Smarticus Tells History
What we likely all once knew about history, has likely been forgotten. Here, at Smarticus Tells History, we move around the timeline picking up some of the most interesting and sometimes downright weird stories. Stories such as the Rabbit Queen, or how Cleopatra wasn't Egyptian, the Black Plague and many more.They are all true, no matter how quacky and quirky some may seem. We keep them short and mostly to the point. So put your listening ears on, have a beer or two, and learn a thing or two!!!
Smarticus Tells History
Episode 53: When Tuberculosis Bred Vampires in the Heart of America
Unearth the chilling truths that lurk in the shadows of history as we recount the New England Vampire Panic, where the dread of disease transformed into a fear of the undead. Together with expert folklorists Michael Bell and Paul Barber, we uncover how 18th and 19th-century communities were ensnared in a web of superstition, leading them to disturb the eternal rest of their dearly departed. This is not mere fiction; it's a stark revelation of the lengths to which fear can drive humanity, a journey through an era where tuberculosis's pall cast a much more sinister specter across the New England countryside.
Gather 'round as we share the poignant account of Mercy Brown, a symbol of an epidemic's grip on the human psyche, and how her community's desperate acts may have sparked the imagination of none other than Bram Stoker. The tenebrous practices of the past, designed to protect the living from the clutches of those thought to feast upon them from beyond the grave, are brought to light, painting a vivid picture of the battle between an invisible killer and the visceral response it provoked. Join us for this excursion into a time when the fear of the unknown fanned the flames of dark folklore, and discover how the vampire myth we know today is deeply rooted in the misfortunes of a bygone era.
Welcome to Smartacus.
Speaker 2:Tells.
Speaker 1:History. Alright, enough with the echo and fanfare. You're here for history, right, and not that boring crap you learned in high school. This stuff's actually interesting, like things you've never heard about the Civil War, cleopatra, automobiles, monopoly, the Black Plague and more Fascinating stories, interesting topics and some downright weird facts from the past. It's a new twist on some stories you may know and an interesting look at some things you may have never heard. So grab a beer, kick back and enjoy. Here's your host, smarticus.
Speaker 3:Hello history enthusiasts, welcome back to another episode of Smarticus Tells History. I am, of course, your host, smarticus. Another episode of Smarticus Tells History. I am, of course, your host, smarticus, accompanied by my co-host, phoenix. Hello, today we will be embarking on a chilling journey into the past, a time when fear, superstition and the unknown disease collided to create the New England Vampire Panic. Let's discuss consumption, and I'm not talking about tuberculosis. You'll get that joke later.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, our food is not actually a food, it's a drink. Can you hear the tinkling of glass and ice?
Speaker 3:It's a drink.
Speaker 2:Can you guess what it is? It's a bloody mary, which is probably really tacky considering what we're gonna be talking about, but oh well, that's a kick.
Speaker 3:I now remember why I don't drink Bloody Mary.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, why's that?
Speaker 3:Because they're freaking disgusting.
Speaker 2:You're the one that put soy sauce in it. Hey, I followed the recipe.
Speaker 3:The recipe told me to put a little bit of soy sauce in it, so that's what I did. Okay, I'm going to come over here and drink my apple juice. I'm a big boy now.
Speaker 2:Is it real apple juice or is it your crone?
Speaker 3:No, it's apple juice. It's apple juice and cranberry juice. I mixed them.
Speaker 2:That's pretty yummy.
Speaker 3:It is. It's pretty tasty yeah.
Speaker 2:Nice, okay, well so, yeah, we're having bloody Marys, although Barticus thinks they're pretty disgusting.
Speaker 3:He's very against it. Not a fan. I endured for you guys.
Speaker 2:That's right, the sacrifices we make. So, moving right along, I'm going to need you to picture this in your head Rural backwoods of New England during the tail end of the 1700s and into the mid-1800s. The landscape is dominated by small, tight-knit communities trying to scratch out a living Sounds really quaint, until you learn that there is a terrible monster roaming around at night, slowly sucking the life out of people For a family or friend. It doesn't discriminate. In those tiny towns, long ago, it was believed to be the dearly departed, inflicting consumption on others from their graves. Newspapers would call them vampires. But what exactly was it, and how did this superstition grip the imaginations of those living in this era?
Speaker 3:Sounds scary until you look back on it with the lens of modern medical science. What was believed to be undead, draining life from those still alive, has since been revealed to be tuberculosis or, as they called it, consumption.
Speaker 2:Funny how two things can be true at the same time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, isn't it? But the question still has to be asked how did the people of these little towns come to think that the wasting disease was some kind of vampiric creature? There's a lot of theories about that from historians and folklorists. One from the latter group, michael Bell, asked that same question, especially since it was usually family members who were accusing their deceased loved ones of slowly killing other family members and neighbors, which, I mean, is kind of true. I mean, yeah, retroactively, yeah, yeah, but they weren't running around, you know, with a straw, yeah, with a straw.
Speaker 2:Creeping in through the window at night and going thanks, I'll be back tomorrow To answer. It's important to remember that, even though Robert Koch identified the tuberculosis bacterium in 1882, that information didn't reach most rural towns until long after the panic. Even then, there wasn't a drug treatment available until the 1940s. That aside, it's important to note that around that area during the 1700s were a lot of Slavic and German immigrants. Naturally, what they brought with them were superstitions from the old country, such as ghouls and vampires. These Slavic influences didn't diminish over the centuries because immigrants never stopped coming. Even during the Revolutionary War, Hessian mercenaries came over and then decided to stay.
Speaker 3:Bell believes that all the new waves of immigrants believing in these superstitions is why these beliefs of the life-sucking creatures from the graves stayed so long in New England. Beliefs of the life-sucking creatures from the graves stayed so long in New England. Another folklorist, paul Barber, has actually examined and found ways that the myth actually makes practical sense to an extent. To the unschooled, he asserts a bloated corpse would look like it had just eaten. A corpse after being staked screams when the building. Bacterial gas of naturally decaying body escapes. The newly made whole.
Speaker 3:Ew yeah whole Ew yeah, ew.
Speaker 2:Ew, it's gross, but still a really good point. But if you know anything about people during that time, the first thing that should come to your mind is that they were puritanically minded. So how did they get to the point where they were willing to exhume their loved ones and desecrate their bodies? That's right, folks, and desecrate their bodies? That's right folks. New England had people all over the woods cutting up bodies, pulling out hearts and livers, burning them and then making a drink out of the ashes to give to those believed to be victims of the undead. Maybe it would be better than your drink.
Speaker 3:I mean I'd try it.
Speaker 3:Just once, maybe twice, just once, To quote the Smithsonian Magazine article about the same topic. Contrary to their puritanical reputation, rural New Englanders in the 1800s were a fairly heathen lot. Apparently, only 10% of the population belonged to a church. Rhode Island, for instance, was originally founded as a haven for the religiously opposed, so in the place of organized religion, what they had were superstitions. We're talking about magical springs that could heal dead bodies that bled when their murderer was present, burying shoes by the fireplace to prevent the devil from shimmying down the chimney like Santa Claus Right.
Speaker 2:They had some wild ideas back then. Which brings us back to the exhumations. In these rural areas, especially during the late 1800s after the Civil War, young men were not wanting to come home if they ever could, which meant that the populations were dwindling to just the old and infirm, marinating in their old ways and beliefs. An exhumation, even if grudgingly done, would have been viewed by everyone involved as a sign of doing everything that could be done to stop the. And that brings us to one of the most famous ones, mercy Lena Brown of Exeter, rhode Island. This girl's story is crazy.
Speaker 3:Painting a new picture. Exeter, rhode Island, during the latter end of the 19th century, after the Civil War, was mostly a farming community with soil that was partly fertile. The population was down due to the war, young men taking the new railroad out west in search of better opportunities. In 1892, there were 961 people where there had been 2,500 just 70 years before. Waves of tuberculosis were rushing into the area for decades. That's pretty crazy. It dropped by over half, right yeah.
Speaker 2:And especially considering how slow things were back in the day, like during this time, just 70 years was all it took.
Speaker 3:Right yeah.
Speaker 2:The Brown family lived on the eastern side of town in a small homestead of 30 to 40 acres. In 1882, the family was hit by the disease. Mercy's mother, mary Eliza, was the first to succumb to it. Next was her sister, mary Olive, the following year. She was quite a beloved dressmaker and member of the community. According to the obituary article that is still in the Brown family possession, a few years later their brother, edwin, got sick too and tried to get better in Colorado Springs as a climate change was often considered a good remedy. Sadly, that never worked. Edwin returned home.
Speaker 3:Mercy, or Lena as some called her, didn't become obviously ill until a decade after her mother and sister died. By then, she had what was called galloping consumption, which just means that it had hit hard and fast and she was gone quickly, so quickly in fact. She beat her brother to the grave. This was where their neighbors got involved, fearing that their own health was at risk as well as being concerned for Edwin. They went to the children's father, george, with an alternative take on the matter. Perhaps the family had fallen prey to a force of nature that was from the old country? Perhaps one of the three brown women wasn't fully dead and was slowly sucking the life out of the rest of the family?
Speaker 2:Their big idea was that they should exhume the bodies, see which one had fresh blood in its heart. George Brown consented to the exhumations and examinations of his family by a doctor, but refused to be there to see the atrocity that was going to be visited on them. What they found was that the mother and older sister were just bones, but Mercy, who had only been dead for a few months during wintertime, was still pretty well preserved.
Speaker 3:The doctor that George had insisted on attending performed a graveside autopsy and found that the heart had clotted in decomposed blood. He also emphasized that her lungs and this is a quote showed diffused tuberculosis germs. End quote. That didn't stop the villagers from taking her heart and her liver, burning them on a nearby rock and feeding the ashes to Edwin. He died less than two months later. What's even crazier than this is that there were reporters there to witness this seemingly pagan ritual. They took the story and ran, turning it into an international real-life Penny Dreadful. It's no wonder that Edwin died.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:You fed him already, not to mention part of a corpse Right, but a corpse that was infected with tuberculosis. Of course he's going to die.
Speaker 2:Right, but that seemed like a totally logical thing for them to do. In their minds, that was going to be the cure-all. And what's even crazier to me is like they never bothered to acknowledge the fact that all of these crazy remedies didn't fix anything. Nobody ever survived.
Speaker 3:Yep, yet they kept ever survived. Yep, yet they kept trying them.
Speaker 2:Yes, over and over again. Fortunately the person's already dead, but still Ew. The story went from newspaper to newspaper, then to an anthropologist journal, and then the foreign press got involved. One such paper in London insisted that and this is a quote Yankee vampires was an American problem and certainly not a product of the British folk tradition, ignoring entirely that a good number of people in that area could trace their family lines all the way back to England. Funny enough, a 1896 New York world clipping fell into the hands of a London stage manager some of you might know as Bram Stoker. His theater company was touring the US that year and by the next year he was publishing his novel titled Dracula.
Speaker 3:A lot of parallels can be drawn between his character, lucy, not just in name but in her plot, when compared to Mercy Brown's story A very loved young woman who becomes suddenly and terribly pale and gaunt with difficulty breathing until she seemingly dies. Then she is later exhumed by a doctor, found to be a vampire sucking the life out of people, and her heart is destroyed. The name part that I mentioned before. Sometimes she was called Lena, pretty close to Lucy. Of course that's all speculation and conjecture from Abigail Tucker's Smithsonian Magazine article, but it also makes for a good theory.
Speaker 2:And, as my grandpa used to say, don't ruin a good story with facts. But, as we said, this evidence that suggests that these vampire scares went on for decades, bordering on almost 100 years. And while Mercy Brown's tale became legendary and world-renowned, there were other bodies that experienced similar and different treatment. There's a town in Vermont where people from surrounding villages came to witness a heart burning in a blacksmith's forge, and there are cases where it was believed that all that needed to be done was to simply flip the person over and nail the coffin shut again.
Speaker 3:Flip them over. How Like front to back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that way their back was facing the top of the coffin. Yeah, just roll them over. How like front to back? Yeah, so that way their back was facing the top of the the coffin. Yeah, just roll them over, that'll fix it stick a stick of flour between their buttcheeks.
Speaker 3:Oh, it was, uh, a million ways to die in the west.
Speaker 2:That's what it was oh my gosh, I haven't seen that in like forever I was trying to think like, where did I see that from?
Speaker 3:that's what it was.
Speaker 2:It was uh star wars, uh liam neeson oh yeah, I was never going to get to that conclusion when you said star wars I.
Speaker 3:I always go to the old ones, oh, yeah, like because he played Shirley Theron's husband in that movie and she knocked him out Somehow. I don't remember how, but she knocked him out and he fell over with his butt sticking up, and so she pulled his pants down and stuck a little dandelion flower in it and left.
Speaker 2:I'm done with you, goodbye.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was pretty funny. That's what I thought of. There's something wrong with me. If you're getting some Salem Witch Trial vibes from this, well, you're not alone. The thing about Exeter that sets them apart is that they don't promote this dark time in their town's history. In fact, they really don't appreciate any attention about the matter at all. They say that the legend should be left alone, especially after two teenagers were killed on their pilgrimage to visit Mercy's gravestone, which has also been stolen several times, to the point where there is now a metal strap to keep it from being removed again. She lies in between her brother and her father.
Speaker 2:While this story seems sad and, don't get me wrong, it is. It is good to know that George Brown did not believe in the myth, according to the Providence Journal, but, as we said before, he was the one who insisted on having a doctor do the autopsy. He did this, the journal says, to satisfy the neighbors. Another newspaper added on to that by claiming that it was because they were and this is a quote worrying the life out of him. End quote. Of course, we can't say whether it was right or wrong on his part to let them have their way, but the fact was that his family was dead and he still had to live alongside the other people there. What's left of Mercy is a quilt, possibly made from scraps from her mother and sister's dresses. Her family takes very good care of it and brings it out to remember her once a year.
Speaker 1:Isn't it?
Speaker 3:sweet, and on that note we must conclude this chapter in history, A chapter that reminds us of the power of folklore, superstition and the lengths people will go to in order to protect themselves and their loved ones. Thank you for joining us on this eerie exploration of the New England Vampire Panic. If you have any historical questions or topics you would like us to explore in future episodes, please do not hesitate to reach out. Thank you for joining us, and if you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a review. We'll be back with more stories from the past. Until then, keep exploring.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to Smarticus Tells History. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to rate and review and make sure to subscribe and be sure to follow the show at facebookcom. Slash Smarticus Tells History or just click the link in the show description. Thanks again for listening. See you next time.