The Vampire of Plymouth

“There are such beings as vampires, some of us have evidence that they exist. Even had we not the proof of our own unhappy experience, the teachings and the records of the past give proof enough for sane peoples.” ~ Dr. Seward, Bram Stokers Dracula.

Bram Stoker may have immortalized vampires as creatures that prey on the necks of their victims, but real vampires from folklore aren't so romanticized. In fact, they're simply the walking dead. And one of these horrible creatures is said to reside in Plymouth.

During the 1800's, pulmonary tuberculosis would result in 1 out of 4 deaths. It was a bacterial infection that destroyed the tissue in the lungs and could be transmitted through the air from an infected individual either by coughing or sneezing near the uninfected. However, to the early settlers of New England, medicine and science had not even touched on the origin of the disease or even come to understand what it was, how it was caused or how one could prevent it. At this time, the disease was at the time, known by its colloquial term as the Consumption, and it manifested in different ways: there was the fast-acting kind that could turn a healthy person into a corpse by a matter of weeks. Or the slower-moving form of the disease that slowly wrung the life from its victims over the course of many years. Entire families during this time were wiped out as the affliction whittled its way through household after household.

When medical science couldn't provide answers, some families turned to the super natural. On May 4^th, 1822, the Old Colony Memorial and Plymouth County Advertiser ran an article called 

“Superstitions of New England.” it Highlighted an 1807 vampire case of Plymouth and the folklore remedy that followed:

In that almost insulated part of the state of Massachusetts, called Old Colony or Plymouth County, and particularly in a small village adjoining the shire town, there may be found the relics of many old customs and superstitions which would be amusing, at least to the antiquary. Among others of less serious cast, there was, fifteen years ago, one which, on account of its peculiarity and its consequence, I beg leave to mention...

There was, fifteen years ago, and is perhaps at this time, an opinion prevalent among the inhabitants of this town, that the body of a person who died of the consumption, was by some supernatural means, nourished in the grave of some one living members of the family; and that during the life of this person, the body remained, in the grave, all the fullness and freshness of life and health.

This belief was strengthened by the circumstance, that whole families frequently fell prey to this terrible disease.

Of one large family in this town consisting of fourteen children, and their venerable parents, the mother and the youngest son only remained – the rest within a year of each other had died of the consumption.

Within two months from the death of the thirteenth child, an amiable girl of about 16 years of age, the bloom, which characterized the whole of this family, was seen to fade from the cheek of the last support of the heart-smitten mother.

At this time as if to snatch one of this family from an early grave, it was resolved by a few of the inhabitants of the village to test the truth of this tradition which I have mentioned, and, which the circumstances of this afflicted family seemed to confirm. I should have added that it was believed that if the body thus supernaturally nourished in the grave, should be raised and turned over in the coffin, its depredation upon the survivor would necessarily cease. 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 dreaded to declare. - “yes, I saw the visage of one who had been long the tenant of a silent grave, lit up with the brilliancy 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 scarcely lost its brilliancy, and the livid fullness of her lips seemed almost to say, 'lose me and let me go.'”

In two weeks the brother, shocked with the spectacle he had witnessed, sunk under his disease. The mother survived scarcely a year, and the long range of sixteen graves, is pointed out to the stranger as an evidence of the truth of the belief of the inhabitants.

Dr. Michael Bell's book, Food for the Dead, he explores many of the vampire cases throughout New England. The Plymouth case is unique. “One of the interesting things about the Plymouth example; and its the only one I found in New England, is that all they did was just turn the corpse upside-down. Face down. And then rebury it. It shows just how dumb vampires really are [he laughs]. Like its going to dig itself deeper into the ground and its never going to get out.”

With the gentle Plymouth treatment, somewhere a vampire still rests intact, though face-down in her grave, alongside fifteen others from her immediate family.