Arts & Entertainment

Connecticut's Own Vampire

State Archaeologist Nicholas Bellantoni explained about Connecticut's "vampire" recently to patrons of the Plumb Memorial Library.

In 1840s in Griswold, a man died of tuberculosis, then other family members sickened and died soon after.

To his family and neighbors, the disease appear to be spreading and its source might be the original sufferer. They believed he was returning from the dead and spreading the disease.

To keep the "vampire" at rest, the man's family broke into his grave five years after his death, removed his skull and lower leg bones and destroyed his chest. The leg bones were crossed over his chest. His coffin was also walled up with bricks afterward. 

It also didn't help that European sailors had brought with them superstitions about vampires from their own country, such as exhuming the dead and mutilating bodies to make them stay that way. In those stories, vampires were evil.

To add perspective, all this happened before Bram Stokers' Dracula was published.

That's the backdrop of the "Jewett City Vampire," as told by state Archaeologist Nicholas Bellantoni to patrons of Shelton's Plumb Memorial Library.

"The idea [of vampires] is there as early as 1765," Bellantoni said.

There was no modern medicine, and "all they knew was family were dying," Bellantoni said. "The best hypothesis we have is that they thought he was undead."

As evidence, believers thought blood in the corpse's heart meant the body was still alive. 

To keep the Jewett City Vampire really dead, the family also placed the skull facing west, a move meant to condemn him so he would not rise again when God would resurrect the faithful body and soul, Bellantoni said.

A cure for tuberculosis was found in the late 1800s. Dracula was published in 1897.

But until then, 20 vampire cases were reported throughout New England. In the end, the "vampire hunters" were trying to save themselves from death by disease.

"People will do irrational things during a pandemic," Bellantoni said.


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