It starts with coughing. Not just one person—your whole family. Your wife’s cheeks have gone pale. Your son has blood on his lips. Your daughter sleeps all day and wastes away by night. The doctor says it’s “consumption,” but you’ve seen this before. Everyone in your town has. People get sick. Then sicker. Then, sometimes years later, another family member passes away from the same thing.
So when your neighbors start whispering that one of your buried relatives might be feeding on the rest… you don’t laugh. You listen.Because in 19th-century New England, that idea wasn’t fantasy. It was a ritual. It was your last resort.
When science didn’t have answers, people dug up their departed
From the late 1700s to the end of the 1800s, communities across the northeastern United States were struck by a mysterious and brutal illness. Consumption—what we now call tuberculosis—was the leading infectious killer in America at the time. In parts of New England, it accounted for up to 25% of all losses, according to the Smithsonian.
But what terrified people wasn’t just the disease—it was how it spread. One person in a family would die. Then another. Then another. It moved like something personal. Like something with intent.
Medical knowledge hadn’t caught up. The tuberculosis bacterium wouldn’t be discovered until 1882, and even then, it wasn’t widely understood outside of cities. In rural areas, people were watching their families vanish and hearing nothing from doctors except “there’s nothing we can do.”
So instead, they turned to folklore.
Vampires, but not like you think
The people digging up graves weren’t thinking about capes and fangs. The word “vampire” wasn’t even their term — it was one later challenged by newspaper reporters and folklorists observing what was happening. In their minds, the issue wasn’t some bloodsucking monster rising from the grave. The fear was subtler — and more terrifying.
They believed that a deceased family member could still be draining life from the living. Not physically, but spiritually. Through some lingering connection, the spirits were believed to be holding on. And until that link was broken, the sickness would continue.
According to folklorist Michael E. Bell, who documented more than 80 such cases in New England, people believed that a corpse not decomposing fast enough might still be “active”—feeding on the energy of the living. These weren’t monster stories. They were household tragedies twisted into folklore logic.
And so came the question: how do you find the one who’s still feeding?
What a “vampire” looked like
The answer came from what people saw in the grave. If a body looked fresh—plump, with blood at the lips or liquid in the heart—it was a sign. In truth, these are all standard parts of decomposition. In cold weather, bodies decay more slowly. Blood settles. Gases cause bloating. Skin recedes, making it look like nails and hair have grown.
But in communities without mortuary science, these signs were read as proof that something unnatural was happening.
So they would dig. Quietly. Sometimes with the entire town present. And if a body looked too lifelike, the villagers knew what had to be done.
What happened next: blood, bone, and fire
In many cases, the corpse was simply turned face-down in its coffin. This was believed to confuse the spirit—to send it down, not up. But in more serious cases, the rituals were far more disturbing.
Hearts and livers were removed and burned. Skulls were separated from spines. Bones were arranged in warning formations. In one infamous case discovered in Griswold, Connecticut in 1990, a man’s remains were found in a coffin marked “JB 55.” His skull had been removed and placed on his chest. His femurs crossed beneath it. His rib cage had been broken open. Forensic analysis revealed that this was John Barber, a middle-aged farmer who died of TB. The mutilation happened after his burial.
These weren’t punishments. These were attempts at healing. The belief was that if the “source” body could be neutralized, the living could recover.
And in the most desperate cases, the ashes of the burned organs were mixed with water and given to the ill to drink.
The case that made international news: Mercy Brown
In March 1892, a small Rhode Island town became the epicenter of national headlines.
George Brown had already buried his wife and eldest daughter when his son Edwin fell ill. Then, his teenage daughter Mercy died. Her body was placed in an above-ground crypt while the ground remained frozen.
But when Edwin continued to weaken, the neighbors insisted something had to be done. George resisted for weeks. But the pressure didn’t stop. Eventually, he allowed them to exhume the bodies of his wife, eldest daughter, and Mercy.
The first two had decomposed into skeletons. But Mercy, who had passed away just two months and kept in a cold tomb, still looked “too alive.” Her heart contained liquid blood. That was all they needed to see.
Her heart and liver were removed and burned on a nearby stone. The ashes were mixed with water. Edwin drank the concoction.
He died two months later.
The Providence Journal sent a reporter to cover the exhumation. The story spread nationally. Today, Mercy Brown is often remembered as “America’s last vampire.”
Why people kept doing this—despite the science
By the time Mercy’s heart was burned, germ theory had already been established. Robert Koch had identified the tuberculosis bacterium in 1882—a full decade earlier. But in Exeter, Rhode Island, that knowledge hadn’t reached people in a practical way. There were no treatments. No vaccines. No real understanding of how TB spread.
As the History Channel explains, science might have had answers—but not solutions. Knowing what TB was didn’t mean you could stop it. Meanwhile, folk rituals—no matter how gruesome—at least gave people the illusion of control.
Sometimes, a sick person would get better after a ritual. TB has natural periods of remission. That was enough to confirm the ritual’s power in the eyes of the community. And when it didn’t work? They said it was done too late.
