theories regarding salvation, sin, and the world: the Strict and Particular Baptists, the Separates, Universalists (who denied the existence of Hell), Evangelical Calvinists, and many others. Some groups espoused views, which, today might be considered strange; the early Brownists (followers of the English preacher Robert Browne), for example, held that the Devil was a woman, and, consequently, no woman could enter Heaven (saintly females were turned into men upon death). Mother Anne Lee’s Shakers, who had fled from England in 1774, believed that lust was the Original Sin, so any contact between men and women (even eye contact) was forbidden. On the contrary, the Perfectionist named Shadrack Ireland believed that the Second Coming was imminent, and instructed his followers to lay themselves out on stone slabs in sealed underground chambers beneath the Massachusetts hills, so that when the Great Trumpet sounded they could walk out, whole and ready to face God. It is easy to see how unshrouded bodies lying in stone crypts might have formed the basis for the idea of the walking dead in New England.
For many of the faithful, sin and evil (and the avoidance of both) were the twin preoccupations of life. Once Salvation had been achieved, Satan would stop at nothing to bring God’s children down, and apparently his agents were everywhere. The Indians who lived in the woods were undoubtedly agents of the Evil One. Thus, when the Indians attacked their settlements, it was unquestionably the work of Satan against the Chosen. And God permitted such atrocities to occur because of the sins of the colonists, whether real or imagined. Such raids were a chastisement upon the settlements, but they were also a powerful reminder of the evil that dwelt out there in this new land.
Disease formed yet another problem in the colonial experience, and it was one that continued until the mid-1800s. The conditions in which many of the early settlers lived were poor and unsanitary by modern standards, and many people lived on the edges of swamps, lakes, and bogs—perfect breeding grounds for all sorts of ailments, many of them fatal. Consequently, epidemics of various kinds swept through the colonies, taking away mainly the weak and vulnerable as they passed and, once again, given the religious fervor of the time, their spread was interpreted as God’s judgement upon a sinful people. Because of the swampy conditions and the poor sanitation, tuberculosis and typhoid, along with many forms of respiratory and lung infections, flourished in many parts of the colonies, the contagion sometimes carrying away entire families.
On May 19th, 1780, a spectacular event occurred that shook New England to its core and galvanized many of the radical churches. Many of the hill congregations had experienced a renewal of religious fervor, as itinerant preachers traveled among them, preaching on the damnation of sin and the imminence of evil. Then, at mid-day, the sky suddenly went dark and the sun disappeared. In fact, it was so dark that birds flew home to nest, flowers closed their petals, and people had to use candles in order to see anything. The sky was even blacker than it was on a regular night. What caused the famous New England’s Dark Day is unknown. It may have been a solar eclipse, but it was probably a combination of smoke from forest fires, a heavy fog, and cloud cover. The total darkness extended as far as Barnstaple, Massachusetts, and was even experienced in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. For the Godly, though, there could be only one interpretation: the end of the world was coming and Christ was about to return. In Hartford, Connecticut, the fledgling state legislature was already meeting in session when the light failed; thinking that it was the Day of Judgement, the speaker called for the sitting to be suspended. However, one representative, Abraham Davenport, called for candles and the meeting proceeded. The darkness lasted until about midnight when it finally dispersed and the stars could be seen again. Christ certainly hadn’t come, and the world was still the same.
The effect on the Godly congregations was, however, electric. If the darkness was not a sign of the Second Coming, then it was something else. Many said it was a warning from God to the colonies regarding their sins. It was a hint at things to come if men did not mend their ways and follow holy precepts. In some parts of New England, everything was treated as a sign from God or the sign of the Devil’s work. Satan had redoubled his efforts to drag the colonies down to a lost eternity and his agents were even thicker on the ground. As if to prove this assertion, in the months following the Dark Day, many colonial villages and towns experienced epidemics of both typhoid fever and tuberculosis.
Is it any wonder that from this rich stew of folklore, religion, and disease, the idea of the vampire emerged almost fully formed? And there might have been a moral dimension to its appearance, for the animated corpses were usually of those who had died in sin or who wished to draw the Godly members of their family away with them to the grave, and, perhaps, into Satan’s power. The effect of the Dark Day only served to strengthen the religious fervor that had established itself within the New England mind, and to establish the imminence of the Devil as a real and potent force on day-to-day life.
Perhaps one of the first people to write on vampire beliefs in America was the anthropologist George R. Stetson. His article, “The Animistic Vampire in New England,” appeared in The American Anthropologist in January 1896. He centered his arguments around the remote areas of Rhode Island—settlements such as Exeter, Foster, Kingstown, and East Greenwich—where, in his day, some of the older superstitions and beliefs still flourished. He quickly drew attention to the isolation and poverty of the place.
The region referred to where agriculture is in a depressed condition and abandoned farms are numerous, is the tramping ground of the book-agent and the chromo-peddler…. Farmhouses, deserted and ruinous, are frequent and the once productive lands, neglected and overgrown with scrubby oak, speak forcefully and mournfully of the migration of youthful farmers from country to town…. Here Cotton Mather, Justice Sewall and the host of medical, clerical and lay believers in the uncanny superstitions of bygone centuries could still hold high carnival.
Between 1780 and the mid-1800s, plagues of tuberculosis, typhoid, and smallpox swept many of the tiny communities already devastated, as Stetson points out, by poverty and a decline in their agricultural base. Poor diet and a harsh life often took their toll on the more vulnerable, leaving them open to the attentions of such contagions.
It was not only humans who suffered from disease in these areas. In an area heavily dependant on agriculture, crops were also susceptible to infestations. Whole fields could be ravaged by the onset of a pestilence, financially ruining families and leaving whole communities prey to starvation. Between the years 1790 and 1815, the South County of Rhode Island, famous for its apple growing and cider making, suffered a series of severe apple blights. Fruit withered and died on the trees. as even relatively prosperous families struggled to survive. Poverty was everywhere, and death followed.
In his article, Stetson mentions a curious custom in which such illnesses had been involved. Following certain epidemics, bodies of the victims seem to have been exhumed and inspected. According to Stetson, citing a local doctor, this practice (burning the heart and some internal organs of a tuberculosis victim) was common in many parts of rural Rhode Island, and was designed to prevent the corpse coming back to torment or injure other members of its immediate family.
Of the origin of this superstition in Rhode Island or in other parts of the United States, we ar
e ignorant. It is in all probability an exotic like ourselves, originating in the mythographic period of the Aryan and Semitic peoples, though legends and superstitions of a somewhat similar character may be found among the American Indians.
Along with the belief in returning revenants, which had been carried off by disease, was a sense of moral justice. Although these things might be agents of the Devil, God sometimes permitted them to return for a specific purpose—to show His displeasure as a warning. They were also connected with illness and pestilence as part of his judgement. This could form the basis of at least some of the vampiric appearances, and would serve as an explanation to why Godly families might be so persecuted.
One of the earliest instances of alleged vampirism in New England comes from Manchester, Vermont, and dates back to the late 18th century. It is the case of Rachel Burton, and an account of it appears in the personal papers of Judge John S. Pettibone, although the report is taken from an unnamed source. The account, written sometime between 1857 and 1872, is of uncertain date, and is still held by the Manchester Historical Society. It perhaps reflects an underlying religious morality on the subject of marriage, which may have characterized sections of early Vermont society.
On March 8th, 1789, Captain Isaac Burton married Rachel Harris in Manchester. She was from a reasonably wealthy family in the area, and was widely described as a young, healthy, beautiful girl. The union was lauded in the Manchester community, and the Captain found an ideal partner. Unfortunately, the marriage did not last long. A bout of tuberculosis passed through the region and Rachel Burton succumbed to it, dying slowly and painfully. During her illness, she coughed up large quantities of blood, her skin became pale and marbled, and she went into severe decline. Less than a year after she had married Isaac Burton, on February 1st, 1790, Rachel passed away.
At first, Isaac Burton was distraught at the loss of his pretty young wife, but shortly after her death, rumors began to circulate that, as Rachel lay ill, he had sought solace in the arms of another woman. Allegations of the affair seemed to take on more substance when the Captain proposed marriage to Hulda Powell, daughter of Esquire Powell, a local landowner. Despite an unspoken disapproval, the Captain and Hulda were married on January 4th, 1791.
A few months into the marriage, Hulda Burton also began to display symptoms of the strange wasting fever that had taken Rachel. Desperately, Isaac threw a greater part of his wealth at the occurrence by summoning two doctors from Manchester to investigate his wife’s condition. Although they gave learned opinion, and prepared tonics for the declining Hulda, they were of little use and soon Captain Burton’s second wife was confined to her bed, just as his first had been. Tales say that she became delusional—she claims she saw Rachel Burton in her room, her lips caked in hardened blood and smelling of dirt. Maybe this was a delirious reaction to the whispers and the implied disapproval concerning her marriage, or perhaps it was something else, but it had an alarming effect on Isaac Burton and on his wife’s relatives, who took turns looking after her when the Captain was unavailable. Despite all the doctor’s ministrations, Hulda Burton continued to deteriorate.
One of the relatives who sat by her bed was an elderly and venerable aunt, greatly respected in the community, but steeped in the traditions of former years. As he spoke to the old woman one evening, Isaac Burton was offered a rather chilling explanation for what ailed his sickly wife. Bluntly, the aunt told him that she believed some wicked spirit was somehow drawing both the blood and the energy from Hulda’s body. Isaac expressed his horror at such a theory; he asked what motive such a spirit would have for attacking his wife.
“It is the one that has gone before,” replied the old woman darkly. “The one that can’t rest in her grave for the jealousy that she bears my niece. She wants you to herself.” What could he do, he asked? She told him there was a way that had been practiced in these parts countless years before—something she called “a burnin’”—but it would need the approval of the Selectmen who oversaw the running of the town. The body would have to be exhumed, and certain vital organs would be formally burned in public view. Only then might Hulda recover but, even then, such recovery was not certain. It was certain that if nothing was done, Hulda would die and the spirit would perhaps attack other members of the family.
At a loss, Isaac Burton approached an old friend, who was also a Selectman, named Timothy Mead. Mead had already heard about the belief in the remoter parts of Rhode Island, which were looked on as “barbarous practices,” and was not inclined to support the exhumation. Vampires were only an old superstition, which had originated in Europe in times long past. Furthermore, Rachel Harris had been a respectable girl from a respectable family, and there was no need to connect her with such a hideous superstition. The matter remained where it was, with Hulda now growing steadily weaker by the day. The old aunt’s supposition seemed vindicated, however, when she complained of an intense weight on her chest each night, as though somebody was sitting on it. Moreover, she now had flecks of blood around the sides of her mouth, as if somebody were drinking it from her. Both Isaac Burton and several relatives dozed in a chair each night beside her bed while she slept fitfully, only to be wakened by her cries and screams that Rachel Burton was in the room with her.
It can be argued, of course, that the progress of the tuberculosis in the body will produce a variety of symptoms. For example, the victim might cough up blood (the blood flecks on the lips), or create respiratory and chest problems, such as a tightness of the chest and difficulty in breathing (the sensation of weight on the chest). Further, the condition is often accompanied by pallid, marble-like skin, giving a ghostly impression. These can be attributed to the medical condition, but to Isaac Burton and many other people around the Manchester area, it meant only one thing: a vampire and the work of the Devil.
He approached Timothy Mead again. This time the Selectman was very much aware of the rising tide of rumor and fear within the town and, after a special meeting of the town’s legislature, the exhumation was granted. On a February morning in 1793, Rachel’s coffin was brought from the iron-hard earth, and was taken to the forge of Jacob Mead, the local blacksmith. In spite of their fear, a good number of people had gathered—some reports say between 500 to 1,000 people—to see what the exhumation had disclosed. The casket, once open, revealed a bloated corpse that was barely recognizable as the beautiful Rachel Burton. However, around the mouth were the dark brown stains of dried blood, which were quickly noticed and seized upon by the crowd, some of whom cried out that the bloated nature of the body was because of it being gorged with human blood. To many of those present, this was incontrovertible evidence that Rachael was indeed a vampire.
The heart, liver, and lungs of Rachel Burton were removed and cast into the searing coals of the blacksmith’s forge. The stench that arose from the burning organs was almost overpowering, and several onlookers declared that they heard a faint sigh as the charnel smoke curled skyward. Others thought they saw something like a black serpent climb upward through the smoke and vanish as it dispersed.
With the grim exorcism completed, the crowds departed. If Isaac Burton had expected his wife to recover, he was sorely disappointed. Although she appeared to rally briefly, Hulda Burton had been weakened by her ordeal and did not survive. On September 6th, 1793, she succumbed to the disease that had wracked her for more than a year. Although she died, the strange malady did not pass on, and it was assumed that the attentions of the vampire had been finally fulfilled.
Isaac Burton continued to live in Manchester and married again—in fact, he married twice more. He and his fourth wife Dency Raymond lie together in a section of Manchester’s old Dellwood Cemetery. Some of the graves have been relocated there from an older graveyard on the village green near today’s courthouse in which many old unmarked graves still remain. There is no grave marker in Dellwood for Rachel Burton, so perhaps she lies somewhere by the courthouse.
The story of Rachel Burton, the “wronged
wife,” who returned from the grave to take a bloody and wasting revenge upon her successor, spread through New England like wildfire. It reinforced old beliefs—first about the imminence of evil, and second about the necessity of living a good and proper life and the avoidance of sin. In Rhode Island, such stories provided the staple of folklore and may have inspired some other incidents in the state. Vampirism would flourish in Rhode Island for more than 100 years through the celebrated “Vampire Ladies,” who allegedly prowled the nights. We’ll get to them a little further along in the chaper.
Along a narrow country road in North Cumberland, Rhode Island, lies a small and overgrown cemetery, supposedly dating back to Revolutionary times. Badly neglected, the encroaching overgrowth serves to cover a number of tombs and funeral markers, including the last vestiges of the once-prosperous Staples family. Here, among the broken stones and tumbled funerary urns, lie the unquiet bones of Abigail Staples, who died toward the end of 1795 at the age of 23. It is thought that she died of consumption (tuberculosis), but her death does not appear to have brought an end to her involvement with her surviving family.
On February 8th, 1796, Stephen Staples approached the Cumberland Town Council with an unusual request. He wished to conduct an “experiment,” which involved digging up the body of his daughter Abigail, who died several months earlier, in order to see if it might save the life of his other daughter Lavinia Chace.
Abigail had been a moody, wistful girl, sometimes given to romantic dreams of marriage and family life. When her sister married Stephen Chace, its thought that Abigail harbored a little resentment toward the marriage—after all, she, a born romantic, still remained unwed and un-courted. Her dreams, however, were cut short by a bout of consumption that passed through Cumberland. Shortly after her death, however, her sister Lavinia began to exhibit similar symptoms, and began to deteriorate. She was confined to her bed for a time, and often drifted in and out of sleep. During her slumber, she had visions that a dark figure crouched at the very end of the bed and jumped onto her chest, crushing it with its weight and drawing the breath from her body. All were convinced, however, that the nightmare would pass with the sickness. One morning, her husband was disturbed when Lavinia sat bolt upright in the bed and uttered “Abigail.” She then sank back to sleep, but her outburst had troubled the young man.