vampire

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"A vampire" according to Webster's dictionary is a "blood sucking ghost or
a reanimated body of a dead person believed to come from the grave and wander
about by night sucking the blood of persons asleep. In the early 1770's
a Rhode Island farmer named Stuckley, the father of 14
children, feared that his oldest daughter Sarah was a vampire, Sarah ruled
the roost, bossing her other brothers and sisters. She seemed to take great
pleasure in slaughtering the farm animals. The younger children complained to
their parents Sarah licked the blood from her fingers as if it was jelly or
honey.In her early twenties Sarah contracted consunption,and within a few
months she died. Shortly after Sarah's death her younger sister started
coughing up blood.The local doctor diagnosed her disease as comsumption,later
known as tuberculosis.in one of her deliriums she told her parents Sarah
visited her every night sat on her stomach suffocating her and sucking the
blood from her neck. The consumption spread through the family and as five
more children became ill they complained of nightly visits from Sarah.
Half of the stuckley's family was wiped out in two years.

When Stuckley's wife took ill, and like her dughters she endured nightly
visits from Sarah, he decided to take action. He and his neighbors exumed
the body of Sarah. Opening the coffin they found the body well preserved,her
hair and fingernails still growing, it was enough evidence to suspect his
daughter of vampirism. they decided to stab her in the heart which poured out
blood, they next cut out Sarah's heart placed it in an iron pot and cremeated
till there was only ashes left. Two weeks later Mrs. Stuckley died of
consumption.

100 yeras later in 1874 the village of Placedale, William Rose dug up the
body of his daughter and burned her heart for she was drawing energy from
other family members. this was reported in the Providence Journal even though
details weren't given one can be surmize Rose's actions were a superstitious
belief his daughter was a vampire.

The most celebrated case of vampirism occured 9 years later at Wickford
and Exeter Rhode Island, again an outbreak of tuberculosis was the cause of
panic. George Brown's wife Mary of Exeter,died of the disease on December
8,1883. Within six months her daughter Mary age 20, passed away of the same
illness. George Brown had six more daughters,and one son Edwin. Edwin was
married and owned his own farm in West Wickford. Five years after his sister
Mary died he too contracted the disease, and fearful for his life he moved
to the Rocky Mountains. There less than a year later he got word his sister
Mercy Brown, age 19, had also passed away of tuberculosis. Edwin headed back
east in in 1892,determined to lick the plague.

In Colorado the popular cure for tuberculosis was to"eat the fried heart of
a rattlesnake," but Edwin also knew the New England cure was to burn the heart
of a suspected vampire. Edwin didn't know which one of his deceased relatives
was causing his blood to be sapped, so he decided to exhume all three bodies.
His mother and his sister Mary were both skeletal, but his sister Mercy,
dead two months earlier looked as good as the day she was burried. he then
cut out his sister's heart and reburied the body. The heart was then burned
on a stake nearby ,and like all the rattlesnake hearts he had eaten in the
Rockies ,Edwin chomped on the fried heart of his sister Mercy. The grisly
cure didn't work Edwin Brown expired only a few weeks later.