Two hundred years after the Salem witch trials, farmers became convinced that their relatives were returning from the grave to feed on the living. In 1854, in Jewett City, Connecticut, townspeople exhumed several corpses suspected to be vampires that were rising from their graves to kill the living. A few newspaper accounts of these events survived.
This fascinating insight to American history and beliefs is described in an article by Abigail Tucker in the Smithsonian Magazine at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/The-Great-New-England-Vampire-Panic-169791986.html
My thanks to newsletter reader J Hansen for telling me about this article.
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