No one is really sure when the belief took hold in New England that some supernatural force may have played a role in the deaths of family members due to the horrible disease once called consumption. The influx of various diverse cultures into the country at the time brought many beliefs in folklore and lifestyles that inevitably intermingled as the different nationalities began to coexist in the new land. Consumptive victims took on the appearance of what one might consider a ghoul of sorts, becoming gaunt, pale and many times bleeding from the mouth due to profuse coughing. The look of the grave upon them certainly made others wonder if they were making that transition from human to demon. No doubt, many feared that when the person finally succumbed to the horrible malady, he or she would return and feed on the living in some way or another.
So far, the earliest record of an exhumation and exorcism for what we now term vampirism in New England has been traced back to 1784. The story is found in the Connecticut Historical Collection by John Warner Barker, published in 1836. Barker details an eyewitness account of an exhumation in 1784 by a local citizen named Moses Holmes, who spoke of a foreign doctor he referred to as a “quack.” The doctor prescribed a very unusual remedy for the family of Isaac Johnson of Willington, Connecticut. Barker narrates that on June 1, 1784, Holmes witnessed Mr. Johnson, along with two doctors, West and Grant, exhume the bodies of Johnson’s two children in order to perform the prescribed cure on himself. Johnson had become ill with the wasting disease. One of the children had been buried for one year and eleven months, while the other had been dead for just about a year.
The Old East Cemetery in WiHington, Connecticut, where Isaac Johnson and his family may have been buried.
The remedy was to dig up the bodies of the deceased and look for vines or sprouts that may be growing from the vitals. The next step was to remove the vitals, along with the vegetation, from the deceased and burn them. This would rid the family of their plight. Although the doctors found no sign of sprouts or vines within the coffin, Holmes did notice some small sprigs growing under one of the caskets. The account does not state whether the bodies were burned for good measure, but Holmes went on to note that the rest of the community should be made aware of the case so as to not be fooled by the doctor, whom he called an “imposter.” This last comment might have come in light of the fact that Mr. Johnson died in 1785 from consumption.
According to research by folklorist Dr. Michael Bell, Isaac Johnson married Elizabeth Beal, and their two children were Amos and Elizabeth. All four were presumably buried at the Old East Cemetery, just off Route 74 in Willington. Both Dr. Bell and Connecticut State archaeologist Dr. Nicholas Bellantoni attempted to find their graves but were unable to locate any markers in the cemetery bearing such specific names.
Arlene and I, along with our friend Greg Wood, also attempted to locate any sign of the Isaac Johnson family within the Old East Cemetery. Before beginning our trek, Greg quipped to his wife, Magin, “We’re going vampire hunting.”
Vampire hunting—not quite the nature of our expedition. Sure, in one light we were going searching for the graves of an alleged case of vampirism. I guess you could call that “hunting,” but we did not have wooden stakes and holy water, not even garlic. We were not expecting to encounter a creature of the dark gliding stealthily among the tombs before turning into a bat and flying away or trying to bite us on the neck. We were simply searching for some gravestones in a cemetery. Legend tripping would probably fit the scenario more in definition, but vampire hunting sounds so much more dynamic. Arlene and I made a little joke about it, and we shuffled out to the car to begin our vampire hunt.
The cemetery was established in 1899, yet many of the graves date back to before the American Revolution. In fact, about two hundred men and boys from Willington served in the American Revolution. Thirty ardent citizens scurried over hill and hollow to help the cause in Lexington. There are several Johnson plots scattered among the burial ground, but none contains the graves of Isaac, Elizabeth or their children. We know through research by Ruth Shapleigh-Brown that roughly two-thirds of Connecticut’s colonial graves are presumably long gone. Brown is the executive director of Connecticut Gravestone Network, an organization dedicated to preserving and protecting Connecticut’s old burial grounds. I attended one of Brown’s presentations and found it to be very enlightening. One reason that many of these graves are missing, according to Brown, is due to the fact that many of the settlers used wooden markers, which rotted away over time, or common fieldstones, which have sunken into the earth or were cleared away by later owners of the land who saw them as mere stones jutting up from the earth. The early settlers were mostly Puritans and did not believe in elaborate grave markers until much later. Even the final resting places of the founding fathers of some of the towns that bear their names are long lost.
In the case of the Johnson family, it seems rather unlikely that the markers were lost, as the existing stones seem to be well established. We even considered the time period in which the event was to have taken place in conjunction with the burials at the cemetery. Some of the burials predate the Johnson case and have proper markers. Even the Johnson plots have carved headstones, some of them also predating the time of the reported exhumation and exorcism. It seems strange that one whole family would be buried there, yet there would be no stones of any kind to mark their graves. The chance that wooden markers may have been erected for the entire family seems improbable, but it is not altogether out of the question.
Another interesting fact that Ruth pointed out is the way old burial yards are arranged. Many of the grave sites are not in neat rows but are strewn about haphazardly. This is not due to carelessness or lack of planning but is more in line with the makeup of the New England landscape. The region is very rocky, and in some cases, digging a grave became an endeavor when a shovel hit an immense, unmovable boulder. The easiest thing to do was to relocate the site of the grave in hopes of finding easier ground to dig. This would account for many of the burials being out of line. One mistake that historical societies often make when cleaning these old cemeteries is to assume that time and the movement of the earth has caused these stones to shift. Preservationists pull them up and replant them in a line, in keeping with what they know from today’s burial customs. Of course, this means that the stones are no longer marking actual grave sites. In some cases, Ruth found that a stone had been relocated a good distance from the actual gravesite, making it appear that a stone was missing from a grave when in reality it was several feet away, looking like it belonged to another plot.
There are certain areas, especially near a few of the Johnson plots, where there is open space with no tombstones. Could they be unmarked graves? Could the stones have been removed for some reason and never replaced? Could they have been temporary markers that may have been mistaken for fieldstones and discarded?
All of these questions and more come into play when looking for the Johnson plot. The other question that crosses one’s mind is the idea that maybe it is the wrong cemetery altogether. We checked to see if Willington may have been part of another own or if another town may have once been part of Willington. A check of when Willington was established proved that it was incorporated in May 1727, well before the exhumations took place. The surrounding towns were also well established before the Johnson incident—Tolland in May 1722, Mansfield in October 1702, Stafford in 1719, Union in 1734 and Ashford in 1714. The reason I mention this as an important factor is that some larger towns were often divided up into smaller towns and renamed, making records hard to locate. It was not uncommon for towns to be annexed into smaller segments for, among other reasons, ease of government or lack of meetinghouses. This practice went on well into the nineteenth century. I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Bellantoni on the subject, and I found that he had come to the same conclusion long before that the Johnson plot might be on their old property; this is why no one could find their graves in the Old East Cemetery.
One of the Johnson plots in the Old East Cemetery in Willington, Connecticut. Note the grassy space in the foreground.
For now, we have only scant records that state that an exhumation took place in an attempt to rid the Johnson family of their plight. This case is also the first time that a vine being part of the cure for vampirism is brought up. This idea would surface several years later in Vermont and, still later, in New Hampshire. However, cases from the mid- to late nineteenth century do not point to vines or the growth of any plants in or near coffins as a sign of ghoulish activity.
Was the Willington incident the first actual case of vampirism, the one that set the standard for scores of families digging up their loved ones in search of some spectral ghoul that fed on the living? No one is sure, but the case does fit the scenario of what would transpire for the next one hundred years, when medicine failed and folklore took over.
It is important to note that in the research of tuberculosis (consumption) before and at the time of this foreign doctor’s remedy, studies proved that consumption could be diagnosed but still could not be effectively treated.