March 15, 1995. I turned on the TV in time to hear the host of a show ask, “Could these strange ritual burials reveal an American cult of vampires?” Several months before, the show’s producers had contacted me and requested an interview. I asked about the nature of the program, who else would be interviewed, and, most importantly, if they were interested in presenting some approximation of an historically accurate account. When I was told that Paul Sledzik and Nick Bellantoni with whom I had consulted regarding JB and the Walton family cemetery in Griswold, Connecticut (see Chapter 8) had agreed to participate, I assented pending confirmation by Paul and Nick. The three of us discussed the project and agreed that if we did participate, there was a chance that we could tell what we considered to be the authentic story, at least as far as we understood it from the evidence we had. If we declined to be interviewed, then we would have no chance to alter what we were certain would be the inevitable, irresistible pull of the Dracula caricature. When Paul mentioned that the interviewer had asked him about a “cult of vampires,” we resolved to present a united front in denying the reality of anything remotely resembling a cult. Somewhat sheepishly, Nick admitted that, unfortunately, he had carelessly used the word in a newspaper interview when attempting to describe the extent of New England’s vampire tradition. The show’s producers must have read the article and, of course, the term “cult” drew them like a magnet. We decided that, if the term was mentioned, we would seize the opportunity to place the story in its proper context of tuberculosis and folk medicine and argue strongly against the notion that there was some sort of regional coven of the undead—which is precisely what we did over breakfast with the network’s crew on the day of the shoot.
Finally, we were ready to begin filming. “Lights.” “Roll it.” “5, 4, 3, 2.…” First question: “What’s this about a cult of vampires here in New England?” Spontaneous laughter from Nick, Paul, and Michael. Incredulous, but knowing, laughter. What followed was an on-camera, reasoned, well-articulated discussion of tuberculosis epidemics, the failure of the medical establishment, and the desperate hope that folk medicine might end a family crisis hurtling towards disaster.
So, when I turned on the TV, I couldn’t believe I was hearing the phrase “cult of vampires” again. But this time I didn’t laugh. My heart sank and I muttered some words I save for special occasions (such as finding out I’ve underestimated my income taxes by several thousand dollars). Once again, I felt betrayed. It was bad enough that this vampire segment was coupled with yet another Elvis sighting and yet another exposé of the government’s cover up of an alien presence. On the program, as it aired, the word tuberculosis, or even consumption, was never mentioned. The show’s host got no closer than “thousands died of mysterious causes.” A sick feeling accompanied the realization that I was going to see myself on national television and, through the magical technology of editing—by expert juxtapositioning, deletion, and contextualization—and the use of narration and voice over, I was going to imply that, yes indeed, a cult of vampires had roamed the New England countryside.
During the years that I have been working on this project, word has gotten around to the mass media. I have been interviewed for both local and national newspaper and television presentations, with the resulting products ranging from outstanding to absolutely dreadful. Too many, unfortunately, tend towards the latter. Around Halloween, interest mounts, sometimes approaching a feeding frenzy. It seems that, in each case, just before I turn on the television to see one of these programs for the first time, I experience what I imagine it would be like if I were in the midst of a string of bad relationships, I meet someone new, and I say to myself, “This time will be different.” But, naturally, it isn’t. Then I ask myself, “Why do I say ‘yes’? What’s wrong with me?” Dr. Rational scolds Mike for being a naive optimist and slow learner. With downcast eyes, Mike responds, “Yeah, I know.” I write this with no hubris, for I know that what they seek is not me, nor my interpretations. It is the vampires—the classic vampires—not the victims of tuberculosis or scapegoats. Why?
Perhaps I need to begin with a more basic question: Why is no one threatened by vampires today? Neither the communities whose ancestors dug them up, nor the newspapers that were shocked and outraged at the spectacle, take vampires seriously any more. Several factors coalesced by the close of the nineteenth century to spell the end of the vampire practice. The Civil War, Lincoln’s assassination, the meticulous experiments of a German scientist, an altered intellectual climate, and the publication of a novel, all helped transform the vampire narrative from hard news to entertainment.
After Robert Koch announced his discovery of the tubercle bacillus in 1882, the germ theory became the commonly accepted explanation for the spread of tuberculosis. Along with a different theory came a different method of treatment that, until the discovery of streptomycin in 1943, entailed the isolation of the patient. This, and other preventative measures based on the assumption that the germ could be transmitted both directly and indirectly from person to person, led to a steady decline in the incidence of tuberculosis in the United States. The correlation between contagion and germs is obvious; the link between contagion and vampires is perhaps more indirect. The significant difference is how the contagion is explained. A Greek-American informant provided an unusual, but logical, connection between germs and vampires: “When people die of a contagious disease, and no one will go near them and they bury them without a priest, without anything, they become vrykolakes” [vampires in Greek]. A person who died of a contagious disease might become a vampire simply because everyone, including the priest who is supposed to perform the rituals to prevent the corpse from becoming a vampire, is afraid to approach the corpse. In any event, by the close of the nineteenth century, a microorganism called Mycobacterium tuberculosis had replaced the vampire as contagion’s scapegoat.
Chemical embalming as mortuary practice was rising in popularity at the same time that the germ theory was winning acceptance. Between 1856 and 1870, eleven embalming patents were filed with the U.S. Patent Office. The Civil War created a need for preserving a great number of corpses, often far from desired or convenient sites of interment. The embalming of public figures to lie in state created a greater popular awareness of the custom. Lincoln’s assassination, and the subsequent public viewing of his body as it went by rail from Washington to Illinois, reinforced public acceptance of the two related customs of embalming and viewing the corpse. The funeral industry grew rapidly during the 1880s, but, as is the case with many customs, there was a split between city and country. The rural population was slower to accept the expanding role of the professional undertaker, whose work usually included embalming. Earlier in the nineteenth century, embalming was used as a sanitary measure, particularly during outbreaks of contagious diseases such as smallpox, diphtheria, scarlet fever, and yellow fever. In the latter half of the century, embalming became the socially prestigious choice. In addition to the cosmetic effects of embalming, removal of the blood also renders the corpse inert, preempting, as it were, the creation of a vampire by eliminating its prime constituent.
As the germ theory and embalming were becoming generally accepted, the debate between evolutionists and romantics was subsiding. It was widely believed that civilization had won (or was on the verge of winning) the war over superstition. With the beginning of the twentieth century, the antagonistic relations between town and country were also lessening, and editorialists for urban newspapers no longer had reason to find fault with their rural neighbors. Without fanfare, the vampire war was over. Combine the above ingredients and add the publication of Dracula, in 1897, and you have a recipe for transforming the unfortunate victims who died too young of pulmonary tuberculosis into fanged fiends still roaming the countryside. Perhaps a little fine-tuning of Dracula, making him more accessible to the public and the media, was all that was needed. Hollywood obliged, turning Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula (and his many clones) into an industry within an industry.
Yet, having the necessary ingredients available doesn’t explain why media workers (including print journalists, television news-people, and film producers) obviously feel free to ignore apparent facts in favor of fascinating fictions. Media workers distinguish between hard news and soft news. Hard news is timely and deals with important events. Soft news is concerned with “human foibles” and the “texture of our human life.” Those who develop soft news features often feel free to stretch the facts for the sake of “color” and, in fact, research has shown that many have difficulty ascertaining just what the facts are in the first place.
This distinction is supported by newspaper and magazine articles that revisit the Mercy Brown event. This flood began just over three decades ago, and shows no sign of ebbing. In one of the first modern interpretations of Rhode Island’s vampires, the author of a 1970 Yankee magazine article asserted that “the family and friends” of Edwin Brown “unanimously agreed that it must be a vampire that was sucking his blood and causing his loss of strength.” The blood-sucking motif was reinforced in “Horrible History at the Boston Boo-Centennial,” which appeared in the Providence Journal-Bulletin in 1975: “It was a sudden deteriorating illness of Edwin A. Brown many years ago that caused his family and friends to believe a vampire must have sucked his blood, causing a once husky and healthy man to lose all his strength.”
By 1980, it was a “ghoulish curse” that had stricken the Brown family, and Mercy had acquired the attributes of the classic vampire: “Surely the fiend rested there and stole forth from the crypt to drink the spirit of her brother.” Just one year later, this popular pattern was consummated with bites on the neck from the demonic, imperishable corpse of Mercy Brown: “The mother, Mary Brown, had died on Sept. 8, 1883, apparently of tuberculosis, but the local story was that she had died of a bite in the neck. The following year, on June 6, her daughter, Mary Olive, aged 20, followed her in death—and again a mysterious bloodsucker was blamed.” The article relates that “a doctor prescribed a dose of ashes of Mercy’s heart dissolved in tonic” to “exorcise the demon” from Edwin. This description of the Mercy Brown case concludes: “That vampire still roams free in Chestnut Hill Cemetery, and is said to rage around that midnight fire that glows anew every Halloween in Exeter.”
In these accounts, a reanimated Mercy continues to haunt Exeter, an open-ended sequel that contrasts sharply with the outcome related in oral versions still told in South County. As Everett Peck remarked, burning the heart “took care of it.” Ninety-two-year-old Oliver Stedman, a local historian from the adjacent town of South Kingstown, echoed this traditional understanding of the event’s finality: “They went an’ cut the heart out, and burned it, there, and then they figured the whole thing was all over, it was all right … they’d fixed it, there’d be no more vampire.”
Three days before Halloween, in 1979, a headline in the Providence Sunday Journal Magazine, asked, “What really happened to Mercy Brown?” The reader is led to believe that Mercy is still an active vampire:
Let the scientists and the rest of the skeptics have their say. In their own dark little hearts they know there are strange things that even they can’t explain. Maybe nobody could tape Mercy’s voice, for instance, because she wasn’t there when the recorder was. Vampires DO roam.
A related article in the same magazine continued the undead motif with, of course, the required soft touch:
Mercy Brown died nearly 88 years ago. She was the fourth from her family in nine years. Life had been drained from all of them. Vampirism was the cause, everyone knew that. So why couldn’t Mercy whisper from the grave again? The undead do … don’t they?
No one can accuse these authors of assaulting the reader with facts. The whispers from Mercy’s grave were recorded by a couple, Ed and Sally, who had positioned a running recorder at the grave to determine if Mercy was trying to communicate from her coffin.
The publication of their attempt to record Mercy’s voice from the grave created a new kind of legend trip to Chestnut Hill Cemetery, as others began leaving tape recorders running at the gravesite during the night. Several claimed to hear whispering from the grave when the tapes were played back, adding to the belief that Mercy continued to haunt the cemetery. A local television news magazine’s subsequent broadcast of a segment on Rhode Island’s vampires included a follow-up interview with Ed and Sally:
Ed: We have something from the grave, … definitely what it is, we don’t know, but there’s something that come off that tape recorder.
Narrator: Ed and Sally … visited Mercy Brown’s grave and claim they have evidence to confirm their belief that Mercy was a vampire. Inspired by a TV movie in which a tape recorder picked up voices of the dead, Ed and Sally decided to make their own recording.
Ed: Whenever you get around this cemetery, my feeling is that definitely there is something that roams around here at night. It’s just that type of a place. It’s a lonely, pretty desolate place, and anything is possible down here. And … there’s something there, definitely.
Narrator: What that something is, Ed and Sally believe they have on their tape recorder.
Ed: I’ve heard the tape numerous times. I’ve sat down by myself and listened to it, on many occasions. And I can pick up where it sounds like she’s sayin’, “Please help me.”
When a portion of the recording was played back, it sounded to me like white noise and hiss created by using inexpensive tape in a low-end tape recorder. The newspaper reporter who had earlier written about Ed and Sally’s tape, surprisingly, had reached the same conclusion: “An investigation showed … that the built-in microphone in Sally’s tape recorder wasn’t picking up the sounds of a pleading vampire. It was hearing the scraping of the tape reel rubbing against the sides of a poorly made cassette.” But those seeking supernatural explanations would not be deterred:
Sally: We really didn’t expect anything, you know, at first … and then all of a sudden hearing that. It was really horrifying. Even Ed, he was scared. He says, “Yeah, let’s get out of here. There’s something in there.”
Ed: Well, Mercy Brown was supposedly a vampire. And based on what I’ve read, and what I’ve talked about, and what I’ve heard about—she was a vampire. And ‘til proven differently, I figure that she was a vampire.
The scene faded as eerie music played in the background. Ed’s closing argument above closely resembled a number of answers given by the 27 percent who responded “yes” to the survey question, “Do you believe it is possible that vampires exist as real entities?” posed in Norine Dresser’s book, American Vampires. Answers included, “No one has proved otherwise” and “I have no evidence to disprove their existence.” The media have adopted the same position: Mercy is guilty of vampirism until proved innocent (and, of course, no such proof would ever be admitted into evidence).
While I was amused by what I saw as the media’s inadvertent self-parody in this case (Ed was “inspired by a TV movie”), there was a more substantial implication to consider. If Ed and Sally were indeed inspired by media depictions of the supernatural, then it seemed reasonable to look more deeply into the role of “spirit-belief specialists,” which role the mass media often seem to assume. In small, close-knit communities, it is typically an individual who functions as one of the “influential authorities, whose opinion, by virtue of their social prestige, becomes decisive” in interpreting an event as supernatural. In the Mercy Brown case, I had concluded that William Rose (perhaps through his second wife, a Tillinghast descendent) might well have been the one who counseled George Brown regarding the supernatural nature of his family’s distress (see Chapter 4). The press, television, and movies now seem firmly entrenched in the legend process. As active bearers of tradition, they are the storytellers and spirit-belief specialists who interpret and shape, for a large number of people, the supernatural nature of events.
Community insiders, such as Everett Peck, however, still refer to established folk tradition. During our interview, Everett projected a rational, down-to-earth, hardheaded view of his family’s story, the events that spawned it, and recent attempts to attach supernatural elements to Mercy’s grave: “Well, they got some kind of soundin’ devices to hear, uh, they say they hear things. Well, now, damn, you ain’t gonna hear nothin’…. There may not even be bones left.” And Everett is justly indignant at the vandalism that seems to accompany the legend tripping.
In the context of a newspaper or television interview, however, supernatural experiences are not just accepted, they are actively pursued for their commercial appeal. Television interviewers and newspaper feature writers seek out individuals, such as Ed and Sally (and Jennie Boldan, of Foster), who are willing to express a belief in vampires. Although they are usually outsiders who hold fringe views (in relation to expressed convictions of longtime community residents), their interpretations are portrayed by the media as typical or representative of the community’s prevailing beliefs. Based on the examples I’ve gleaned from recent newspaper and television treatments, as well as my own direct experiences, I can only conclude that the media do not want to hear, indeed will not listen to, perhaps cannot hear, views that are not compatible with the popular conception of a vampire as exemplified by the Dracula of film.
The relationship between mass culture and local legend is not entirely antagonistic, at least insofar as vitality (if not veracity) is concerned; mass culture “nourishes legendry—providing it with fresh subject matter and speeding its dissemination.” Norine Dresser even suggests that folklorists add the term “tubal transmission” to their glossary since “the television tube has become the tribal storyteller.” The influence of mass media on the vampire tradition has been especially potent. Valid or not, mass-media accounts of the Mercy Brown incident have become part of the legend. In some orally transmitted versions told by outsiders and newcomers to South County, Mercy actually leaves the grave to suck her victim’s blood and must be destroyed by driving a stake through her heart. Unlike Everett’s family story, these tales do not hinge on a medical problem in desperate need of solution. They focus, instead, on Mercy as one of the living dead.
Differences in storytelling contexts are likewise revealing. Everett provided a compact description of the narrative’s normal setting when he explained that the family was in the cemetery to honor the dead on Decoration Day or at the adjacent Grange for Children’s Day. The story unfolded naturally, clarifying the admonition to avoid Mercy’s gravestone and the rock where her heart was burned. In this context, the family story of Mercy Brown is an explanatory legend, providing the rationale for a specific tabu. From Everett’s perspective, the tale was told for a practical reason rather than for entertainment per se (although, of course, the tale certainly may have entertained family members) or the sheer delight of fright, functions that seem preeminent in outsider versions. For instance, I interviewed a man who said that he tells the story to his children every Halloween, then drives them that night to visit Mercy’s grave. He told me that the way he heard the story, a stake was driven through Mercy’s heart.
Someone who is expected to recount a “supernatural occurrence”—to become a storyteller, as it were—feels various social pressures, the nature and effect of which depend upon a number of factors. Such recountings, generally referred to as legends by folklorists, are stories set in the real world of historical time, usually with named characters and places. Although they are often told as true, their truth is usually at least partially questionable or open to debate. While legends revolve around a memorable, stable core, their form tends to be unstable. Exactly how a legend takes shape is subject, in part, to the composition of the group of people who happen to be present: such elements as their personalities, beliefs, and attitudes, and their relationships to one another, help determine what kind of story gets told. For example, in the legend of Mercy Brown as told by the mass media for a mass audience, the focus of the conflict has shifted away from a family’s effort to stop the onslaught of consumption—a folk medical practice—towards an encounter with the classic vampire of popular culture.
Even though the media might imply, or even label explicitly, that such a story is “history,” they are not following the rules of historical interpretation; they are playing the entertainment game. As we move away from the actual, historical event (in time or place), the tragic aspects diminish as the supernatural elements are elaborated. The narrative has changed from a story “about sickness caused and cured by magic” into one of “encounters with agencies of the supernatural world.” Over the past century, newspaper, magazine, and television stories have transformed this teenaged farm girl, an unfortunate victim of tuberculosis, into a Dracula clone, a role that neither history nor folklore can justify for her.
As a storyteller, Reuben Brown presents an intriguing case. Everett described him as “an old man livin’ today who can remember one of the twelve”—referring to the twelve men who “got together” and decided to go ahead with the exhumations in 1892. Everett said that Reuben may or may not talk to people about the story, depending on how he’s feeling. I must have caught him at a bad time, because he did not respond to my request for an interview when I approached him not long after my visit to Everett. But, shortly before his death in 1984, the eighty-seven year old descendent of the Mercy Brown family consented to an interview with a reporter from the Providence Journal. Part of his narrative is remarkable in its conformity to the popular pattern:
The whole fearful matter started with unexplained deaths, says Reuben Brown. Young girls, six or seven on one side of the Brown family, pined away and died. All of them “had a mark on their throats.”
“People figured they’d been bit by a vampire … they all had that mark on them and nobody knows who made it,” says Brown.
Some folks were sure that Mercy—already gone to her grave—was the vampire.
A dozen people got together—members of Mercy’s family and others in the town—and decided to open the grave and pull Mercy’s body into the sun-light to perform a terrible task.
Reuben Brown had a friend who was there.
“I used to know a man who saw them when they unearthed her. He said he saw them cut her heart out and burn it on the rock … it appeared that Mercy had moved in the grave. She wasn’t the way she was put in there.…
“But he said there were no more deaths after that. That’s what he said.”
Reuben Brown adds this footnote: “My father believed she was a vampire. He said all those girls had the mark on their throat when they died.”
For me, Reuben’s version of the legend raised more questions than it answered. If his tale accurately portrayed the events, why would such a striking detail as “a mark on their throats” not be published in the newspaper accounts of 1892? Why did Everett’s story not include this motif? Did Reuben relate the story as it was told to him? Was he playing with the reporter and, indirectly, the public at large? Did he fill in details he could not recall? Did he add details so that his tale corresponded with popular expectations? How much of his narrative was received tradition and how much was shaped by the social tensions and the network of identity and status relationships that he conceived to exist during his interview with the newspaper reporter? Perhaps the overarching, single question, I might ask is: Did Reuben Brown see his storytelling role as one of history or entertainment?
The split between hard news and soft news did not develop overnight in the world of journalism. Sidney Rider, who published, in an 1888 issue of his Book Notes, the account of Sarah Tillinghast’s vampiric assault on her family in late eighteenth-century Exeter, chided the Providence Journal for what he saw as their inconsistent policy on this issue when they refused to print his article:
Once upon a time the writer [Sidney Rider] sent to the Providence Journal upon invitation, an article entitled the “Belief in Vampires in Rhode Island,” in which the origin of the myth was discussed, and an instance narrated. The article was returned in due time with this note:
Dear Sir:—The enclosed blood curdling tale is rather too gruesome for the Sunday Journal, but I should think you could easily expand it into an article for some other paper which likes the sensational. Yours truly, R. S. Howland.
The article was not expanded, but it was sent to the New York Evening Post, in which it appeared, and from which it was reprinted in Book Notes vol. 5, p. 37. How was my chastened spirit shocked at these glaring headlines which I saw in the Journal of the 19th March, ’92:
EXHUMED THE BODIES.
______
Testing a Horrible Superstition in the Town of Exeter.
______
BODIES OF DEAD RELATIVES TAKEN FROM THEIR GRAVES.
______
They Had All Died of Consumption, and the Belief Was That Live Flesh and Blood Would Be Found That Fed Upon the Bodies of the Living.
Nothing ghastly in those lines surely, Brother Howland, nor blood-curdling, nor gruesome. Que m’importe.
During a newspaper or television interview, it is supernatural experience, not historical interpretation, that is actively pursued for its commercial appeal. Vampires that do not fit the Hollywood model need not apply, no matter how authentic their historical or folkloric credentials. While researching the vampire tradition with the assistance of Joe Carroll, an intern from the Anthropology Department at Rhode Island College, I was contacted by a well-known local television newsman. He wanted to do a feature on haunted places in Rhode Island, including the cemetery where Nellie Vaughn is buried. Research and fieldwork may be the most interesting parts of my work as a consulting folklorist for a state agency, but public-sector folklorists are rightfully asked to make their findings intelligible and relevant to the general public, who, ultimately, have paid the bill. Ever the optimist, I see such requests as opportunities to balance the media’s tendency to sensationalize at the expense of authenticity with some down-to-earth data. At this point, Dr. Rational tends to become cynical and usually asks Mike, “Did you ever hear of a ‘Pollyanna’?” Then he looks for ways to bow out. So, I decided that this was a good opportunity to initiate Joe into some of the public-sector aspects of my position and asked if he’d like to stand in front of the camera and answer questions about Nellie Vaughn, a tale with which he was intimately acquainted.
Prior to a location shoot at Nellie Vaughn’s gravesite, the newsman, Joe, and I discussed the legend. I emphasized the strong probability that the story of Nellie Vaughn as a vampire was the result of mistaking her for Mercy Brown. The newsman brought up the fact that no grass grows on her grave. Both Joe and I offered our opinion that there was no need to resort to supernatural explanations. Most likely, we suggested, nocturnal adolescent visitors (“legend trippers, as we folklorists call them,” I told the interviewer) have destroyed the vegetation, just as they have damaged the gravestone itself.
The segment on Nellie Vaughn opened with music from the movie The Shining. The host began, “There are supposed to be twelve vampires in Rhode Island. You can believe that or not. But if you ever go by the West Greenwich Baptist Meeting House at Liberty Hill and Plain Roads, you probably will see a cemetery behind it. And if you go into the cemetery and look up Nellie Vaughn, you’ll see that no grass grows around her grave. Nellie died at nineteen in the 1890s [actually, 1889], but it is said she walks around here quite often. Does she drink blood? Who knows? On her headstone is the inscription, ‘I’ll be watching and waiting for you’ [actually, ‘I am waiting and watching for you’].”
The scene then cut to the cemetery, with Joe standing in front of Nellie’s gravestone, which was broken and lying on the ground. He said, matter of factly, “It’s not really that sinister when you think about it. It’s common for a lot of tombstones that are out here. It just simply means ‘I’m in heaven, waiting.’ Part of the legend is that no grass grows on her grave….”
The host interrupted with a question. “Is that true of all vampires?”
The camera panned to Joe, stunned and groping for words. The question presupposed that Nellie was a vampire, so any answer that he gave would at least tacitly accept that point. An on-the-air moment of silence seems like an eternity. Finally, Joe said, “Uh, I don’t know. I’m not sure of all vampires.” Collecting himself, Joe tried to reintroduce rationality, “But I think it’s because people come out here to her grave and try to dig it up.”
His was just a voice in the wind. The scary music started again. Cut to the host: “It’s no secret that Nellie is here,” he said solemnly. “But it still remains a mystery about what she’s doing.”
That was the entire Nellie Vaughn segment. Still a mystery to me is the “mystery about what she’s doing.” I should have realized that Joe and I were fighting a tradition of soft news that was a stronger adversary than any vampire, real or imagined.
Why would anyone prefer fictional vampires to authentic ones? I hadn’t given the question much serious thought until an encounter I had when I was lecturing about New England’s vampires to a class of students attending a prestigious art college. As I related the stories of rural families who dug up the bodies of their loved ones and burned their hearts to save the living, I tried to convey the reasonableness of actions taken centuries ago. These were ordinary farmers, I explained, who were confronted with an illness that medicine could neither explain nor cure. So they did something people everywhere had done for as long as there is memory or record. They blamed the dead. Fundamentally, I argued, the New England vampire practice was perhaps better understood as folk medicine rather than supernatural belief. After class, a student complained that her image of vampires would never again be the same. At first, I felt apologetic that I had destroyed her long-held icon. Later, I wondered why a person would want to cling to a tired, trite symbol. In her wonderful book on American vampires, folklorist Norine Dresser devoted an entire chapter to the lure of the vampire. She wrote that the “sanitized and romanticized” vampire “appears to be an appropriate symbol for contemporary American life—he is lonely, secular, glorifies (sometimes abuses) power, and enjoys sexual freedom.” Vampires in novels, such as those by Anne Rice, may be updated as rock stars and contemporary thrill seekers, but deep inside, where it really matters, they are still Count Dracula. Could any other figure serve so well as a metaphor for the darker side of human nature? What better food for the imagination than a creature that incorporates sex, blood, violence, shape-shifting, superhuman power, and eternal life?
By the early twentieth century, vampires had disappeared from their natural countryside setting. But they found a welcome home in the world of entertainment. In a sense, and ironically, those who argued during the nineteenth century that civilization was on the verge of eradicating the last vestiges of primitive survivals were correct, at least regarding vampires. Science had banished them, but they were eagerly adopted by a smitten popular media. Once the vampire practice became an oddity of history, rather than a ritual actually performed by people living only several miles down the road, everyone could relax and enjoy the horror vicariously. Today’s newspaper readers and television viewers, confident in their sophistication and numbed by Hollywood’s onslaught of celluloid vampires, can now be entertained by New England’s “quaint vampires.”