by Bob Curran
Stephen Staples listened intently to the young man’s concerns. He knew the legends of the vampires that existed among some of the townspeople, but he tended to put little faith in them. However, the account came at an interesting time. There had been several instances of tubercular fever in some of the neighboring villages and, in keeping with the ethos of the time, several local ministers had proclaimed this as God’s visitation upon a wayward people. Satan was very near at hand, they warned, and would make his presence known very soon. So although Stephen placed little credence in such ghostly things, there was still a corner of his mind that was unsure. In the end, he decided to place the decision in the hands of the authorities.
The Council’s first reaction was one of skepticism. One of the more formidable members present was Captain Ben Westcott, an old soldier who had been decorated during the War of Independence. Although he sympathized with Stephen Staples over the loss of his daughter Abigail, and expressed his concern over the illness of his daughter Lavinia, Westcott suggested that perhaps a better remedy would be to pray for the latter’s swift recovery. From the chair, councilman John Lapham stated that the matter was actually beyond their field of expertise, and that it properly belonged in the realms of ignorant superstition and folklore. Nevertheless, the Council was well aware of the sermons of preachers in the area, and how they had stirred up notions of ever-present evil and devilry. Sensing their uncertainty, Stephen Staples pressed the matter, saying that if the Devil were close at hand and ready to strike, so might demon vampires. Stephen Chace then made an impassioned plea, begging them to act in the community’s good, if only to dispel the terror that had gripped so many people. Let them dig up Abigail’s corpse and inspect it, and if nothing was amiss, they would rebury with decency. Somewhat reluctantly, the Council authorized the exhumation. However, the “experiment” had to be conducted more or less in secret. Furthermore, no record was to be kept of the exhumation.
Mindful of the Council’s request, Stephen Staples made his way to the tiny graveyard on the edge of the Staples’ property, together with three hired men, after nightfall. By the light of lanterns, they unearthed Abigail’s body. No record exists of what they found, but according to local lore, whatever young Stephen Chace saw when the coffin was opened almost drove him mad, and had him wandering about the countryside, muttering to himself, for the rest of the night. Although he recovered, he refused to go anywhere near the burying ground. Stephen Staples never again spoke of that night or what he had witnessed, but he was a changed man, gaunt and silent with dark, hollow eyes. He was constantly troubled by terrible nightmares. It is also said that one of the workmen who unearthed the coffin committed suicide shortly afterward.
What became of Lavinia Chace is unknown, as she simply disappears from the pages of recorded history. She might have recovered, or she, too, might have succumbed to the pestilence. No marker indentifies her grave to say when or how she died, and no mention of her is made in any subsequent account. In fact, as the Town Council would have wished, the whole incident has been consigned to history. There is no record of any similar occurrences in the area, and it is unclear if there were any similar deaths.
However, a History Channel special showed a curious headstone erected to Simon Whipple Aldrich in the Union Cemetery Annex, which bears a curious inscription: “Although consumption’s vampire grasp had seized thy mortal frame.”
Simon Whipple Aldrich was the youngest son of Colonel Dexter Aldrich and his wife Margery, who died on May 6th, 1841, presumably of tuberculosis. However, the strange mention of the word vampire in the inscription has intrigued historians; why should it be included on the headstone? It may, of course, be just a turn of phrase, but it may also be the trace of a memory from the dark time of Abigail Staples, and perhaps part of the legacy that she bequeathed to the community.
The Staples case may have established the notion of vampires firmly in the Rhode Island mind, because shortly after, the first of the celebrated “Vampire Ladies,” Sarah Tillinghast, allegedly made an appearance in Exeter, Rhode Island. In many respects, the Tillinghast story matches that of Abigail Staples. The similar protagonist was the dreamy and moody Sarah, who whiled away some of her girlhood days by visiting old cemeteries in which many who had been killed in the Revolutionary War lay. The area around Sarah’s home had been used by American snipers against the British, and her father, Snuffy Tillinghast, had actually fought against British and Hessian troops.
Snuffy was a reasonably prosperous apple-farmer, and with his wife Honour, he had raised many daughters. In the later days of 1799, his prosperity, his family, and his way of life were to be severely tested by what he believed to be supernatural forces. It all began with a nightmare. One night, just before the apple harvest, Snuffy Tillighast awoke sweating. He had experienced an awful dream in which he was walking through his orchard. It was harvest time and the branches were laden with apples. Suddenly, from somewhere close by, he heard the voice of his daughter Sarah calling to him. As he turned to see where she was, a cold wind suddenly sprang up, blowing through the orchard and chilling him to the bone. Branches creaked and leaves blew everywhere. The voice faded, and in the dream Snuffy turned back to work at the trees; as he did so, he saw that the leaves on about half of them had turned brown and were withering, the fruit rotting on their branches. The stench of decay spread through the orchard and, as he looked, he saw that half of his harvest was completely rotten.
The dream haunted Snuffy for many days afterward, and he was sure it was a prophesy of things to come. It came again and again and, in the end, he went to see his local minister, Benjamin Northup, to see if the preacher could determine exactly what the vision portended. The clergyman was of little help—he told Snuffy not to worry, but to keep praying. It was nothing but anxiety about the crop. Snuffy was hardly comforted by the minister’s words, but he tried to do as he was told and put it all to the back of his mind. The harvest passed and, greatly relieved, Snuffy and his family settled in for the winter.
Sarah had always been a moody child and, as the winter set in, she seemed to draw more and more into herself. She sat about all day reading old books, and when she did go out, she was often found wandering down in a tiny cemetery, which had been created on the corner of her father’s land. She chose to stay in her room during mealtimes instead of joining the family at the dinner table, and she appeared to be growing weaker and weaker. Soon it became apparent that Sarah was ill, and as the days went by, it also seemed that she was not long for this world. At the end of 1799, she was dead. The cause was, of course, given as “consumption,” and she was laid to rest in the family plot, a little way from the house. That, however, was not the end of her involvement with the family.
A few weeks after her death, the Tillinghast’s youngest son James came down for breakfast one morning looking decidedly peaked. Assuming that he’d been gorging himself on some of his father’s green apples, Honour chided him gently as she made breakfast. James protested his innocence and said that his chest hurt badly, “where Sarah touched him.” The mention of her daughter’s name brought a mixed range of emotions in Honour. Gently, she told the boy that Sarah was dead and that he had only been dreaming about her. Even as she did so, she could hear the unhealthy rattle in his chest. She put him back to bed and piled his bed high with blankets to keep him warm, feeding him nourishing broths. In the nights that followed, he talked again and again about Sarah coming to visit him in his room and sometimes touching him. James did not linger long, and followed his sister into the ground.
Shortly after, James’s sister Andris, then age 14, also took ill, as well as another sister Ruth. Both died, and it seemed that an unknown blight had suddenly hit the Tillinghast family. The father went to see Reverend Northup again, but once more gained little comfort from the visit. The clergyman simply told him to leave the fates of both himself and his family in God’s hands and to pray. Snuffy returned home a worried man. Worse was to follow.
The T
illighast’s eldest daughter, Hannah, age 26, was married and lived several miles away with her husband in West Greenwich. However, this didn’t stop her from visiting her mother and family whenever she could in order to give Honour some help with the chores. However, on several nights when she left the house after a visit, Hannah was sure that she was being followed. Shadows moved under the trees and there were furtive and unexplained movements and rustlings in the roadside undergrowth. For a moment, she had thought it was her sister Sarah, but Sarah was dead. That night, however, she had dreams that Sarah was in the bedroom with her. On her next visit, she told her mother about the nightmares. Honor was now convinced there was evil somewhere close by, and that it was stalking her family. She begged Hannah not to speak of it, and told her that if perhaps they prayed together it might go away. But it didn’t, and Hannah soon came down with the illness, gradually wasting away. She died in the late spring of the following year.
Honour now began to experience the same vivid dreams as her children. They always followed a similar pattern—she was stifling from a waft of stale and fetid air, which swept all through the bedroom. Sitting up in bed, she saw her daughter Sarah standing at the far end of the room, looking at her mournfully, but with a great longing in her eyes. Honour found herself rising from bed and walking slowly toward the phantom, who opened her arms. Then Honour woke up, bathed in sweat. She told herself that there was really nothing to worry about, it was only a dream, but she nor Snuffy were all that sure. Their fears were further compounded when their 17-year-old son Ezra took to his bed and lay shaking with a fever. He too spoke of dreams of Sarah, but these were simply put down to the sickness.
Things took on a slightly more sinister tone with the arrival of a visitor named Jeremiah Dandridge, an old man greatly respected in the community and across other parts of Rhode Island as well. He had come to offer his condolences on Hannah’s recent passing. During the course of the visit, Honour began to detect something else in his conversation—something Dandridge seemed hesitant to mention. The old man had very fixed views of the world, particularly when it came to the supernatural. He said that there was an old story that those who died from the consumption sometimes returned to torment the living in the form of a vampire. He had heard of a case in Vermont several years before where a corpse had been dug up and was found bloated with human blood. And there had been another more recent instance in Cumberland where a family had been tormented by the unquiet phantom of a relative. In each case, the families had also been tormented by dreams that often foreshadowed yet another tragedy. His words troubled Honour greatly and stayed with her long after Dandridge had left. It was an old superstition—and Jeremiah Dandridge was prone to give credence to such things—but what if it was actually true?
Long into the night, Snuffy and his wife talked over the situation. They were getting no help from the community or from the Church, so Snuffy decided to take matters into his own hands. The case of Rachel Burton in Vermont, which Dandridge had mentioned, placed the seeds of a grisly idea in his mind. There might still be a way to save what remained of his family. The following night, together with two hired men, he made his way out to Exeter Cemetery where the body of Sarah lay. With them they took shovels, a mattock, ropes, and a flask of oil.
Throughout the night, the men worked at digging up coffins of all the children from the hard ground. All of them had been in the earth for more than six months and when the caskets were opened the bodies inside showed various stages of decay—all, it’s said, except Sarah. When the lid was removed from her casket, she was, according to popular lore, lying as if in repose. Her eyes were open and gazing blankly at the night sky above, and there was a slight flush on her cheek. Upon seeing her, one of the workmen fell to his knees and began to pray. The other farmhand stepped back as though the girl might spring from the coffin and seize him. Looking at the horror, Snuffy Tillinghast ordered them to return to the cart and fetch the oil. Taking a large hunting knife from under his coat, he allegedly cut his daughter’s breast and, as the men returned with the oil, he tossed something on the ground in front of them. It was Sarah’s heart and liver. Pouring the oil over them, Snuffy brought out a tinder and flint and set fire to the small heap of internal organs. An acrid smoke rose through the graveyard and then, somewhere away among the trees, a breeze seemed to sigh. As the heart turned to ash, the men, still shaking, judged that the danger was past. Reinterring all the coffins, they left the cemetery as the sun began to rise.
As a result of Snuffy’s actions, Honour recovered completely and was able to bear two more children, and all of the remaining youngsters outlived their parents. In many ways, however, Snuffy Tillinghast’s strange dream had come true—in it he dreamed that he had lost half his apple harvest and out of his children, half had died.
The Tillinghast graves can still be seen today. They lie in a quiet wooded cemetery, close to what was once Snuffy’s farmhouse, just off Victory Road in Exeter, Rhode Island. The original stone markers are, however, difficult to detect, lying half-hidden in the encroaching growth. Snuffy’s is no more than a squat stone swamped by the tall grasses with only the initials ST to identify it. Nearby stands a stone for his wife Honour, who died in 1831, and beyond that are several graves of some of their children. The final resting place of Sarah Tillinghast, however, is unmarked.
The Tillinghast case (and that of Abigail Staples) firmly established Rhode Island as a vampire-ridden state. Sarah Tillinghast became one of a series of reported cases that continued into the 19th century, all of which followed roughly a similar pattern. These instances that became known as the Rhode Island “Vampire Ladies” included Nancy Young (1824), Juliet Rose (1874), and Mercy Lena Brown (1892). Although the specifics of Mercy Brown’s case broadly follow all those who had gone before, it is a striking one, because it was so late (almost into the 20th century), and because it is thought to have partly influenced Bram Stoker in his writing of Dracula. Stoker toured America with the Irish actor Sir Henry Irving around the time of the Brown case and, after his death, his widow found newspaper cuttings of that period.
From time to time, the newspapers seized on some of the practices that were carried out in some of the Rhode Island and Vermont settlements. The Mercy Brown vampire story attracted some journalistic interest, particularly in the Providence Journal, which had a wide circulation in Rhode Island. Indeed, in its March 21st, 1892 issue (around the time Mercy’s body had been exhumed), the Journal ran a special article on vampirism, in which it claimed vampirism was not a Rhode Island tradition, but one that had been imported from Europe. Stating that the burning of a vampire heart to alleviate supernatural harm may have originated among the Hindus and Danubian peoples, the article goes on to say that it was brought into places such as Rhode Island by way of Hungary and White Russia. Describing the case in some detail, the Journal goes on to state that the rite of exorcism (the burning of heart and organs) is hideous, comparing it to the practice of the inhabitants of the Upper Congo in Africa. Apparently, it was even suggested that Mercy’s brother Edwin, who was suffering from consumption at the time, should eat the ashes of the burned organs in order to save himself. This course of action, it seems, was inspired by certain beliefs from Serbia. Whether or not this was done is unclear. The article provoked a series of letters from Rhode Island residents, commenting on the event and drawing attention to some others of which their authors had heard.
And of course where local newspapers picked up on the story so did the wider press. New York papers such as The World began to run articles on what was happening in Rhode Island, along with several other New York and Washington broadsheets under headlines such as:
Vampires in New England—Dead Bodies Dug Up and
Their Hearts Burned to Prevent Disease.
Similar headlines appeared in many other editions of the New York press. The idea was, in the minds of New York and Washington editors, to create the impression of gullible backwoodsmen who desperately clung on to the (f
alse) perceptions of former years while they (New Yorkers) were far too sophisticated and savvy to believe in such nonsense. Several of the papers attempted some sort of “learned critique” of the subject, quoting extensively from Stetson’s article and other anthropological texts. The tone, however, remained condescending.
One of the last of the so-called Rhode Island “Vampire Ladies” would appear to be the rather unfortunate Nellie Louise Vaughn, who died in West Greenwich on March 31st, 1889. She became a victim of much press speculation, even into comparatively recent times. She died at the age of 19 and her grave is allegedly situated in a small secluded cemetery on the twisting Plain Meeting House Road in West Greenwich The cemetery is a large one and contains graves that date back to the 1700s.
Nellie’s story seems to parallel many of the others—illness and death, a ghostly figure, and dreams within her family. But it is the inscription on her headstone that attracted the most attention: “I am Watching and Waiting for you.” No reason has ever been given for this particular form of words—maybe they are purely innocent and were directed toward a living family; maybe even toward a secret lover, but many people later seized on them as a sinister warning. Little attention was actually paid to them for a long time, and then, in the mid 1960s, during the course of a lesson on local folklore, a teacher at the local Coventry High School told his class of an alleged vampire’s grave out in West Greenwich. The site was identified, and suddenly the strange inscription took on an added significance. Stories began to circulate that Nellie had been buried alive, that her form was seen in the vicinity of the church on certain nights of the year, and that no vegetation or moss would actually grow on her grave or headstone. Students first identified the grave, then the press took an interest. All through the 1960s and early 1970s, sporadic articles appeared in a host of magazines concerning alleged “vampire activity” in West Greenwich.
