New England Vampire Panic - US History - Extra History
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There's a ton of mystery and lore that surrounds vampires, those blood-sucking creatures of the night, but what really inspired those tales? One related event caused the New England Vampire Panic! Where superstitious villagers were faced with an outbreak of consumption. Digging up some of the dark Vampire Superstitions we that are recognized have today.
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Wouldn't this actually spread tuberculosis oh God they wouldn't know that
guy i like your channel buy only in amerika do you need an charity for your medical bills. the rest of the word found the solution it is called universal health care!!
*any1 who lived thru the c19 pandemic does not need an explanation.* people are insane. & not interested in learning. & i hope they all dxe. -JC
Minnesota gang
@Extra credits can you please help support those scientist trying to protect mother nature those who fight and stand against climate change and global warming
as someone who lives in a small rural community with only about 20 people, i can say that this kind of preassure from neighbors is real, you know everyone and everyone knows you, and a reputation is very important
Guess life sucks for you. :(
Well, you can't spell 'agriculture' without 'cult' after all!
Still beats the narcissism and lonely yet around millions of people in big cities.
@@shadowbannedaccont9479 Stop projecting kiddo, city inhabitants are exact opposite of your brand of hating education, hygiene, and common sense, stone age stupidity...
@@shadowbannedaccont9479 the narcissim part of your statement is provenly false. There is no more narcissism in cities than outside. Loneliness and isolation can be a thing though, especially for people who have social disabilities. But I can say for sure that having grown in a small town, said disabilities becomes a big fat target for bullying in those communities instead of the anonymity of big cities.
What a terrifying time to be alive. The possibility of losing your entire family like that, and then have then unburied.
“The past was the worst.” - Simon Whistler
@@NicoBabyman1 “dont write down your crimes” Simon whistler Rule number one
@@kestrels-in-the-sky Not to be that guy, but, *write
Coronavirus also has people dying left and right
It’s a terrifying time because people believe what’s on TV, instead of what they can actually see. I’ll bet these people knew more about their situation than we do.
So that's where the old "Stake the heart" myth came from. And in a weird way "nailing a corpse down so it can't move" makes much more sense than "Vampires can only be killed by a stake through the heart"
Vampire myth comes from Eastern Europe. Eastern Europeans would heavily keep their pagan beliefs in magic along with Christianity. Eastern Europeans believed the world to be full of various unalive and undead mythical creatures. Kinda like of a fantasy world. "The Witcher" universe is a pretty decent representation generally, but there's much more creatures. The multitude of creatures involved ghouls and upyrs, blood sucking undead things.
Between this and Lovecraft, I'm convinced that New England is just a magnet for creepy stories 😨
Don't forget Salem!
It’s just another province in the Freemason confederation.
@@jarekwrzosek2048 Oh, yeah. Because of the Witch Trials.
And all Steven King.
Lovecraft was just a nut.
The pain of losing a loved one and then being told to eat their ashes. Dang.
All while fighting the same disease that killed her yourself!
Wait you don’t do that?
ayo...
As some who lived most of their life in Exeter R.I, there are still people who hear the superstition but not the explanation. If you happen to visit Mercy Brown’s grave, please show her and the surrounding graves the respect you wish she was shown in this video. Especially since the graveyard is still being used for burials today.
Brain: You've already watched Ask a Mortician talk about this. Do you really need to watch another video? Hands: What? I wasn't paying attention. The video already started.
A fellow deathling I see!
Same thing happened to me. But, I love supporting both channels
Same here!
Hello fellow Deathling!
That's why I loved living in New England. No matter the season, Halloween was always just around the corner. :P
This sounds oike a comment made before seeing the entire video (I'm guilty of the same, don't worry)
Halloween is paganism. That’s all year long. Take Easter for example. Ishtar worship. Satanism. Prefer Christmas? That’s Tammuz worship. Satanism. It never ends.
@@memyselfandi8544 You sound like a fan of The Witchfinder General ;)
@@memyselfandi8544 Connections between Easter and Ishtar are unproven; and incredibly unlikely.
Caneticut 👍👍
If you are interested in other ways people were supersticious towards the dead then read up on medical cannibalism, where we used to eat mummy-parts out of egypt or parts of other deceased as medical treatment.
To quote Farnsworth, " I was going to eat that mummy"
@@TheCatholicNerd Zevulon the great he's teriyaki style
Not just out of Egypt: English nobility were sometimes made into medical cures and sold piecemeal to other nobles after their deaths. (Source: Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History)
The idea was “whatever they did to this cadaver made it last for millennia, so maybe we could ingest it and that stuff for longevity “. With that logic, i’m surprised they didn’t save their money by drinking formaldehyde from those science lab frog jars.
Oh...... Wonderful.... I wanted to think about THAT!
You should do a video on the Glasgow necropolis vampire. In the 1950s a story went round the schools in Glasgow about a vampire hiding in the necropolis graveyard, resulting in hundreds of children hunting for it.
Well fed vampire
The modern idea of what we think of as a "vampire" doesn't really start to spread until Bram Stoker's _Dracula._ Originally, vampires were closer in mind to what a DnD player would call a "wight" or "ghoul"- a living corpse that attacks and feeds on the living- or were a spiritual presence like described in the video.
Not true. There were earlier 19th-century works that depicted vampires as able to pass for human-John Polidori's "The Vampyre", Sheridan Le Fanu's "Carmilla"...
Kinda, the origin of vampires is not singular. There are many origins that eventually coalesced into what we today often associate with vampires. Vampires are sorta like dragons, where the term has a few dozen loose traits that are related to the idea and if what you are describing has two or more you can just it as such. And funnily enough, even vampires and dragons are intertwinned.
"Originally, vampires were closer in mind to what a DnD player would call a "wight" or "ghoul"- a living corpse that attacks and feeds on the living- or were a spiritual presence like described in the video." So, a zombie?
A bit of trivia regarding vampires: Jiangshi, a Chinese type of vampire, were traditionally depicted in art depicted as senators. (You might recognize Hsien-ko from Darkstalkers as an example of one; her outfit was based on Chinese senators of the time. Chinese senators wore those domed hats, the jackets with the oversized sleeves, and baggy trousers.) This is because these senators had a reputation of taxing their citizens dry. P.S. Has there been an Extra History piece covering the Remington-Rand strike of 1936 to 1937? I found it interesting in that the strike was deliberately engineered by the company with the aim of destroying the union.
Those are called court officials or court eunuch
Very interesting, I never draw that connection. No wonder the Jiangshi always depicted to wear official uniform =))) Those cheeky peasants make up that story as a way to satire those corrupted official as they constantly suck their "Life source" away from them LMAO
1) jiangshi 僵尸 means zombie, not vampire. 2) I've never heard of the whole "depicted as senators" things
@@johnnysun6495 A jiangshi technically doesn't conform to western depictions of vampires or zombies, but we refer to them as "Chinese Vampires" as the closest analogue we have. Admittedly, the line between vampires and zombies are not entirely clear cut, as both are undead humans who consume living humans for sustenance. But I've seen them referred to as "Chinese Vampires" far, far more than "Chinese Zombies," hence using the popular naming convention.
@@Overhazardthanks for the info, that's actually super interesting. I kinda started wondering if the line between vampires and zombies was weird when I was browsing Wikipedia after hearing Powerwolf's "Armata Strigoi" for the first time.
I remember the Lovecraft vampire story was a lot like this. The corpse below the home just drains the people living there, similar to consumption. The protagonist ends up digging until he finds the corpse and pouring a vat of acid onto it.
Do you by chance remember the name of this story?
@@davidmccann9811 Found it: "The Shunned House"
this wouldve been a cool one to sync up with Caitlin Doughtry over at Ask a Mortician, since she recently did an episode on the same thing. Definitely would be a cool collab!
Lol right? Both of the videos even started the same, a brief recount of a different family before going to the Brown family.
Caitlin on Ask a Mortician just did a video on this exact topic too and it’s a little longer for anyone who wants to learn more. This is such an interesting video and I loved watching it and getting another perspective on the whole thing. RIP Mercy Brown
When you’re so early that the video is still in 480p
lol
I didn't realize anyone outside of my home state of Rhode Island had ever heard of this story! It always felt more like local legends than national news.
George never caught the consumption you say? Well clearly the ritual was a succes, shame help came too late for his son. I think we can all learn a valuable lesson from this tragic tale, don't hesitate overlong to check your recently deceased loved ones for demonic possession. Imagine all the lives it could have saved.
Demonic presence detected *BFG division starts playing in the background*
In order to get TB you have to be genetically susceptible. George wasn't but I suspect his wife was. The kids inherited her susceptibility to TB and it was probably sitting there from their childhood until something kicked it off. In this case probably the same event or trigger infection.
@Ordo Alcoholicus We laugh at them today, but the old beliefs are still with us, endlessly expressed in the stories we tell. Much like the old gods of Northern Europe, which became fearful specters of the religion they once comprised and continued to be handed down in spite of their Christianization.
Rip 'n' Tear or whatever...
Yup. You nailed how superstition works perfectly
Everytime I hear about Tuberculosis I can hear a good doctor saying "I'm sorry for you Son, it's a hell of a thing"
Then just 25 years later there was a cure. Ain't that a bitch.
That’s because they lack faith in God.
@@memyselfandi8544 which one?
@@memyselfandi8544 What a weird reaction to a video game reference.
@@Disorganized_Religions that's religious nuttery for you
You know the Extra History episode is gonna be extra interesting if you see that Child and Teens Checkup sponsorship
Gonna be a medical focused video
Ask a Mortician did a video a few months ago about this topic too! It's called "America's Forgotten Vampire Panic" It's 40minutes long, for anyone who wants to know more
In other words, "don't spit on the sidewalk" killed all the vampires.
That explains why it shows up on so many "dumb laws" lists...
If you like this topic, Ask a mortician made a fantastic 40 min video discussing this event
People might think the opening is a dramatic example of superstitious times when folk had struggles with death on the daily, and life was little more than finding ways to make yourself comfortable with your inevitable demise, but anyone from RI knows that Exeter just be like that.
we still live in superstitious times.
Yeah, haven't you been paying attention to the news in recent years. We're just as superstitious these days, if not more so.
@@Bill_Garthright why would I ever pay attention to the NEWS??
8:40 - That was a nice touch, and a beautiful homage for someone who suffered so much because of that disease, even without dying from it. RIP George Brown and his family.
Thanks !
I love these Medical History episodes, their so interesting and I always appreciate them. Thank you EC and Child and Teen Checkups
Glad to see you guys cover a topic from my home state, even if it is a rather gruesome one. I grew up in Coventry which is about 15 minutes away from Exeter and there are numerous tales of ghosts and vampires. Probably why H. P. Lovecraft wrote so much horror including "The Shunned House" which has a vampire as described in the video. Also a quote from another of his stories is "can't trust those Nooseneck Hill people", which is just north of Exeter.
I'm always here for haunted New England stuff.
If you like New England folklore check out the Lore podcast. Aaron covered a lot of fantastic stories :)
@@lechindianer I absolutely love that podcast!! It's wonderful for writing inspiration!
The fact that there are years of these makes me so happy!!
I love Extra Credits. The style of narration combined with the brilliant animation makes this the most entertaining youtube channel out there.
I truly love this channel so much, it just brings me a lot of happiness so thank yall for what you do
Been waiting for this! We also dove into this topic with our puppet show a little while back. We are hugely inspired by your work- thanks, EC!
I have MS and if I didn't live long enough to name my killer- well I can't imagine. One of the best in years, thank you.
I've been watching EC for years and always found the little intro jingle super familiar, but could never place it until recently. It's the game Act Raiser! Love it!
For a more comprehensive video regarding this, you can check Ask A Mortician!
... and 100 years from now Extra Credits does a story on people actually taking horse de-wormer instead of a perfectly save vaccine.
Sooner than that, most likely.
You guys know how to tell a story! The way u ended with George getting closure was simply ❤️
Hell yeah, I thought you'd already made a video on this. The subject matter suits your style perfectly. Great video!
While we're on the subject of superstition in the early days of America, it would be awesome if you guys could do a series on the grim history of Witch Hunts.
Was hoping this was the basis of Stephen King's 1978 novel Salem's Lot, about vampires in rural Maine, but it appears he was inspired simply by Bram Stoker's Dracula. Darn, it would have been a great historical connection.
Poofy kitty drawing was a great and cute bit of levity! Great video too!
Awesome content as usual. Love to see it.
I love your channel keep up the great stuff!!
Im so happy i live in new england (Massachusetts specifically) because i love the creepy stories from around here
My most favourite Extra History subjects are the sherlock holmesy stories of disease and finding their cures. Like with John Snow and the sewer water.
I was born and raised in Connecticut. New England is absolutely this creepy.
You know just a few years later, Bram Stoker would publish Dracula.
I wasn't expecting this video to make me cry, but that ending got me.
Love your illustrator, they’re awesome!
Harker: _"My god, now she's dead."_ Van Helsing: _"No, she's not."_ Harker: _"She's alive?"_ Van Helsing: _"She's nosferatu."_ Harker: _"She's Italian?"_ Van Helsing: _"No, it means 'the undead.'"_ Dracula. Dead and Loving It (1995)
Really a very unfortunate breach of the Masquerade. ^^
I smell Sabbat here.
Great story, as always.
For anyone interested,there is a video on youtube called ,,the exorcism of the moroi" ,which is about one of the last romanian vampire hunter,who got into trouble for doing the ritual in the video when talking about eastern europe
Nearly 2k views in 7 minutes? Dang... Also, RIP Arthur Morgan
And yet we have seen people with access to effective preventative measure against a disease ignore and even actively resist them in favor of pseudoscience and/or prayer.
I’m from the same area in Vermont where the first case was recorded in the 1790s, and I’ll admit that I love to drop facts about this into conversation. Maybe Shirley Jackson wasn’t far off about small towns being secretly cultish.
the one thing that can strike human kind with more fear than any monster is death, and it's aftermath of grief
By the title I thought that the video was set in 1500.
Heads up in May for the 125th anniversary of dracula. Fans of the book will be gathering in whitby to try and break the record for most vampires in 1 place. Keep an eye out for that
So, how many Belmonts will be there?
Bout same number as of alucards
God, that was a lovely ending. teared up a bit 🌻
I can imagine the conversation: Doctor, examining the exhumed body: There are Tuberculin germs here. This is the cause of her illness. Villager: So the germs invite the spirit. We must do the ritual. Docter: No, there’s no spirit. The ritual won’t accomplish anything. Villager: What do you know? You’re a doctor, you only know about germs. Leave this to us. Doctor: (facepalm)
“Consume some of her ashes” is a very gentle way to say he “sipped some sister smoothie”.
There is a precedent for the word "Vampire" being known in New England. I found a near-full-page article in an mid-18th-century newspaper (100 years before the panic) describing "Vampyres". The article was actually posted in an April 1st issue of the paper, and I've never figured out if this was an early April Fools prank headline.
oh, I found it: The Boston Evening-Post, 1 April 1765- "The Surprising Account of those Spectres called Vampyres"
A bit of topic: Vampires are WAY to overrated. In most classical stories they die to everything. Sun, holy water, they have to count rice and cant enter a house if not invited. Only in modern stories, where they are a bit more resilient and often hotter, are they kinda cool.
Yeah but hypnosis, shapeshifting, superhuman speed and strength, longevity, that's not something to scoff at. But yeah compared to Werewolves they are kind of losers. Vampire:What's your weakness? Werewolf:Wolfsbane Vampire:Where would you even get that? Werewolf:Exactly. So what's your weakness? Vampire:Stake, sunlight, holy water, garlic, can't enter a house unless invited, can't approach a cross... Werewolf:So pretty much every farmers market or hardware store?
Modern vampires are sort of like Superman: They have a laundry list of powers paired with a number of crippling weaknesses that any competent opponent that faces them will know and exploit. Obviously Superman has a better power-for-weakness exchange rate, but you get the idea.
Liches on the other hand...
I definitely heard "TV is a vicious bacterial infection" 😂
one of the best channels to eat food to imo
Awesome, another vampire episode
I grew up in Cranston, RI and we were told this story in the fifth grade. We were told the story as damn near fact and not as a history lesson (I know) so it’s wild to see this picked up by one of my favorite channels
There’s another great video on this topic on the askamortician channel!
If I remember correctly, this panic helped inspire Dracula. Like, Bram Stoker had a copy of a news article about the panic in his pocket when he was working in theater.
Thank you..
Note: Rhode Island native H.P. Lovecraft adapted this precise phenomenon into a horror story, "The Shunned House". Ian Gordon does a solid audio-narration on his KZhead channel, Horrorbabble.
Okay, I cried in the end.
As a Rhode Islander I love seeing out bizarre history covered
Heck yeah, same here
Geez, that's heartbreaking
This video made me thankful but sad.
And now I have context for keeping and using all those cloth masks accumulated over the past couple of years.
Yep, a crazy time period to live, what with Gothic fiction and horror (thanks Bram Stoker!).
Thank you. For not making me wait to Halloween. To get my fix of the Macop.
Except TB isn't defeated, its still out there. Its extremely important that you take your medication exactly as your doctor says for this very reason 1.4million died from it in 2019. TB is still poking and proding at our defenses and if we are too lax it will find a way through again stronger than ever before.
Am I the only one that usually isn't interested in history but loves this? It's so entertaining HOW
Some of the earliest instances of "anti vampire measures " were found in Poland
When it comes to medical science and teaching people what is really going on with a contagion or other medical condition, there is one thing to always keep in mind. *People are stupid.* Example: The last two years.
Got to love that ending!
In many ways, we are still in these times. People of varying educational backgrounds choose superstitions, mysticism, and "alternative medicines" over tested and proven methods. Often times, these are fueled by political ideology. People die preventable deaths, martyrs for a lie that a disease is exaggerated or nonexistent. But these deaths are very real.
The Dollop podcast did an episode on this for anyone who wants more vampire panic
I heard about this in an episode of Spooky Saturday/Scouts (ep. 1.5), which described the girl's death, the digging up of her heart, the feeding it to her brother and the brother's subsequent death. I had thought this was a colonial thing, but now you tell me it was just before the twentieth century? 😞
This is why I am glad to live in a city, everyone does everything they can to not engage with their neighbors.
I’ve literally just finished rereading Salem’s Lot!
surprising ending. Very uplifting.
TB is still around today & requires a long treatment program. It’s still very contagious & it’s very important to get yourself & your kids vaccinated.
This is certified H.P Lovecraft moment
You guys should have mentioned the Jewett City (CT) vampire scare of the 1850s.
I wrote a playscript about this story!
Imagine living in a world where the majority of the population doesn't understand medical science, and a pandemic sweeps across the planet killing entire families or leaving individuals completely untouched. Wow so hard to imagine that.
“We shall dig up everything about a family member to expose it for the monster they are!” Oh! A family gathering!
I just saw Thoughty2's video about this.
ok, hear me out, if you've heard of or listened to the Dollop with Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds, you'll get what I'm saying, but it's interesting how two of my favorite media content providers, Extra Credits and the Dollop, end up covering the same stuff. Last week it was the Great Disappointment and this week it's the Vampire Panic. It's just memories flooding back and I am just thankful for creators like EC who entertain and educate us time and again. You guys are amazing keep up the amazing work you guys do.
You cannot get a simpler yet respected name than "George Brown"