Twilight In Connecticut: Vampires In Our Midst

When the subject of Vampires comes up in conversation (at least for those of us who have everyday discussions about such topics) you think of dark castles, medieval lands, and blood-sucking creatures. Or, if you’re of the more recent generation, your mind probably goes direct to the likes of series such as Angel, True Blood, and of course, Twilight. Whatever the way your thoughts take you, the notion that Vampires have a place right here in our own little state is likely something that never comes up… and yet it is a fact that is quite literally written in stone.

Before any of you go rushing out to find that handsome, romantic, centuries-old Vampire to get hitched with, there are a few very important things to remember. First and foremost, as with so many topics, the Hollywood version is far from the original story. Vampires were never something you’d want to be. And, in fact, original Vampire lore makes it clear that it’s not something you ever could be. Sorry folks, but if a Vampire bites you, you don’t turn into one, you’re simply dead (and not the dead that can rise again, just dead… plain old dead). Also, up until books and film, Vampires were never something romanticized. They were always evil, nasty, monsters. And the idea that anyone would ever consider becoming one was more unbelievable than the idea that they were in real creatures.

Now, to set the scene for a moment. You’re living in colonial Connecticut, in a land that has been largely unexplored, with strange and new surroundings. And all around these parts there are stories of creatures lurking in the woods and unusual happenings town-by-town. Before the age of television and the internet, people were left to their own imaginations to come up with explanations for things they couldn’t understand. And anyone can tell you that our imaginations can create far scarier things than any Hollywood filmmaker could. So when people started mysteriously dieing, and to those around them it appeared as though the life was being drained from them, the immediate assumption was that something supernatural was at work. And everyone knew that Vampires from the Old World “feed” off of people so when these people were “wasting away” it was decided that must be the cause.

But what to do? Colonists were faced with many threats, but Vampires?  Believe it or not the methods to keep Vampires at bay have been passed from generation to generation and have excited since around 4,000 BC! One thing that Hollywood has done is keep some of these methods alive on screen, so you may be familiar with the most popular ones: stake through the heart, fire, beheading. All of these things were considered to be solutions to any Vampire problem. So in areas where Vampires were believed to be a problem, townspeople got together and headed into the cemetery to find the graves of those suspected. What is perhaps most shocking at all is that these bands of Vampire Hunters were sanctioned by the towns themselves!

These people would go into a cemetery and begin digging up graves of suspected Vampires. And when they came upon one (normally the person they decided was at the cause) they would find that the remains appeared to still have blood, nails and hair growing, and other things which they determined were signs that the people were returning from the grave. The remedy? You guessed it! Put a stake through the heart, burn the remains, or decapitate the corpse (or all of the above). If – as was the situation in a Connecticut case – there were only bones that remained in a grave, the means to stop the Vampire was to rearrange the bones. Put the head on backwards, cross the bones, etc. This was believed to make it impossible for the individual to return and stalk their victims.

Today we know (or think we know) better than to consider that Vampires are actually real creatures raising from the graves, but back then the ruler of thought was superstitions and legends, so it wasn’t difficult for colonists to jump to a more supernatural cause. And also, of course, they simply didn’t have the same knowledge of things such as decomposition or medical illnesses to draw reasonable conclusions. But that’s where modern-day forensics steps in to provide a perspective on these events in our history.

I’ve been proud to be able to learn from Connecticut State Archeologist Nick Bellantoni, who extensively added forensics to a case of suspected Vampirism that occurred here in Connecticut. When he unearthed remains in a grave that has been moved around, and began looking into why that took place, he stumbled upon the Vampire situation in our state. Using his understanding of forensic archeology (think of the TV series “Bones”) he examined the remains and drew a very interesting conclusion. The individual in question, who in Colonial days was a suspected Vampire, had actually passed away from Consumption (what we call Tuberculosis today). This terrible disease of the time ran through towns, and especially through families, and it results in people who may seem otherwise perfectly healthy to “waste away” until the disease eventually takes them.

All of this may seem like days so long ago, but in fact these events in our history only happened in the 1800s, which in the larger picture, was not all that long ago. It may be hard for us to imagine today jumping so quickly from a medical cause to a supernatural one, but times have not in fact changed that much. To date there have been around 12 situations found in the not-so-distant-past here in New England where Vampires were believed to be the cause for deaths. But, I’ll leave you with a final thing to think about… not all of these cases have been so easily explained away as a medical misunderstanding. So, just maybe, somewhere out there – closer than you might think – real Vampires are lurking around.

Those interested in learning about New England’s Vampire lore are invited to attend two programs next week. On Tuesday, November 15, there will be a multimedia presentation at the Trumbull Library (33 Quality Street) on this subject. And next Wednesday, November 16, we will be discussing this topic as part of our Weekly Coffee Talk at our Library & Research Center, 284 Racebrook Road, in Orange.