Excerpts - Newspaper

**News Clippings, Quotes and Mentions**

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### The Surprising Account of those Spectres Called Vampyres

* Date: January 21, 1765 p1 Hartford Courant
* Source and Citations: Spectres Called Vampyres, Food for the Dead

The Vampyres, which come out of the graves in the nighttime, rush upon people sleeping in their beds, suck out their blood, and destroy them. They attack men, women, and children, sparing neither age nor sex. The people attacked by them complain of suffocation, and a great interception of spirits; after which they soon expire. Some of them, being asked, at the point of death, what is the matter with them, say, they suffer in the manner just related from people lately dead, or rather, the spectres of those people; upon which, their bodies, from the description given of them by the sick person, being dug out of the graves, appear, in all parts, as the nostrils, cheeks, breast, mouth, etc. turgid and full of blood. Their countenances are fresh and ruddy, and their nails, as well as hair, very much grown. And, though they have been much longer dead than many other bodies, which are perfectly putrefied, no[t] the least mark of corruption is visible upon them. Those who are destroyed by them, after their death, become Vampyres, so that to prevent so spreading an evil, it is found requisite to drive a stake through the dead body, from whence, on this occasion the blood flows as if the person was alive. Sometimes the body is dug out of the grave, and burnt to ashes; upon which, all disturbances cease. ...

### Strange Superstition

* Date: Norwich Weekly Courier: May 24th 1852
* Source and Citations Strange Superstition, Food for the Dead

A strange and almost incredible tale of superstition has been related to us of a scene recently enacted at Jewett City. It seems that about eight years ago, a citizen of Griswold names Horace Ray died of consumption. Since that time two of his children, both of them sons, we believe, have sickened and died of the same disease. The last one dying some two years since. Not long ago, the same fatal disease seized upon another son, whereupon it was determined to exhume the bodies of the two brothers already dead and burn them. And for what reason do our readers imagine? Because the dead were supposed to feed upon the living; and that so long deadas the body remained in the grave remained in a state of decomposition either wholly or in part the surviving members of the family must continue to furnish sustenance on which the dead body feed. Acting under the influence of this strane and to us hitherto unheard of superstition the family and friends of the deceased accompanied by vampire others proceeded to the burial ground at Jewett City on the 8th inst. Dug up the bodies of the deceased brothers and burned them on the spot. The scene as described to us must have been revolting in the extreme; and the idea that could have grown out of a belief such as we have referred to, tasks human credibility. We seen to have been transported back to the darkest age of unreasoning ignorance and blind superstition instead of living in the 19th century and in a state calling itself enlightened and Christian.

### Rhode Islanders Lived in Fear of Vampire Attacks

* Date: Westerly Sun; July 24th, 1977 p. 18
* By: James A Revson
* Source and Citations: {page to be made}, Food for the Dead

Another tale of vampirism involves Nellie L. Vaughn of Coventry (sic) who died in 1889 at 19. Her grave in Rhode Island Historical Cemetery No. 2 is the only sunken grave in the cemetery and continues to sink into the earth. "No vegetation or lichen will grow on the grave," reports a local university professor despite numerous attempts by grave tenders and the curious. Along the bottom the headstone are inscribed the words, "I am waiting for you."

### New York: Feb 1998

* Date: February 16th, 1998p. 41
* By: Rick Marin
* Source and Citations: {page to be made}

...Goth rave kids in flowing black Lestate get ups and Elizabethan collars, exuding deep melancholia. Their enthusiasm, visible under even the most wan and pallid visage is catching. The music, which the DJ tells me is "classic alternative" is Sex Pistols, REM, extreamly danceable. If you have a Goth fetish, or even if you don't, this may be the most fun fun you can have without actually being dead....

### Eddie Brown Notice

* Date: February 26th, 1892
* Source and Citations: {page to be made}, Food for the Dead

Our young fellow townsman Eddie Brown who has been tarrying at Colorado Springs about two years in prusit of health, but without success except temporarily at times, has returned to R.I. accompanied by his wife, she having been with im a good part of the time to nurse and cheer him. They remained abroad until it became evident he could derive no more benefit there and then sadly and gladly started for their old home in Exeter, arriving at Wickford Junction per midnight train from Boston, the 23rd inst. We learn that for the present they will stop with Mr. and Mrs. Willet Himes, the parents of Mrs. Brown.

### Providence Journal March 20

* Date: March 20th, 1982 p. 4
* Source and Citations: Providence Journal March 20, Food for the Dead

...The shocking case of exhumation is one of the border towns of the state last week is, after all, only a rather more than unusual striking illustration of a truth with cannot be denied that the amount of ignorance and superstition to be found in some corners of New England is more than surprising to one who comes into contact with it for the first time. There are considerable elements of rural population in this part of the country upon which forces of education and civilization hace made scarcely any impression.

### Providence Journal March 19: Headline

* Date: Saturday, March 19th 1892
* Source and Citations: March 19: Headline, Food for the Dead

EXHUMED THE BODIES. TESTING A HORRIBLE SUPERSTITION IN THE TOWN OF EXETER. Bodies of dead relatives taken from their graves. They had all died of consumption and the belief was that live flesh and blood would be found that fed the upon the bodies of the living....

### Was she a Victim?

* Date: Providence Journal Bulletin, October 25th, 1984 p10
* By:
* Source and Citations: {page to be made}, https://lccn.loc.gov/sn95021923

...The whole fearful matter started with unexpected deaths say Reuben Brown. Young girls, six or seven on one side of the Brown family, pined away and died. All of them. "had a mark on their throats." "people figured they'd been bit by a vampire...they all had that mark on them and nobody knows who made it." says brown. Some folks were sure that Mercy - already gone to her grave - was the vampire. A dozen people got together - members of Mercy's familr and others in the town - and decided to open the grave and pull Mercy's body into the sunlight to perform a terrible task. Reuben brown had a friend ho was there. "I use to know a man who saw them when they unearthed her. He said he saw them cut her heart out and burn it on the rock... it appeared that mercy had moved in the grave. She wasn't the way she was put in there... "But he said there were no more deaths after that. That's what he said." Rouben Brown adds this footnote: "My father believed she a vampire. he said all these girls had the mark on their throat when she died....

### Fourth Lateran Council

* Date: circa 1215, approx. November
* Source and Citations: {page to be made}

Diabolus enim et alii daemons a deo guiden natura certi sunt boni sed per se facti sunt mali

The devil and the other demons were created good by God, indeed, but essentially became bad.

### The Phantom World 1

* Date: March, 1850
* By: Augustin Calmet (edited by Henry Christmas)
* Source and Citations: The Phantom World

...They opened the graves of those who had been dead six weeks. When they came to that of the old man, they found him with his eyes open, having a fine color, with natural respiration, nevertheless motionless as the dead; whence they concluded that he was most evidently a vampire. The executioner drove a stake into his heart; they then raised a pile and reduced the corpse to ashes. No mark of vampirism was found either on the corpse of the son or on the others....

### The Phantom World 2

* Date: March, 1850
* By: Augustin Calmet (edited by Henry Christmas)
* Source and Citations: The Phantom World

...Thanks be to God, we are by no means credulous. We avow that all the light which physics can throw on this fact discovers none of the causes of it. Nevertheless, we cannot refuse to believe that to be true which is juridically attested, and by persons of probity. We will here give a copy of what happened in 1732, and which we inserted in the Gleaner (\_Glaneur\_), No. XVIII....

### Job 4:18

* New International Version: If God places no trust in his servants, if he charges his angels with error,
* New Living Translation: "If God does not trust his own angels and has charged his messengers with foolishness,
* English Standard Version: Even in his servants he puts no trust, and his angels he charges with error;
* Berean Study Bible: If God puts no trust in His servants, and He charges His angels with error,
* New American Standard Bible: 'He puts no trust even in His servants; And against His angels He charges error.
* King James Bible: Behold, he put no trust in his servants; and his angels he charged with folly:

### Daily Express - London England

* Date: April 17th, 1927
* Source and Citations: {page to be made}

Vampire brain, plan to preserve it for science. Berlin. Thursday, April 16th. The body of Fritz Haarmann, executed yesterday at hanover for 27 murders, will not be buried until it has been examined at Gottingen University. Owing to the exceptional character of the crimes - most of Haarmann's Victims were bitten to death - the case aroused tremendous interest among German scientists. It is probable that Haarmann's brain will be removed and preserved by the University authorities - Central News

### Old Colony Memorial May 4th

* Date: May 4th, 1822
* Source and Citations: Superstitions of New England, Food for the Dead

She bloom'd through the shroud was around her, locks o'er her cold bosom wave, as if the sertn monarch had crown'ed her, the fair speechless queen of the grave. But what lends the grave such lusture? O'er her cheeks what such beauty shed? His life blood, who bent there, had nurs'd her, the living was food for the dead!

### Gravestone of Simon Whipple Aldrich

* Date: 1841
* Source and Citations: {page to be made}, Food for the Dead

In memory of Simon Whipple, youngest son of Col. Dexter Aldrich and Margery his wife, who died May 6, 1841, aged 27 years. Altho' consumption's vampire grasp had seized they mortal frame ..........ing mind ..........\*

The end of the headstone is damaged and lost but the last few lines are from a poem by Eliza Earle in 1838 and reads: Altho' Consumption's vampire grasp had seized thy mortal frame thy ardent and inspiring mind untouched, remained the same.

### Providence Herald Sept 5th

* Date: September 5th, 1872
* Source and Citations: {page to be made}, Food for the Dead

The village of Peacedale was thrown into excitement on thursday last, by the report that two graves had been dug up near Watson's Corner, on the share of the Saugatucket river. The circumstances are as follows: the family of Mr. William Rose, who reside at Saunderstown, near the South Ferry, are subject to the consumption, several members of the family having died of the disease, and one member of the family is now quite low with it. At the urgent request of the sickman, the father assisted by Charles Harrington of North Kingston, repaired to the family burying-ground which is located near Watson's Corner, one mile north of Peacedale, and after building a fire first dug up the grave of his son, who had been buried 12 years, for the purpose of taking out his heart and liver, which were to be placed in the fire and consumed, in order to carry out the old superstition that the consumptive dead draw nourishment from the living. But as the body was entirely reduced to ashes, except for a few bones, a daughter who had been dead seven years, was taken up out of the grave beside her brother. This body was found to be nearly wasted away, except the vital parts, the liver and heart which were in a perfect state of preservation. The coffin also was nearly perfect state of preservation, while the son's coffin was nearly demolished. After the liver and heart had been taken out of the body, it was placed in the fire and consumed, the ashes only being put back in the grave. The fire was then put out, and the two men departed to their respective homes. Only a few spectators were there to witness the horrible scene. It seems that this is not the first time that graves have been dug up where consumption was prevalent in the family, and the vital parts burned in order to save the living. A few years ago the same was done in the village of Mooresfield and also in the town of North Kingstown, both of course without success.

### New York World Feb 2nd

* Date: Sunday February 2nd, 1896
* Sources and Citations: {page to be made}, Food for the Dead

VAMPIRE IN NEW ENGLAND. Dead Bodies Dug Up And Their Hearts Burned To Prevent Disease. Strange Superstition Of Long Ago. The Old Belief Was That Ghostly Monsters Sucked The Blood Of Their Living Relatives.

Recent ethnological research has disclosed something very extraordinary in Rhode Island. It appears that the ancient vampire superstition still survives in that state and within the last few years many people have been digging up dead bodies of relatives for the purpose of burning their hearts. Near Newport, scores of such exhumations have been made, the purpose being to prevent the dead from being entertained is that a person who has died from consumption is likely to rise from the grave at night and suck the blood of surviving members of his or her own family, thus dooming them to a similar fate. The discovery of the survival in highly educated New England of a superstition dating back to the days of Sardanapalus and Nebuchadnezzar {669-640 BCE} has been made by George R. Stetson, an ethnologist of repute. He has found it rampant in the district which includes the towns of Exeter, Foster, Kingstown, East Greenwich and many scattered hamlets. This region, where abandoned farms are numerous, is the tramping ground of the book agent, the chrome peddler and patent medicine man. The social isolation is as complete as it was two centuries ago. Two Typical Cases. There is one small village distant fifteen miles from Newport where within the last few years there have been at least held a dozen resurrections on this account. The most recent was made two yeas ago {1894} in a family where the mother and four children was exhumed and the heart burned....Another instance was noted ina seashore town, not far from Newport, possessing a summer hotel and a few cottages of hot-weather residents. An intelligent man, by trade a mason, informed Mr. Stetson that had lost two brothers by consumption. On the death of the second brother, his father was advised to take up the body and burn the heart. he refused to do so and was consequently attacked by the disease. His heart was burned and in this way the rest of the family escaped. This frightful superstition is said to prevail in all of the isolated districts of Southern Rhode Island and it survives to some extent in the large centers of population. Sometimes the body is burned, not merely the heart and the ashes scattered.

### Providence Sunday May 27

* Date: May 27th, 1990, p. A1
* By: Kevin Sullivan
* Source and Citations: {page to be made}, Food for the Dead

A journey through old rhode island; quietly but in vain, the rural areas try to fend off modernity

... just before dark, we arrive at West Greenwich Center, which is the center of absolutely nothing in West Greenwich. There's an old boarded up church and a graveyard, and when we arrive, a pickup truck. In the graveyard, three high school aged boys are looking at gravestones. They say they are looking for the grave of Mercy Brown, the vampire... her gravesite has become a Halloween favorite among vandals and spook-seekers. But these lads, all high school sophomores are not interested in vandalism or history or even vampires and the occult. Explains Erik \_\_\_\_ : "we want to bring girls down here and freak them out." Mercy Brown is buried in Exeter, at least 10 miles away.

### Hartford, Connecticut June 22

* Date: June 22nd 1784
* By: Moses Holmes
* Sources and Citations: {page to be made}, Food for the Dead
* Additional Page: PPP Jun 84 (article reprint)

Whereas of late years there has been advanced for a certainty, by a certain Quack Doctor, a foreigner, that a certain cure may be had for a consumption, where any of the same family had before that time died of the same disease: directing to have the bodies of such as had died to be dug up, and further said that out of the breast or vitals might be found a sprout or vine fresh and growing, together with the remains of the vitals, being consumed in the fire, would be an effectual cure to the same family: - and such direction so far gained credit, that in one instance, the experiment was thoroughly made in Willington, on the first day of June instant : two bodies were dug up which belonged to the family of Mr. Isaac Johnson of the Place, they both died with the consumption, one had been buried one year and eleven months. The other one year a third of the same family then sick - on full examination of the then small remains by two doctors then present, viz. Doctors Grant and West, not the least discovery could be made; and to prevent the misrepresentation of the fact I being an eyewitness, that under the coffin was sundry small sprouts about one inch in length, then fresh but most likely was the produce of sorrel seeds which fell under the coffin when put in the earth. And the bodies of the dead may rest quiet in their graves without such interruption, I think the public ought to be aware of such an imposture.

### R.I. Latter-Day Transylvania?

* Date: Providence Evening Bulletin; February 25th 1975 p. 1, A8
* Sources and Citations: {page to be made},

... and in Peace Dale, William Rose disinterred the body of his daughter in 1874, cut out the heart and burned it to prevent further attacks from her grave on the living family members... a hired hand at some handsome old estate on Rose Hill Road said he knew where the Rose family burial ground was and, sure, he'd be glad to take us there himself.After he joined the expedition, he was politely informed that "our interest in local history" had to do with vampires. But, proving a bit of an occultist himself, he said he too had heard of the incident. he guided the part up Rose Hill road several hundred yards to a cemetery set off in the woods and surrounded by a chest-high stone wall. The sand off a gate latch snapping shut startled, but did not deter the searchers. "I've got it" McNally cried suddenly, rushing forward to a large gray stone marked 'William Rose' and pointing to engravings that indicate the man would have been just about the right age in 1874 to dig up his daughter's grave. A thorough search of the graveyard, however, failed to turn up the resting place of the daughter. The group beat a hasty retreat, delivering the professor to the university just in time to deliver his 4 pm lecture.

### Providence Journal March 21

* Date: March 21st, 1892, p. 8
* Sources and Citations: {page to be made}, Food for the Dead

...All mention of "the vampire" is omitted from this account of the exhuming, but this signifies nothing. The correspondent simply failed to get to the bottom of the superstition. The files of the Journal when reference is made in them to the practice of the tradition in Rhode Island, without exception speak of the search of the graves in such cases as attempts to discover the vampire. he last illustration of the practice was six or seven years ago in the same county, and it was then so described. Previous accounts of the digging up of the bodies from the same purpose are also inspired by the vampire theory. Otherwise the analogy between this case and those which occurred in Europe in the 18th century is perfect, except in the terrible suggestion that the patient must take the ashes of the vampire internally to be cured. These ideas are not so far as can be learned, based upon any form of the European tradition. The books and authorities of Europe do not connect the theory with consumption, not, in it's logical turn upon that application with the victim's eating the vampire. This presentation of the theory must be of American or Rhode Island origin, and most likely it can be claimed as the exclusive possession of Rhode Island country people. It is horrible to contemplate and the local correspondent can hardly be blamed for attributing it to the Indians. it seems very off that South County people alone should ever had regengered and accepted such fancies... how the tradition got to Rhode Island and planted itself firmly here, cannot be said. It was in existence in Connecticut and Maine 50 and 100 years ago, and as far back in come cases as the beginning of the 18th century. The idea seems never to have been accepted in the Northern parts of the state, but every five or ten years it has cropped out in Coventry, West Greenwich, Exeter, Hopkinton, Richmond, and the neighboring towns.

### News of Fritz Haarmann

* Date: December 21st, 1924 The News of the World
* Sources and Citations: {page to be made}

The details of the atrocious crimes for which Haarmann will shortly pay with his life were extremely revolting. All his victims were between 12 and 18 years of age and it was proved that the accused actually sold the flesh for human consumption. He once made sausages in his kitchen and together with the purchaser, cooked and ate them. Some Alienists hold that even the twenty-four murders cannot possible exhaust the full of Haarmann's crimes and estimate the total as high as fifty. With the exception of a few counts the prisoner made minutely detailed confessions and for days with court listened to his grim narrative of how he cut up bodies of his victims and disposed of the fragments in various ways. He consistently repudiated the imputation of insanity but at the same time maintained unhealthy and unhesitantly that all murders were committed when he was in a state of trance and unaware of what he was doing. This contention was specifically brushed aside by the bench, which in it's judgment pointed out that according to his own account of what happened, it was necessary for him hold down his victims by hand in a particular way before it was possible for him to inflict a fatal bite on their throats. Such action often is necessarily involves some degree of deliberation and conscious purpose.

### An Unusual Tradition

* Date: Providence Journal-Bulletin; October 9th, 1982 p. A7
* By: Richard C. Dujardin
* Sources and Citations: {page to be made}, Food for the Dead

 ...But the biggest irritant, members say, has been the constant vandalism to the church and it's property, which they attribute not only to their church's remote location but to a persistent rumor that there is a vampire buried in the church cemetery. What was that about a vampire? "As far as we can determine, it started 15 years ago when a teacher at Coventry High School told his students there was a vampire buried in a cemetery off 102," reports church historian Evelyn Smith. "The teacher never mentioned the name of the cemetery, but the students tried to find where the vampires was. They stopped here and came across a tombstone for Nellie Vaughn. She died in 1889 and her stone reads "I am watching and waiting for you." "The kids assumed that she must have been the vampire and the story has just spread ever since. What we want to do now is set the record straight. There is an alleged vampire, but her name is Mercy Brown and she's buried at Chestnut Hill Cemetery, not here. People have got the wrong cemetery and the wrong person." Mrs Smith wants people to know that Nellie Vaughn was not a vampire. "There is a man in out congregation who is 100 years old who knew Nellie Vaughn personally. He says there was no talk of her being a vampire while she was living or after her death." Nonetheless, the story about Nellie persists, she says. And hardly a day goes buy without people showing up at the cemetery to loos at the woman's grave. Tombstones have been overturned, there even appears to have been an attempt to dig up the coffin.

### Local Haunts

* Date: North Kingstown Villager; October 1995
* By: Chris Carroll
* Sources and Citations: {page to be made}, Food for the Dead

 Many in {North Kingstown} know the story of Mercy Brown, the vampire of Exeter, who was exhumed and whose heart was burned to ash on a stone near the grave. She was blamed for the failing health of her brother Edwin, and for the deaths over her sister and mother. The ritual, supposed to rid the corpse of the vampire spirit, failed to save Edwin Brown. Many now believe that the family died of consumption, the 19th century name for Tuberculosis. But the stories of Rhode Island vampires do not end with Mercy Brown. Just a few miles to the north in the town of West Greenwich, lies the body of Nellie Vaughn, who died in 1889 at the age of nineteen. Etched in her headstone is the inscription, "I am waiting and watching for you." Nellie Vaughn was thought to be a vampire at the time of her death. To this day it is claimed that nothing will grown near her grave, in spite of many attempts to plant there. Now for the frightening part: at least 12 people have reported seeing, hearing, or feeling the presence of Nellie Vaughn while visiting her gravesite. her ghost has often been heard to say "I am perfectly pleasant," but is has also been known to scratch the face of those who may not agree. One mistook the spectre for an insane person before the spirit vanished...

### 19th Cent. Rhode Islanders Lived in Fear

* Date: Westerly Sun; July 24th, 1977 p. 18
* By: James A Revson
* Source and Citations: {page to be made}, Food for the Dead

 ...William C.(sic) Rose of Peace Dale feared an attack by vampire in 1874 because of his daughter's recent death. The then 53 year old man exhumed his daughter's body in Rose Hill Cemetery just outside of Kingston on Route 138 and "burned her heart" to avoid even the possibility vampirism, according to a living descendant of Rose. The graves of Rose and his wife Mary A. (sic) stand out prominently in the graveyard just inside the iron gates but the daughter's grave cannot be found. A search through birth, marriage and death certificated in South Kingstown Town Hall showd no record of the family....

### Letter to the Editor

* Date:
* By: Mrs. Arnold
* Source and Citations: {page to be made}, Food for the Dead

I am writing to dispute Chris Carroll's story, Local Haunts in the October 1995 issue. The story of Nellie Vaughn is not true. In the early 1970's a high school teacher told his students about a 19 year old girl (whose) body was exhumed. Her family thought she was a vampire... the teacher was talking about Mercy Brown. When the students found Nellie Vaughn, they were sure that they had found the grave. The students were wrong, but the rumor continues. Before the mistake in identity, grass always grew on the grave. When grass is constantly being trampled, and dug it will not grow. Nellie's stone has been broken into chunks and stolen. Now that no one can find the grave, the grass grows. No grass has ever been planted there. I have gone to this cemetery all my life, and have witnessed this myself. A man who died at the age of 101, in the 1980s knew Nellie when he was a child, before and after her death. This man told me himself. Much vandalism has been caused because of this mistake.

### Four Looking for Vampire Find Casket

* Date: Providence Journal-Bulletin; November 2nd, 1993 p. 8
* By George E. Trafford
* Source and Citations: {page to be made}, Food for the Dead

 Two couples out for pre-Halloween fun in a historical cemetery Friday night made a macabre discover that has police baffled - a newly opened grave, with a body in an opened casket beside it. State police say they don't know who dug up the casket or what the motive was. They said nothing was missing from the casket... Thresa \_\_\_, one of the four who found the casket, said the group had intended to visit a staged haunted house attraction in Coventry but arrived just after it closed. Then they decided to visit the historical cemetery to look for the grave of someone, who, according to local legend, was a vampire. As they were walking through the cemetery, under Friday night's full moon, they stumbled upon the opened grave...

### Vampires - St. Johnsbury

* Date: St. Johnsbury Caledonian; August 13th 1891 p. 7 image 7.
* Sources and Citations: chroniclingamerica.loc.gov, {page to be made}

VAMPIRES.

If a cat enters the chamber where a man lies dying and passes over his body, the man after death will become a vampire....

### A Therapy from the Grave

* Date: Washington Post; October 25th 1993 p.A3
* By: David Brown
* Sources and Citations: {page to be made}

..."It is sort of homeopathic magic, like taking the hair of the dog that bit you," said bell. "It's what inoculation is, and in that sense is not that far removed from current scientific thinking."...

### This Exhumation in the South County

* Date: Providence Journal; March 12st, 1892 p. 8
* Sources and Citations: {page to be made}

"Ugh" says the person of refinement "horrible" excl{aims} even the reader of the horrible daily papers. but those who believe in it express themselves thus: "It may be true" "You may find out there" "I always heard it was so" and "My father and grandfather always said so" from the traditions of the vampire, it is, on the whole, pleasing to e free, but how singular that this old belief of the \_\_{unreadable}\_\_ been acted upon in White Russia or Lower Hungary, Rhode Islanders would have read it as fiction, or a strange wild falsehood, but this exhumation in the South Country, in the town of Exeter, with the names of persons modern physician assisting is a fact divested of mystery or fictional description.

### Vampire is Described as Follows

* Date: Providence Journal; March 12st, 1892 p. 8
* Sources and Citations: {page to be made}

... The vampire is described in the Century Dictionary as follows: "A kind of spectral being or ghost still possessing a human body, which, according to a superstition existing among the Slavic and other races of the lower Danube, leaves the grave during the night, and maintains a semblance of life by sucking the warm blood of men and women while they are sleep. Dead wizards, werewolves, heretics and other outcasts became vampire... and any one killed by a vampire. On the discovery of a vampire's grave, the body which it is supposed, will be found fresh and ruddy, must be disinterred, thrust though with a whitethorn stake and buried in order to render it harmless." In the Encyclopedia Britannica and other books, a similar description of the theory occurs. They all recount that the tradition comes from Europe, and did not originate among the Indians. The earliest existence is said to have been in South Western Russia, Servia {Serbia}, Poland and Bohemia... from 1730 to to 1735 the tradition took on renewed life and started in Hungary, spread all over Europe, and to America... in all forms of the tradition, the vampire left it's abode, wrought its object at night. When the full moon shone and the sky was cloudless, it's opportunity was supposed to be the most favorable. It appears as a frog, toad, spider, venomous fly, from the moment until it returned to the grave and its corpse home. Its active moments when wantering about were spent in sucking the blood of the living and this was invariably the blood of some relation or friend of the dead. From this feeding, the body of the dead became fresh and rosy. Another form of the tradition, but with far less acceptance, was that the soul of the living man or woman left the body in his sleep in the shape of straw or fluff of down. It was wafted to the victim on the night breeze and returned to the living without a warning of the visit, the victim being left pale and wan and the vampire-man being freshened and invigorated... For the eradication of the curse, the old method was always digging up the body of the dead, the driving of a stake though the heart, the cutting off of the head, the tearing out and burning of the heart, or the pouring of boiling water and vinegar into the grave....

### Letter to the Editor 1822

* Date: Old Colony Memorial and Plymouth Count Advertiser; May 11th 1822 p. 7
* Source and Citations: Old Colony Memorial May 11th 1822, Food for the Dead
* See Also: Queen of the Grave

... The number specified, as well as fanciful ideas relative to the superstitious belief in the salutary effects to be derived from touching the entombed corpse, bear evident marks of great exaggeration. During a residence of nearly forty years in the district referred to, and favoured with opportunities of correct observation respecting this subject, the writer of this reply has not been made acquainted, with but one solitary instance of raising the body of the dead for the benefit of the living: and this was done purely in compliance with the caprice of a surviving sister, reduced to the last stage of hectic debility and despair. Although the family and connections entertained not the smallest hope of beneficial consequences, they could not in duty and tenderness refuse to indulge a feeble minded and debilitated young woman ina mean, on which she had confided her last fallacious hope. Inferences must be extreamly incorrect when drawn from solitary instances, and it may with truth be affirmed, that the inhabitants of Plymouth County are equally intelligent, and not more remarkable addicted to superstition than the generality of our race.

### A Person Who Died of Consumption

* Date: Old Colony Memorial and Plymouth Count Advertiser; May 4th 1822 p. 4
* Source and Citations: Strange Superstition, Food for the Dead
* See Also: Queen of the Grave

... The consent of the mother being obtained, it was agreed that four persons, attended by the surviving and complaining brother should, at sunrise the next day dig up the remains of the last buried sister. At the appointed hour they attended in the burying yard, and having with much exertion removed the earth, they raised the coffin upon the ground; then, displacing the flat lid, they lifted the covering from her face, and discovered what they had indeed anticipated, but dredded to declare - yes i saw the visage of one who had been long the tenant of a silent grave, lit up with the brilliance of youthful health. The cheek was full to dimpling, and a rich profusion of hair shaded her cold forehead, and while some of its richest curls floated upon her unconscious breast. The large blue eyes had scarcely lost its brilliancy, and the livid fullness of her lips seemed almost to say, "loose me and let me go."...

### What Really Happened to Mercy Brown?

* Date: Providence Sunday Journal Magazine; October 28th 1974 p4
* Sources and Citations: {page to be made}

... Let the scientists and the rest of the skeptics have their say. In their own dark little hearts they know there are strange things that even they can't explain. Maybe nobody could tape Mercy's voice. for instance, because she wasn't there when the recorder was. Vampires DO roam...

### Did they hear the Vampire Whisper?

* Date: Providence Sunday Journal Magazine; October 28th 1979 p. 6
* Sources and Citations: {page to be made}

Mercy Brown died nearly 88 years ago. She was the fourth from her family in nine years. Life had been drained from all of them. Vampirism was the cause, everyone knew that. So why couldn't Mercy whisper from the grave again. The undead do... don't they?

### Interview from TV Transcribed

* Date: April 20th, 1982 WJAR TV Providence, R.I.
* By: Transcribed by Bell, Michael E.
* Sources and Citations: Food for the Dead

Ed: We have something from the grave...definitely what it is, we don't know, but there's something that come off that tape recorder.

Narrator: Ed and Sally...visited Mercy Brown's grave and claim they have evidence to confirm their belief that Mercy was a vampire. Inspired by a TV movie in which a tape recorder picked up voices of he dead, Ed and Sally decided to make their recording.

Ed: Whenever you get around this cemetery, my feeling is that definitely there is something that roams around here at night. it's just that type of a place. It's a lonely pretty desolate place, and anything is possible down here. And...there's something there, definitely.

Narrator: What that something is, Ed and Sally believe they have on their tape recorder

Ed: I've heard the tape numerous times. i've sat down by myself and listened to it, on many occasions. And I can pick up where it sounds like she's sayin', "Please help me."

Sally: We really didn't expect anything, you know, at first...and then all of a sudden hearing that. it was really horrifying. Even Ed, he was scared. he says "Yeah, lets get out out of here. There's something in there."

Ed: Well, Mercy Brown was supposedly a vampire. And based on what I've read, and what I've talked about, and what I've heard about -- she was a vampire. And 'til proven differently, I figure that she was a vampire.

### Rhode Island Fears Vampires

* The Times; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
* 19 Jan 1896, Sunday Page 13
* Rhode Island Fears Vampires / Strange Survival of a Grisly Superstition

...Vampirism became a plague, more dreaded than any form of disease. Everywhere people were dying from the attacks of the blood-sucking monsters, each victim becoming in turn a night-prowler in pursuit of human prey. Terror of the mysterious and unearthly peril filled all hearts. Evidence enough as to the prevalence of the mischief was afforded by the condition of many of the bodies that were dug up by the commission appointed for the purpose. In many instances corpses which had been buried for weeks and even months were found fresh and life-like. Sometimes fresh blood was actually discovered on their lips. What proof could be more convincing, inasmuch, as was well known, the buried body of a vampire is preserved and nourished by its nights repasts. The blood on the lips, of course, was that of the victim of the night before. The faith in vampirism entertained by the public at large was as complete as that which is felt in a discovery of modern science. It was an actual epidemic that threatened the people, spreading rapidly and only to be checked by the most drastic measures....