In 1830, another vampire exorcism was said to have taken place in Woodstock concerning a family named Corwin. Much like the other tales of New England’s undead, a family member succumbed to consumption. Another member of the family, a brother, soon exhibited signs of the same disease. A certain Dr. Joseph Gallup was credited with telling the family that as long as there was the blood of the sick brother in the heart of the deceased, the terror would continue until the second Corwin was taken to the grave. This implied the work of a vampire. There was only one solution: cut out the heart of the evil demon and end the trepidation once and for all.
The deceased was exhumed from Nathan Cushing Cemetery in Woodstock as a crowd assembled on the green. It is written that most of the town showed up to witness the exorcism. A fire was cast on the green, and the heart of the exhumed brother was cut out and burned to ashes. The ashes were then put into a pot to be buried in a hole dug in the center of the village green. Some of the ashes were saved for use as medicine for the ailing Corwin.
The pot was put into the fifteen-foot-deep hole and covered with a seven-ton slab of granite. The townspeople sealed the hole in hopes of vanquishing the evil that had befallen the Corwin family. After the pot had been interred, the townspeople sprinkled the freshly turned earth with bull’s blood. The dying brother was made to drink the mixture of ashes and bull’s blood, along with some medicine, in order to cure his illness. Whether the cure worked is a mystery; so are the whereabouts of the Corwin family, the slab and the pot.
This account also appeared in Dr. Michael Bell’s Food for the Dead and Christopher Rondina’s Vampire Hunter’s Guide to New England, although both have asserted that there is no evidence that this particular exorcism was ever performed. Records show no existence of a Corwin family interred at the Cushing Cemetery. Even the green has been excavated in search of the seven-ton slab of granite and pot of ashes. Nothing of the sort has ever been found. Could the facts have been diluted over time? Perhaps the names were misspelled or changed by accident. Maybe it was another town. Records show that a Dr. Gallup did reside within the town, but other than that, there are no written documents to prove that the macabre event ever took place. It appears to be one more mystery in the ever-elusive tale of the New England vampire.