WEBVTT - How the New England Vampire Panics Worked 0:00:00.560 --> 0:00:02.960 Hey, everybody. We've already made our big tour announcement for 0:00:02.960 --> 0:00:06.040 the year, but this is a little different because we 0:00:06.040 --> 0:00:09.119 have added a show because Denver sold out, so we 0:00:09.160 --> 0:00:11.560 have added a second show in Denver. Nice. Yeah, We're 0:00:11.560 --> 0:00:15.120 going to be there on Wednesday. Then we added a 0:00:15.160 --> 0:00:19.119 show the day before the same place, Gothic Theater, Englewood, Colorado. 0:00:19.480 --> 0:00:21.639 And you can go to s Y s K live 0:00:21.720 --> 0:00:24.360 dot com to get info and tickets for that show 0:00:24.640 --> 0:00:27.400 and all the rest of our shows to Chuck. That's right, Boston, 0:00:27.440 --> 0:00:32.040 April fourth, d C April five. St. Louis and Cleveland, Ohio. 0:00:32.800 --> 0:00:36.640 Come out and see us. Welcome to Stuff you should 0:00:36.640 --> 0:00:45.640 Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome 0:00:45.680 --> 0:00:49.000 to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, Charles W. Chuck, pri 0:00:49.640 --> 0:00:56.520 Jerry Stuff you should know. I love this one. Yeah. 0:00:56.800 --> 0:01:05.240 Vampires December fourwelve was our our main podcast on vampires. 0:01:05.400 --> 0:01:07.360 It was like it was a good one and I 0:01:07.400 --> 0:01:09.800 don't remember touching on this at all, did we No? 0:01:10.080 --> 0:01:12.520 I had no idea about it, that's nutty. It wasn't 0:01:12.600 --> 0:01:19.919 until I read a great um, a great article about 0:01:20.040 --> 0:01:23.039 vampire panics in New England that I had first heard 0:01:23.080 --> 0:01:27.160 of it. Abigail Tucker from Ye she did an amazing 0:01:27.280 --> 0:01:33.560 job on that one, agreed. So let's start. Let's start 0:01:33.600 --> 0:01:36.000 where that article starts, because I think it's a great 0:01:36.000 --> 0:01:42.080 place to dive into this this weirdness. Yeah. Yeah, that's 0:01:42.080 --> 0:01:44.959 not what most people would think. You would say. In Connecticut, 0:01:45.360 --> 0:01:47.920 I'm a freshman in college. There were there were some 0:01:48.040 --> 0:01:52.320 kids playing at I think a gravel quarry and they 0:01:52.440 --> 0:01:56.720 discovered some graves. It's basically the dream of every kid 0:01:56.720 --> 0:02:01.760 who's ever played outside to discover some like long lost graves. 0:02:01.760 --> 0:02:04.200 Like any kid poking around the woods. Were all really 0:02:04.240 --> 0:02:07.240 just looking for dead bodies pretty much at the very least, 0:02:07.280 --> 0:02:11.120 you're prepared for it at all times. Yeah, um remember 0:02:11.200 --> 0:02:13.760 stand by Me, kid, Mean, that's what inspired it all. 0:02:13.840 --> 0:02:17.960 That was one of like the great unnerving, disturbing dead 0:02:18.080 --> 0:02:21.760 kids of all time. And you know what, Ray Brower, Um, 0:02:21.800 --> 0:02:25.200 my friend, my best friend Brett came upon a dead 0:02:25.200 --> 0:02:27.680 body one time playing in the woods. Yeah, and it 0:02:27.800 --> 0:02:30.639 wasn't It was a neighbor who who had a heart 0:02:30.639 --> 0:02:33.560 attack while like raking leaves or cleaning up in the 0:02:33.560 --> 0:02:36.320 woods or something, So it wasn't nefarious, but he still 0:02:36.400 --> 0:02:38.960 ran across the dead body as a kid. How why 0:02:39.120 --> 0:02:41.280 was the guy cleaning up the woods? Well, I mean 0:02:41.320 --> 0:02:42.840 I think it was the woods on the edge of 0:02:42.880 --> 0:02:45.120 his yards or something like that. How long had he 0:02:45.160 --> 0:02:51.079 been there for? Uh, don't think it had been that long. 0:02:51.560 --> 0:02:55.520 He wasn't decomposed or anything. I think it was just 0:02:55.600 --> 0:03:02.120 like lifeless body. There's Mr whatever, Mr Whipple, Right, don't 0:03:02.160 --> 0:03:07.400 squeeze charm, I'm cleaning the woods. So these these kids 0:03:07.400 --> 0:03:10.640 found graves that were very, very old. They weren't, you know, 0:03:10.760 --> 0:03:13.480 a dead neighbor or anything like that. They were actually 0:03:13.480 --> 0:03:17.360 it turned out to be a lost family cemetery again 0:03:17.400 --> 0:03:23.440 in Connecticut, right, and in very short order, the Connecticut 0:03:23.639 --> 0:03:27.280 state archaeologist, which is pretty cool, position, a guy named 0:03:27.360 --> 0:03:31.200 Nick Bellantoni. He was called out and he starts excavating 0:03:31.240 --> 0:03:36.240 the place, right, yes, I'll keep going. He finds a 0:03:36.280 --> 0:03:39.200 bunch of graves, lots of kids, because it's New England 0:03:39.360 --> 0:03:43.760 nineteenth century, late eighteenth century, early nineteenth centuries. When they 0:03:43.760 --> 0:03:46.520 finally said, this is about when this this graveyard was 0:03:46.560 --> 0:03:51.920 in use, and there were kids, some adults buried normally 0:03:51.960 --> 0:03:55.080 exactly like you'd expect. How she said they were buried 0:03:55.160 --> 0:03:57.640 Yankee style. Yeah, I didn't know what that meant. It 0:03:57.720 --> 0:04:01.240 meant like in a very thrifty manner, very bare bones, 0:04:01.280 --> 0:04:05.160 I feel forgiven, not like our ostentatious southern coffins. Right, 0:04:05.840 --> 0:04:08.120 what about that lady who got buried in her ferrari? 0:04:08.200 --> 0:04:10.640 Did you hear about her? I think I did. She 0:04:10.800 --> 0:04:13.520 was great just for doing that, you know, like, I'll 0:04:13.520 --> 0:04:16.680 see y'all in Hell. I'm taking my ferrari with that. 0:04:16.800 --> 0:04:19.560 She was like buried sitting up behind the wheel in 0:04:19.680 --> 0:04:22.440 an agle j in her ferrari. That's how she was buried. 0:04:22.560 --> 0:04:26.800 That's like the Elon Musk's tesla in space, a little 0:04:26.920 --> 0:04:29.800 estro not riding around it. Well, yeah, everyone knows that 0:04:29.800 --> 0:04:32.400 that's actually the body of one of his enemies, of course, 0:04:32.440 --> 0:04:37.080 who was alive when that rocket went off. I'm sure so. Um, 0:04:37.120 --> 0:04:40.560 there's this one grave out of all of them that 0:04:40.880 --> 0:04:45.600 is a little hinky, you could say. Bellentoni starts um 0:04:45.600 --> 0:04:48.479 pulling away some of the rocks. It's entombed now like 0:04:48.560 --> 0:04:51.880 the others. There's rocks around it. And he finds that 0:04:51.920 --> 0:04:54.800 the coffin has been broken, and on the coffin, on 0:04:54.839 --> 0:04:58.360 the coffin lid in brass tacks is J. B. I 0:04:58.400 --> 0:05:02.640 believe hyphen five. Yeah, and this coffin is red, which 0:05:02.680 --> 0:05:05.880 is also different I think than the others. Most of 0:05:05.920 --> 0:05:08.520 the coffin's fine, or most of the skeletons fine. But 0:05:08.600 --> 0:05:10.919 when he gets a little further up, he finds on 0:05:11.040 --> 0:05:15.640 top of the ribs the thigh bones are crossed across 0:05:15.720 --> 0:05:18.599 the ribs, and the skull is no longer attached the 0:05:18.680 --> 0:05:21.119 end of the spinal column. It's on the rib cage 0:05:21.160 --> 0:05:24.279 as well, and the rib cage has been broken. And 0:05:24.600 --> 0:05:27.720 upon further inspection he finds the coffin has been smashed. 0:05:27.920 --> 0:05:32.600 And Nick Bellantoni says, we'll I'll be yeah. I mean, 0:05:32.600 --> 0:05:35.680 this is not what normally happens as a body decomposes. 0:05:36.240 --> 0:05:38.480 They don't go into the shape of the Jolly rogers 0:05:38.839 --> 0:05:42.120 pirate flag. Um. And it's funny that you picked this 0:05:42.279 --> 0:05:45.160 because uh and this is sort of an announcement. But 0:05:46.720 --> 0:05:50.800 the Great Aeron Mankey of Lore fame, was telling me 0:05:50.920 --> 0:05:54.960 these stories this week in the office because uh we 0:05:55.360 --> 0:05:57.000 he has partnered with us. He's gonna do some shows 0:05:57.040 --> 0:06:01.320 with us. Now, yeah, not Lore He's like, no, no, no, 0:06:02.000 --> 0:06:03.800 you don't get that one. But he's gonna do some 0:06:03.839 --> 0:06:05.400 new shows with us and we're all super excited. But 0:06:05.440 --> 0:06:08.640 he was telling me all these stories and you were 0:06:08.680 --> 0:06:13.760 falling asleep, stroking my head gently. And uh, the next 0:06:13.839 --> 0:06:17.840 day you sent this article or this, uh, this collection 0:06:17.880 --> 0:06:19.479 of articles you put together and said, let's do one 0:06:19.480 --> 0:06:22.680 in vampire panics. And I was like, that's weird. Man, 0:06:22.760 --> 0:06:25.800 Like Aaron Mankey was just talking about this, and he 0:06:25.839 --> 0:06:28.600 has like three Laura episodes, one on Mercy Brown that 0:06:28.680 --> 0:06:31.480 I listened to, uh as part of this research, but 0:06:31.520 --> 0:06:33.720 then two others, and it was just it all can 0:06:33.839 --> 0:06:37.560 kind of really weirdly came together the spirits of the vampires. 0:06:37.600 --> 0:06:41.440 And so anyway, welcome Mr Manky, Yeah, welcome, We're glad 0:06:41.480 --> 0:06:44.080 to have you. And are we calling him Mr Mankey 0:06:44.160 --> 0:06:47.080 not Aaron? No, but it was very sweet. He's an 0:06:48.000 --> 0:06:51.839 long time all time stuff you should know listener, and uh, 0:06:51.920 --> 0:06:53.880 he's a legit. I'm sure that he is going to 0:06:53.920 --> 0:06:57.400 hear this and say, oh, guys, I did this so much, 0:06:57.880 --> 0:07:01.920 so much better. I don't like you any longer. So anyway, 0:07:02.040 --> 0:07:05.680 JB fifty five year right is spelled out in brass tacks. Uh. 0:07:05.760 --> 0:07:09.640 It's a male skeleton. It's from the eighteen thirties at 0:07:09.680 --> 0:07:12.160 the latest in there in the body is probably in 0:07:12.160 --> 0:07:17.040 his fifties or so, and it's just very very creepy 0:07:17.080 --> 0:07:21.520 and perplexing. Yeah, very perplexing. First blush, Bellentoni said in 0:07:21.560 --> 0:07:26.240 that Smithsonian archicly he'd never seen anything like it before, right, right, 0:07:26.280 --> 0:07:29.360 So he's he obviously, being an archaeologist, He's not like, 0:07:29.760 --> 0:07:34.240 well that's pretty interesting. I'm going back to my sandwich now. 0:07:35.000 --> 0:07:37.640 He wanted to get to the bottom of it, that's right. 0:07:37.680 --> 0:07:41.000 So he started asking around and finally one colleague said, well, 0:07:41.480 --> 0:07:44.920 maybe it was a vampire. This is Michael Bell not 0:07:45.040 --> 0:07:48.800 yet okay, he it was apparently a colleague, I guess, 0:07:48.800 --> 0:07:52.720 a fellow archaeologist who's like, there was actually such things 0:07:52.760 --> 0:07:56.960 as vampire panics. And then Bellentoni met Michael Bell, right, 0:07:57.080 --> 0:08:00.840 and notably Uh in eighteen fifty four. This is about 0:08:00.880 --> 0:08:07.240 twenty years after the gentleman j B. Which is probably 0:08:07.240 --> 0:08:11.560 his age, right, or I guess maybe Jim Brown years old, 0:08:12.440 --> 0:08:16.320 let's let's just call him that. Uh, and Jewitt City, Connecticut, 0:08:16.320 --> 0:08:19.560 there was a vampire panic that had broken out and 0:08:19.840 --> 0:08:24.920 the corpses were exhumed that people might thought were vampires. Uh. 0:08:25.000 --> 0:08:26.760 And then I think is when he finally gets in 0:08:26.800 --> 0:08:30.200 touch with this Rhode Island folklorist named Michael Bell. Yeah, 0:08:30.240 --> 0:08:32.760 and Bell is like, my friend, I'm going to tell 0:08:32.800 --> 0:08:36.480 you something. Are you sitting down and Bell Andoni says yes, 0:08:36.880 --> 0:08:42.439 and Bell goes, have you had your sandwich? Um? Bell goes, 0:08:42.520 --> 0:08:47.800 you are sitting on the only intact physical evidence of 0:08:48.040 --> 0:08:52.560 what was a series of vampire panics that gripped New 0:08:52.559 --> 0:08:57.800 England in the late eighteenth to to actually late nineteenth century, 0:08:57.840 --> 0:09:01.200 almost up to the twentieth century. Yeah, that's the remarkable 0:09:01.200 --> 0:09:03.480 thing here, because if you hear this and you're like, yeah, yeah, 0:09:03.480 --> 0:09:05.920 I know about Salem. This was a couple of hundred 0:09:06.000 --> 0:09:10.200 years later. Yeah, this was Yeah, this is about less 0:09:10.200 --> 0:09:12.400 than a d and fifty years ago. Yeah, Like we 0:09:12.400 --> 0:09:15.520 we had evolved way past that by this point to 0:09:15.600 --> 0:09:18.640 believe that vampires existed and we need to dig up 0:09:18.679 --> 0:09:21.960 bodies of our relatives. Yeah, that's what's so shocking about this. 0:09:22.120 --> 0:09:24.920 Like the Enlightenment had come and gone. Science was a thing. 0:09:26.080 --> 0:09:28.199 It was just it was it's very weird to think 0:09:28.240 --> 0:09:31.880 about how late this happened, but sure enough, there is 0:09:31.960 --> 0:09:34.079 bel ATONI looked into it and talked to Michael Bell 0:09:34.160 --> 0:09:37.400 and found out, No, there was, there was vampire panics. 0:09:37.440 --> 0:09:40.640 A lot of people don't know about them because most 0:09:40.640 --> 0:09:42.960 people don't dig into that kind of thing. But they're 0:09:42.960 --> 0:09:46.520 actually because they happened as late as they did, they're 0:09:46.520 --> 0:09:50.160 actually fairly well documented. The thing is is most of 0:09:50.160 --> 0:09:54.679 the graves are lost. Um you have an actual grave 0:09:54.720 --> 0:09:57.160 of one of the vampires that was basically a victim 0:09:57.200 --> 0:10:00.800 of this vampire panic. Yeah, and apparently it happened. Um. 0:10:00.840 --> 0:10:04.760 He documented Bell about eighty of these exhimations as far 0:10:04.800 --> 0:10:08.760 west as Minnesota, but obviously most of these took place 0:10:08.840 --> 0:10:14.360 in the Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire area, Rhode Island, 0:10:14.400 --> 0:10:17.840 Tohode Island. Because I don't know what it is with 0:10:17.880 --> 0:10:20.920 New England. Well, we'll get to it. We'll get to it. 0:10:20.960 --> 0:10:23.959 They're weird because it's it definitely is a very weird thing, 0:10:24.280 --> 0:10:29.120 especially considering that, like at the time, people who were alive, 0:10:29.840 --> 0:10:33.960 We're like, what are you guys doing? How backwards can 0:10:34.000 --> 0:10:39.000 you be? You know? Um, So they're contemporaries were even 0:10:39.080 --> 0:10:43.079 like put off by this kind of thing. And at 0:10:43.120 --> 0:10:46.120 first it was um like you had to know somebody 0:10:46.320 --> 0:10:49.240 to know that this was going on. But eventually a 0:10:49.280 --> 0:10:52.800 couple of them became high enough profile that, um, it 0:10:52.880 --> 0:10:56.760 became international news that there was some weirdness going on 0:10:56.840 --> 0:11:00.440 in New England that the locals were we're we're in 0:11:00.480 --> 0:11:03.839 the grips of a vampire panic. Yeah. Thorrow wrote about 0:11:03.840 --> 0:11:07.760 it in his journal. That's Henry David. Yeah, he wrote. 0:11:08.440 --> 0:11:11.320 He said he was at an exhimation and he wrote 0:11:11.760 --> 0:11:16.560 it was like wow, man. Uh And as you said, 0:11:16.640 --> 0:11:18.800 Rhode Island, Like, this wasn't just like out in the 0:11:18.840 --> 0:11:24.240 sticks a rural uh, New England. This happened close to Newport, 0:11:24.360 --> 0:11:27.520 Rhode Island, which at the time and is still very 0:11:27.559 --> 0:11:31.080 tony area where oh yeah, dude, beautiful that that cliff 0:11:31.120 --> 0:11:35.040 walk or whatever, unbelievable and those houses were around back then. 0:11:35.120 --> 0:11:39.480 These were well healed, rich people and that's where they summered, right, 0:11:39.559 --> 0:11:42.840 murdering one another and getting away with it, drinking champagne 0:11:42.840 --> 0:11:46.600 all the while. That's what they did. God bless him 0:11:46.720 --> 0:11:50.080 as a beautiful town. Yeah, Newport Rhode Island is a 0:11:50.280 --> 0:11:53.440 gorgeous town. Yeah. I was very taken with it and 0:11:53.440 --> 0:11:56.400 thought I could totally live here if I had about 0:11:57.000 --> 0:11:59.160 fifty times as much money as I have right now. 0:11:59.240 --> 0:12:03.800 And it was nine hundred. So um, as I said, like, 0:12:03.880 --> 0:12:07.280 this is this is it's it is very well documented 0:12:07.320 --> 0:12:09.280 in some respects, but you have to be a guy 0:12:09.320 --> 0:12:12.200 like Michael Bell who knows where to look because Gray's 0:12:12.280 --> 0:12:15.160 like this don't pop up every day. Right. There was 0:12:15.200 --> 0:12:19.120 this dude who documented it probably better than anybody, um, 0:12:19.160 --> 0:12:21.040 and he didn't hear about it until I think the 0:12:21.200 --> 0:12:25.079 late eighteen nineties. But he was an anthropologist named George Stetson. 0:12:25.640 --> 0:12:28.719 He published like a monotype on it, on the New 0:12:28.720 --> 0:12:31.959 England vampire panics and exactly what the beliefs were. So 0:12:32.000 --> 0:12:35.200 he he established like the baseline for these beliefs and 0:12:35.200 --> 0:12:38.320 really documented it in the late nineteenth century. Yeah, and 0:12:38.440 --> 0:12:43.520 kind of shook up the world. Yeah. So again everybody 0:12:43.520 --> 0:12:46.360 at the time who wasn't involved is looking in like 0:12:47.080 --> 0:12:51.480 what are you guys doing? Um? Apparently the Boston Daily 0:12:51.520 --> 0:12:54.840 Globe said that was basically inbreeding was responsible for this 0:12:54.880 --> 0:12:59.040 weird behavior. Um, like people from the South, We're going, 0:12:59.559 --> 0:13:02.079 what our nation? Are you guys doing it? There? Right? 0:13:02.640 --> 0:13:05.800 There was a there was the idea that the that Stetson, 0:13:05.880 --> 0:13:10.439 George Stetson, the anthropologists had basically been fooled, been fleeced 0:13:10.440 --> 0:13:15.800 by you know, the slick New England city rural folk um, 0:13:15.840 --> 0:13:17.880 and that they were just pulling his leg as it 0:13:17.920 --> 0:13:22.080 was put. Um, that's not the case. This actually did happen, 0:13:22.640 --> 0:13:26.280 and it it turns out that it is basically an 0:13:26.280 --> 0:13:29.840 extension of a tradition that finds its roots back in Europe, 0:13:30.160 --> 0:13:33.680 goes back many many centuries to Europe. And here is 0:13:33.720 --> 0:13:39.559 where it gets extremely interesting to me. The vampire legend 0:13:39.640 --> 0:13:45.360 that we understand today actually grew out of real superstitions. 0:13:45.360 --> 0:13:50.000 Like everything you know about vampires is is what some 0:13:50.120 --> 0:13:53.520 people hundreds of years ago and not that very long ago, 0:13:53.960 --> 0:14:00.360 believed was actual reality. And this, this vampire panic was 0:14:00.400 --> 0:14:07.400 an actual manifestation of those beliefs in real life. That's right, man, 0:14:08.120 --> 0:14:10.840 The spirit of the vampires are with us, all right, 0:14:10.880 --> 0:14:42.640 we'll be back right after this. Okay. So the vampire, 0:14:43.520 --> 0:14:46.680 as we probably pronounced it like that in that episode 0:14:47.280 --> 0:14:50.360 so many years ago, I have a one note sense 0:14:50.400 --> 0:14:54.560 of humor. Uh, it came It's reliable. That's a nice 0:14:54.600 --> 0:14:57.160 way to say. It came out of Europe, not the 0:14:57.240 --> 0:15:01.200 United States. And that word for disappeared in the tenth century. 0:15:01.400 --> 0:15:05.600 And um Bell, as far as he's concerned, says or 0:15:05.680 --> 0:15:08.840 thinks at least that, um, well, we all know that 0:15:08.840 --> 0:15:11.680 it came out of like a Germany and the Slavic 0:15:11.960 --> 0:15:15.920 immigrants coming here. But he thinks, for his money is 0:15:16.000 --> 0:15:18.440 that it probably wasn't just one big way. It probably 0:15:18.440 --> 0:15:21.920 came over from different people at different times, but eventually 0:15:21.920 --> 0:15:25.240 it made its way over to the United States through 0:15:25.280 --> 0:15:29.720 probably Pennsylvania and then made its way north right. And um, 0:15:29.720 --> 0:15:33.680 from his research he's found, the earliest he's found is 0:15:34.200 --> 0:15:38.680 a reference to it comes from four in the Connecticut 0:15:38.800 --> 0:15:43.280 Koran and Weekly Intelligencer. And you think the Hartford newspapers 0:15:43.320 --> 0:15:47.600 still called the Hartford Koran, So that's an old paper, right, yeah, 0:15:47.720 --> 0:15:50.040 and um in it in this it's a letter to 0:15:50.040 --> 0:15:52.880 the editor from a guy named Moses Holmes, who is 0:15:52.920 --> 0:15:57.360 a councilman in the town of Willington, m Connecticut. And 0:15:57.560 --> 0:16:01.880 he's basically warning people not to listen to what he calls, 0:16:01.960 --> 0:16:06.800 quote a certain quack doctor, a foreigner. And um, basically 0:16:06.800 --> 0:16:10.640 this doctor was saying there there's vampires of foot and 0:16:10.640 --> 0:16:13.040 you need to exume your family and kill them because 0:16:13.080 --> 0:16:16.920 they're vampires now. And Moses Holmes was saying, don't don't 0:16:16.960 --> 0:16:19.480 do that. This is wrong and weird. Well, yeah, and 0:16:19.560 --> 0:16:22.360 that's the legend that came over from Europe. The Slavic 0:16:22.400 --> 0:16:28.160 people had the upier and the Romanians had and the 0:16:28.280 --> 0:16:32.200 upier and the stragoy would die, be buried and would 0:16:32.240 --> 0:16:34.880 come back to drink the blood of their relatives. And 0:16:35.080 --> 0:16:38.720 that was the legend and what it really was. Well, 0:16:38.760 --> 0:16:41.480 maybe we should hold onto that little yeah, let's just yeah, 0:16:41.600 --> 0:16:45.360 I'm sorry, I meant to cross that out on your Okay. 0:16:45.760 --> 0:16:48.280 I was like, this came into yeah, all right, so 0:16:48.320 --> 0:16:50.800 we'll we'll we'll tease that out for later. So you 0:16:50.840 --> 0:16:56.160 ask yourself, like I think of Yankees as like pretty 0:16:56.360 --> 0:17:00.080 solid people, salt of the earth, especially nineteen cent or 0:17:00.280 --> 0:17:04.439 Yankees salts of the Irish people, really stable, like it 0:17:04.440 --> 0:17:06.760 would take quite a bit to drive one of them, 0:17:06.760 --> 0:17:09.320 just totally crazy. Right, they had to put up with 0:17:09.359 --> 0:17:15.000 these winters, nor easters, um saleasters, sure, all that stuff, right, 0:17:15.480 --> 0:17:19.320 and um, you know, how would how would this happen 0:17:19.760 --> 0:17:23.080 outside of say, puritanical New England in the in the 0:17:23.200 --> 0:17:26.000 nineteenth century. And it turns out I didn't realize this, 0:17:26.040 --> 0:17:30.080 but Abigail Tucker points out that the Yankees that we 0:17:30.119 --> 0:17:34.119 think of are not the Yankees, and I'm not talking 0:17:34.160 --> 0:17:40.520 baseball here, are not the Yankees, who, um, we're in actuality. 0:17:40.720 --> 0:17:42.920 So I sat up very late last night trying to 0:17:42.960 --> 0:17:46.439 figure out the most convoluted way to say that sentence, 0:17:47.280 --> 0:17:50.320 and I think of pay Yeah. I thought this was 0:17:50.359 --> 0:17:53.119 super interesting because when I think of New England, I 0:17:53.160 --> 0:17:58.399 think of very religious, puritanical Christian Christian. They don't do 0:17:58.480 --> 0:18:02.640 this kind of thing you think of um And actually, 0:18:02.680 --> 0:18:05.119 you know what's funny is because Mankett was here. I 0:18:05.119 --> 0:18:07.280 had him on movie Crush. I guess what his movie was, 0:18:08.920 --> 0:18:13.520 hold On, hold On, So I said Christian, which makes 0:18:13.520 --> 0:18:16.919 me think of this song Sister Christian by Night Ranger, 0:18:17.280 --> 0:18:21.199 which factored in big time into Boogie Night No. His 0:18:21.280 --> 0:18:25.320 favorite movie is The Village, which makes total sense. I 0:18:25.359 --> 0:18:28.240 watched that again within the last couple of months, and 0:18:28.240 --> 0:18:30.719 I'm like, this movie is even better now. Yeah, I 0:18:30.760 --> 0:18:33.639 liked it more when I saw it again, which is 0:18:33.680 --> 0:18:35.680 weird because you know the twist at the know, because 0:18:35.680 --> 0:18:37.920 it's the m night Sham movie. Yeah, And I think 0:18:37.960 --> 0:18:39.679 it bugged me at the time because I and I 0:18:39.720 --> 0:18:41.840 told him this in the show. But I think at 0:18:41.880 --> 0:18:44.480 the time I was sort of like over M. Night 0:18:44.680 --> 0:18:47.720 and the Twists. I was like, come on, dude, another 0:18:47.760 --> 0:18:50.480 twist and now I'm looking out for it, so I 0:18:50.520 --> 0:18:53.520 had better be really good. Yeah, but I think years 0:18:53.600 --> 0:18:55.040 later I watched it again, I was like, you know what, 0:18:55.200 --> 0:18:57.080 I think I kind of dig this movie. I did too, 0:18:57.440 --> 0:19:00.679 so anyway, very fitting. But I think of those people 0:19:01.160 --> 0:19:06.000 like these Puritans, living off, removed from society, very strict 0:19:06.000 --> 0:19:10.679 religious people's but apparently that was not the deal. In 0:19:10.720 --> 0:19:14.160 the eighteen hundreds in rural New England, only ten belonged 0:19:14.200 --> 0:19:18.400 to a church. Shocking to me, and especially it says 0:19:18.400 --> 0:19:21.479 that you're in this article Rhode Island and I love this. 0:19:21.560 --> 0:19:24.320 I had no idea it was founded as a haven 0:19:24.400 --> 0:19:28.199 for religious dissenters. So I think they just wanted to 0:19:28.200 --> 0:19:32.000 go in party. Yeah, the seaside, they were like, let's 0:19:32.040 --> 0:19:35.960 party and engage in hex magic. Gosh, they were Another 0:19:36.000 --> 0:19:38.800 way to put it is that the New Englanders in 0:19:38.840 --> 0:19:44.200 the nineteenth century were superstitious, but right exactly, because if 0:19:44.240 --> 0:19:48.480 you were um hardcore Christian, superstition didn't play a part, 0:19:49.320 --> 0:19:51.680 you wouldn't like, I mean, what are the some of 0:19:51.680 --> 0:19:55.000 the things they did. They would um barry shoes by 0:19:55.000 --> 0:19:58.240 the fireplace, to catch the devil from coming down the chimney, 0:19:58.440 --> 0:20:00.600 like a horse shoe over your door. Yeah, that kind 0:20:00.600 --> 0:20:02.679 of stuff. Like basically anything you think of is like 0:20:02.800 --> 0:20:07.439 locker weird kind of Pennsylvania witchcraft, that kind of stuff. 0:20:08.000 --> 0:20:10.199 This is like, that's what it was. It was like 0:20:10.280 --> 0:20:15.120 country witchcraft. That's what they believed in. Because even if 0:20:15.119 --> 0:20:17.960 you weren't Christian, you still believed in things like good 0:20:18.000 --> 0:20:21.440 and evil and spirits and demons and stuff like that. 0:20:22.320 --> 0:20:24.119 You just had to have a different way of dealing 0:20:24.119 --> 0:20:26.800 with them. Since you weren't Christian in the way of 0:20:26.840 --> 0:20:29.040 dealing with and wasn't like praying to God or whatever. 0:20:29.560 --> 0:20:31.960 She had to hang up a horse shoe or barry 0:20:32.040 --> 0:20:33.840 a shoe to keep the devil from coming down your 0:20:33.920 --> 0:20:38.400 chimney because you were as backwards as a game. When 0:20:38.400 --> 0:20:40.320 are we going to reveal the reveal? When are we 0:20:40.359 --> 0:20:44.320 going to do our m night twist? Yet? Not yet? 0:20:44.320 --> 0:20:45.800 All right, Well, then you gotta go because I got 0:20:45.800 --> 0:20:48.760 nothing else. Okay, are you ready for now? Well? No, 0:20:48.880 --> 0:20:54.399 if you've got more, if you can, were where we were? 0:20:54.800 --> 0:20:59.639 All right, Well, here's the reveal. Because being superstitious does 0:20:59.640 --> 0:21:04.240 an ex playing the vampire panic. No alone what else 0:21:04.280 --> 0:21:08.160 does I'll let you drop the hammer. So they are 0:21:08.240 --> 0:21:11.920 not entirely certain, but the general consensus among people who 0:21:12.119 --> 0:21:14.800 study this kind of thing is that this was a 0:21:14.840 --> 0:21:22.480 reaction to infectious disease outbreaks, specifically tuberculosis. Boom boom. That's 0:21:22.520 --> 0:21:26.880 why superstitious New Englanders were running around in the nineteenth 0:21:26.880 --> 0:21:30.520 century digging up family members and driving stakes through their 0:21:30.560 --> 0:21:35.119 hearts or beheading them in their graves. I love stuff 0:21:35.160 --> 0:21:38.399 like this when you can look back years later. I 0:21:38.440 --> 0:21:40.560 wonder what they're gonna in a hundred years about the 0:21:40.560 --> 0:21:44.720 Satanic panic. Oh, it wasn't some disease, obviously, this is 0:21:45.119 --> 0:21:49.040 better reveal it was a panic though. Yeah. Um, it's 0:21:49.080 --> 0:21:51.280 interesting that two of our favorite episodes probably are going 0:21:51.320 --> 0:21:55.199 to end up being Satanic panic and vampire panics. This 0:21:55.240 --> 0:21:58.200 one's going pretty well. So all right, so let's talk 0:21:58.200 --> 0:22:03.040 about TV for a minute. This is obviously pre antibiotics. 0:22:03.080 --> 0:22:06.720 There is still tuberculosis, but it's super curable now if 0:22:06.720 --> 0:22:09.800 you're you know, lucky enough to live where you can 0:22:09.840 --> 0:22:16.360 get antibiotics. But it is caused by Bacterium um, two 0:22:16.400 --> 0:22:19.560 of which can infect humans M. Tuberculosis and M. Bovus. 0:22:20.560 --> 0:22:24.000 And you've heard the word consumption in movies like The 0:22:24.119 --> 0:22:28.040 Village from that time period they're dying of consumption. Consumption 0:22:28.160 --> 0:22:31.679 was almost always tuberculosis. That's just what they called it 0:22:31.720 --> 0:22:33.800 back then, right, that was the name for it, the 0:22:33.840 --> 0:22:37.360 reason they called it consumption, and actually that that term 0:22:37.440 --> 0:22:41.640 to describe tuberculous is actually predates the more common usage 0:22:41.640 --> 0:22:44.720 of consumption today. It was like ingesting or eating something. Yeah, 0:22:44.720 --> 0:22:47.919 it takes back to like I think, so it's the 0:22:47.960 --> 0:22:50.760 original meaning was that your body was consuming itself. That 0:22:50.840 --> 0:22:53.600 it was like the word for tuberculosis. Well, yeah, And 0:22:53.640 --> 0:22:55.320 the reason they call it that is because it looked 0:22:55.359 --> 0:23:01.280 like your life force was being sapped away from you. 0:23:01.480 --> 0:23:05.080 The way that the disease progressed, um, it included coughing 0:23:05.160 --> 0:23:08.000 fits where they said, like you couldn't even stop to talk. 0:23:08.040 --> 0:23:13.080 You would be coughing so hard that's not good. Um. 0:23:13.200 --> 0:23:15.400 You would lose a lot of weight, so it looked 0:23:15.400 --> 0:23:18.960 like you were wasting away to um. But at the 0:23:19.000 --> 0:23:24.200 same time, you were um voracious ly hungry. You wanted 0:23:24.200 --> 0:23:26.399 to eat. It wasn't that kind of illness where you 0:23:26.440 --> 0:23:29.159 just can't even eat. You were hungry like all the time, 0:23:29.600 --> 0:23:33.080 but you were still wasting away. So there's this duality 0:23:33.119 --> 0:23:38.639 between hunger, rampant hunger and the loss of a life force. 0:23:39.359 --> 0:23:44.640 And this it's possible that all vampire tales and legends 0:23:44.640 --> 0:23:49.880 and the origin of it is found in tuberculosis, because 0:23:49.920 --> 0:23:52.040 that's what you think of with vampire is um. The 0:23:52.080 --> 0:23:56.040 whole idea at this time was if you had tuberculosis 0:23:56.560 --> 0:23:59.919 and you were the say, second, third, fourth member of 0:24:00.040 --> 0:24:03.880 your family to come down with this with consumption, it 0:24:03.960 --> 0:24:07.280 meant that the one of the previous family members who 0:24:07.280 --> 0:24:11.680 had died of this disease was still alive in some way. 0:24:12.160 --> 0:24:15.600 Their soul was in a supernatural way and was coming 0:24:15.640 --> 0:24:19.360 at night and sucking the life from you to sustain themselves. 0:24:20.400 --> 0:24:22.840 If this was the case, then there was only one 0:24:22.880 --> 0:24:25.119 thing to do. If you were in New England at 0:24:25.119 --> 0:24:27.879 the time, you had to dig up that family member 0:24:27.880 --> 0:24:31.800 and take care of business. Yeah, it's funny. Emily and 0:24:31.800 --> 0:24:34.679 I always laugh at the movie trope of the the 0:24:34.760 --> 0:24:39.240 cough like it has almost a percent return rate. If 0:24:39.320 --> 0:24:41.600 a character coughs in a movie, then they're going to 0:24:41.720 --> 0:24:44.800 die because you just don't leave coughs in movies. That's 0:24:44.800 --> 0:24:48.040 a sure sign. Or especially if they like cough into 0:24:48.040 --> 0:24:52.080 a hanky. There's always blood in it, Like remember Hodgeman's 0:24:52.200 --> 0:24:57.239 um doc Holiday. Yeah, I'll be your Hucklebert coughing up 0:24:57.280 --> 0:25:00.639 the blood and lung tissue. Well, we just started watching 0:25:00.680 --> 0:25:03.600