Food for the dead : on the trail of New England's vampires / Michael E. Bell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bell, Michael Edward, 1943- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Vampires--New England--Folklore.

Vampires.

Folklore--New England.

Folklore.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (392 p.)

Edition:

Wesleyan pbk. ed.

Place of Publication:

Middletown, Connecticut : Wesleyan University Press, [2011]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

"Close your eyes and imagine a vampire: Your mind's eye may conjure up Count Dracula with bared teeth and a shiny tuxedo. But, another kind of vampire was believed to live in rural New England long ago. Author and folklorist Michael E. Bell has spent twenty years pursuing this forgotten vampire tradition. His discoveries will surprise and enthrall skeptics, believers, and all readers of this engaging book." "Bell's odyssey began in 1981 when Rhode Islander Everett Peck told him a family story passed down for generations. In 1892, months after young Mercy Brown succumbed to tuberculosis, her body was exhumed from a local graveyard. Relatives cut out her heart, burned it on a nearby rock, and fed the ashes to her dying brother, hoping to cure him of the wasting disease. They feared that Mercy had become a vampire, sapping her sibling's vitality to provide sustenance for her own spectral existence. Or, had she become a scapegoat, blamed for the baffling affliction ravaging her family?"--BOOK JACKET.

Contents:

Acknowledgments

Prologue

ch. 1. This awful thing

ch. 2. Testing a horrible superstition

ch. 3. Remarkable happenings

ch. 4. The cause of their trouble lay before them

ch. 5. I am waiting and watching for you

ch. 6. I thought for sure they were coming after me

ch. 7. Don't be a rational adult

ch. 8. Never strangers true vampires be

ch. 9. Ghoulish, wolfish shapes

ch. 10. The unending river of life

ch. 11. Relicks of many old customs

ch. 12. A ghoul in every deserted fireplace

ch. 13. Is that true of all vampires?

ch. 14. Food for the dead

appendix A. Chronology of vampire incidents in New England

appendix B. Children of Stukeley and Honor Tillinghast

Notes

Works sited

Index

About the author.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780819571717

0819571717

OCLC:

854970205