This challenge was submitted by Genealogy Guy Drew Smith. I've found the family, but not the skeletons.
In 1930, Laura Clarke of East Greenwich, Rhode Island, was probably like many other young women of her time, living an ordinary life as a wife and secretary. But one has to wonder when, if ever, she learned of the horrifying past of her new in-laws. What family skeletons would she have found most disturbing?
What makes the theft of Varnum Waite's headstone from a Rhode Island graveyard especially noteworthy is the possible motive.
Nestled behind the town's 256-year-old First Baptist Church, the cemetery has fallen victim to vampire enthusiasts and vandals ever since rumors circulated decades ago that the graveyard was believed to be the final resting place of the legendary Nellie Vaughn.The cemetery actually is home to Nellie Vaughn, but she has been "legendary" only since 1967. It was in that year that a group of high school students wandered into the wrong cemetery looking for alleged vampire Mercy Brown and found instead Nellie's stone, which bore the ominous inscription, "I am waiting and watching for you." They, being idiots, took this as evidence that Nellie enjoyed the taste of human blood.
The rumor turned out to be a case of bloodsucking mistaken identity, but that hasn't thwarted thrill-seekers desperate to own a piece of American vampire folklore. Punks have been pilfering pieces of the graveyard under cover of night for years. [Link]
From the Sedalia (Mo.) Daily Democrat of Jan. 23, 1875:
Nicholas Borolajovak, a Servian nobleman, died in Paris recently under peculiar circumstances. He had been forced to leave his own country by an ugly legend which pronounced his family vampires. It was said that for three generations the eldest son in his family had invariably returned from the grave to drink the blood of its living members. Strange to say, Prince Nicholas himself believed the legend, and when he was first taken ill, five days before his death, he asked his host of the Hotel de France et de Roumanie to have his heart taken from his body as soon as life was extinct. This, he believed, would prevent him from leaving his tomb. He was a man of brilliant powers and high culture, and but for this mania regarding vampires would have proved an ornament to any rank. He was buried in Paris.
Belief in vampires was once prevalent in some parts of New England, where people went to great and disgusting lengths to ward them off.
A corpse was exhumed in Griswold, Connecticut, in the early 1990s that showed evidence of both tuberculosis and postmortem tampering.Following the death of a family member from consumption (i.e., tuberculosis), other family members began to show the signs of tuberculosis infection. According to the New England folk belief, the "wasting away" of these family members was attributed to the recently deceased consumptive, who returned from the dead as a vampire to drain the life from the surviving relatives. The apotropaic remedy used to kill the vampire was to exhume the body of the supposed vampire and, if the body was un-decomposed, remove and burn the blood-filled heart or the entire body.
Upon opening the grave, the skull and femora were found in a "skull and crossbones" orientation on top of the ribs and vertebrae, which were also found in disarray. On the coffin lid, an arrangement of tacks spelled the initials "JB-55", presumably the initials and age at death of this individual. [Link]FoodfortheDead.com has more details on the Griswold discovery (including photographs of the gravesite and an artist's reconstruction of what "JB" might have looked like) and on vampire incidents elsewhere in New England. (Flash player is required; click on a town's name to view its gruesome history.)
From The Helena (Mont.) Independent of Aug. 24, 1883:
In Omaha, Nebraska, there resides an eccentric family consisting of a father, mother, and seven children. They live in a neat little cottage on a cross street that is sparsely built up. In this house the man and wife have lived nearly ten years, and neither parents nor children have ever stirred outside except at night, when they occasionally walk out in the dark of the moon. They have dealt with one grocer, who sends the supplies in the evening, to be taken in through a window. Another freak of this curious family is that they keep a coffin in the house for each member.
10. Your immigrant ancestor was shipped over in a six-foot box.
9. Your kids call the boogeyman "Buffy."
8. Your great-great-great-great-great-grandfather sleeps in the root cellar.
7. Angry villagers are camped out on your front lawn.
6. The only cause of death in your family is "heart attack."
5. Your sunblock is SPF 500.
4. Anne Rice keeps calling for an interview.
3. Your last name is "L'Impaleur."
2. Larry Van Helsing from work is asking way too many questions.
1. You can't watch the prom scene in Carrie without getting thirsty.
From The Coventry (R.I.) Courier:
Waiting and watching from beyond...
By: Jennifer Swanson
09/30/2005
[snip]
In 1967 a Coventry High School teacher told students the tale of a young woman who, after her death in the late 1800s at the age of 19, was accused of being a vampire. The teacher divulged little more information other than to say the woman was buried in an old cemetery off Route 102.
Accepting the story as an invitation, the youths set off to find her.
The Chestnut Hill Baptist Church is located off Route 102 in Exeter. And while their teacher was undoubtedly speaking of the cemetery behind that church, of [accused vampire] Mercy Brown's resting place, the teens found another old cemetery off 102.
[snip]
Stepping within that wall and onto those sacred grounds they found something else. It was a gravestone that read, "Nellie L. Vaughn; Daughter of George B. and Ellen; Died in her 19th year, May 1889." And at the bottom of her headstone was inscribed, "I am waiting and watching for you."
The youths had found their vampire.
[snip]
[Read the whole story]
