Rhode Island Stories

A Vampire in Foster by J. Earl Clauson (1936) The vampire superstition appears to have been entertained extensively in the western tier of Rhode Island townships well down through the Nineteenth century. Every now and again a fresh instance comes to our notice, the latest so detailed and complete that we are constrained to offer it.

The latest item in our vampire dossier is from Foster. Capt. Levi Young moved from Sterling, Conn., to Foster. A vigorous, hard-working man, the outlook was bright on the fertile acreage he had acquired. A daughter Nancy soon arrived to share the home, the first of a large family.
Nancy was nineteen years old when she fell victim to consumption. Her father and mother thought of it first as merely a persistent winter cold which would vanish with the arrival of warm weather, but it hung on, with the wasting cough, the bright cheeks and other symptoms which at length convinced them of the truth.
The local doctor did what he could, but it was of no avail. Nancy died April 6, 1827, and was the first to be laid in the plot set aside as a family burying ground on the Young farm. Then other children were taken ill. Capt. Young was a popular and highly respected man, deeply religious, and had the sympathy of the whole neighborhood, which was more populous then than now. All the physicians within reach having proved impotent to stay the sweep of the disease through the family, the father was driven to the only remaining course he could think of. At his request the neighbors gathered around in the early summer of 1827 and dug up the remains of Nancy.
A funeral pyre had been prepared of sound, dry wood from the farm. On this the coffin was laid, and as it and its burden burned the Young family stood around and inhaled the fumes, the belief being that the smoke would cure the sick and render the others immune.
A strange spectacle, the family standing in the smudge of the great fire, the neighbors clustered sympathetically outside the circle, the cattle gazing wonderingly from the adjoining pasture. It must have been a trying experience too, for the anxious father and mother.
Would it help Almira? Would it safeguard the others? It is hardly necessary to say that it didn't. Almira died a year and a half later, Aug. 19, 1828, at the age of 17. Olney, the oldest son, died Dec. 12, 1834, at 29. Huldah, another daughter, 23, died Aug. 26, 1836. Caleb died May 8, 1843, at 26. Hiram lived to be 38, dying Feb. 17, 1854. Two other sons and a daughter escaped the disease.

THE VAMPIRE THEORY That search for the Spectral Ghoul in the Exeter Graves The Providence Journal ~ 1892

It originated in Europe. -Cremation of the heart of the sister for the consumptive brother to eat the ashes. "Ugh!" says the person of refinement, "Horrible!" ejaculates even the reader of the horrible daily papers.
But those who believe in it express themselves thus; "It may be true," "You may find one there," "I always heard it was so," and "My father and grandfather always said so." 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 asleep.
Dead wizards, werewolves, heretics and other outcasts became vampires, and anyone 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 through with a whitethorn stake or burned in order to render it harmless." How the tradition got to Rhode Island and planted itself firmly here, cannot be said. The people of the South County say they got it from their ancestors, as far back in some cases as the beginning of the eighteenth century.

In the case that has called out this reference to the subject, the principal persons interested were a farmer, George T. Brown, and his son Edwin A. Brown. The family had within four years suffered the loss of the wife and mother, four years ago; a daughter, Olive B., three years later, and Mercy Lena, another daughter, during the past winter. Three weeks since, Edwin, finding his health fading, even in Colorado, a favorite resort for consumptives, returned to Exeter. The local correspondent of the Journal tells the story of the call for Dr. Harold Metcalf, the medical examiner of the district, to hunt out the vampire.
The body of Mercy Lena, the second daughter, was removed from the tomb, where it had been placed till spring. The body was in a fairly well preserved state. It had been buried two months. When the heart and liver were removed the from the body, a quantity of blood dripped therefrom. "The vampire," the attendants of the doctor said ~ and then, conforming to the necessity of destroying the vampire, a fire was kindled in the cemetery & the organs were reduced to ashes, thus laying the vampire to rest.

The Tale of Snuffy Stukeley An early New England vampire story [Adapted from an account by Sidney Rider]

At the breaking out of the Revolution there dwelt in one of the remoter Rhode Island towns a young man called Stukeley Tillinghast. He married an excellent woman and settled down in life as a farmer. Industrious, prudent, thrifty, he accumulated a handsome property for a man in his station in life, and comparable to his surroundings.
In his family he had likewise prospered, for Mrs. Tillinghast meantime had not been idle, having presented her worthy spouse with fourteen children. Proud was the sire as he rode about the town on his excellent horses, attired in his homespun jacket of butternut brown, a species of garment which he much affected. So much, indeed, did he affect it that a sobriquet was given him by the townspeople. It grew out of the brown color of his coats. "Snuffy" they called him, and by that name he lived, and by it died.
For many years all things worked well with Snuffy. His sons and daughters developed finely until some of them had reached the age of man or womanhood. The eldest was a comely daughter, Sarah. One night Snuffy dreamed a dream, which gave him no end of worriment. He dreamed that he possessed a fine orchard, as in truth he did, and that exactly half the trees in it died.
The occult meaning hidden in this revelation was beyond the comprehension of Snuffy, and that was what gave worry to him. Events, however, developed rapidly, and Snuffy was not kept long in suspense as to the meaning of his singular dream. Sarah, the eldest child, sickened, and her malady, developing into a quick consumption, hurried her into her grave. Sarah was laid away in the family burying ground, and quiet came again to the Tillinghast family.
But quiet came not to Stukeley. His apprehensions were not buried in the grave of Sarah. Soon a second daughter was taken ill precisely as Sarah had been, and as quickly was hurried to the grave. But in the second case there was one symptom or complaint of a startling character, and which was not present in the first case. This was the continual complaint that Sarah came every night and sat upon some portion of the body, causing great pain and misery.
So it went on. One after another sickened and died until six were dead, and the seventh, a son, was taken ill. The mother also now complained of these nightly visits of Sarah. These same characteristics were present in every case after the first one.
A consultation was called with the most learned people, and it was resolved to exhume the bodies of the six dead children. With pick and spade the graves were soon opened, and the six bodies brought to view. Five of these bodies were found to be far advanced in the stages of decomposition. These were the last of the children who had died. But the first, the body of Sarah, was found to be in a very remarkable condition. The eyes were opened and fixed. The hair and nails had grown, and the heart and the arteries were filled with fresh red blood. All the conditions of the vampire were present in the corpse of Sarah, the first that had died, and against whom all the others had so bitterly complained.
Sarah's heart was removed and carried to the designated rock, and there solemnly burned. Peace then came to this afflicted family, but not, however, until a seventh victim had been demanded. Thus was the dream of Stukeley fulfilled. Of his 14 children, half were in the grave.