American Vampires

by Bob Curran

  The story was given fresh interest in 1993, when ghost hunter Marlene Chatfield paid several visits to Nellie’s grave. On the second visit, accompanied by her husband, she claimed that she heard a female voice telling her “I am perfectly pleasant.” She claims to have been the voice of Nellie Vaughn herself. She also claims that she met a woman in the graveyard who said that she was a member of the local historical society and who told her that Nellie was not a vampire. Once again, there was a flurry of interest among national magazines, many centering on the queer inscription on the headstone. Naturally, with such coverage, hundreds of ghost seekers and occultists found their way to the West Greenwich churchyard to view the grave and perhaps even hold rituals there when no one was looking. Christian groups made their way there in order to “exorcise” the evil that was deemed to still remain there. In the end, the site was littered with bottles and other rubbish, and the headstone was smeared in graffiti and eventually had to be removed. Irreparable damage has been done to both the burial ground and the adjacent church, and local police patrol the area on the lookout for intruders who can be arrested, fined for trespass, and escorted out of the county.

  During the 19th century, the link between tuberculosis and alleged vampirism seems to have been a particularly strong one. Besides those mentioned previously, there are a number of other instances all across New England ranging in geographical location from Woodstock, Connecticut, to Barnstead, New Hampshire, all contributing to a fear of the returning consumptive dead whose intentions were to prey upon the living.

  Despite all of our explanations, it has made us feel a little uneasy. And, indeed, who knows what might still be lurking in the darkness of the New England night?

  NEW YORK

  Between October 16th and 19th, 1924, the American horror writer H.P. Lovecraft penned a short story entitled “The Shunned House.” The work, which was published in the October 1937 issue of the magazine Weird Tales, became something of a classic and is frequently reprinted in anthologies today. The tale deals with a strange, old, and abandoned house that fascinates the protagonist of the story and his uncle, largely because of the instances of illness and strange deaths that have taken place there throughout the previous hundred years. Peculiar weeds grow in the yard and there is a patch of strange and phosphorescent mold growing in the cellar. The place is permeated by a foul and unexplained smell. The investigators find an eerie yellow vapor emanating from what seems to be a moldy outline crouched in a fetal position. During the night, a foul “corpse light” bubbles up from the floor, in which a number of faces are clearly seen. The light takes over the narrator’s uncle, turning him into a kind of monster with “black, decaying features,” which causes the narrator to flee the house while his uncle dissolves and becomes one of the many faces within the yellow light. He later returns to the evil house armed with a gas mask and six carboys of sulfuric acid and begins to dig in the cellar. He eventually uncovers what looks like a white fungal-looking tube, bent in half and, realizing that he has found the elbow of some huge monster, scrambles out of the hole and dumps the acid into it. The Thing expires and an element of peace returns to the shunned house. There is a suggestion in the tale that the creature was vampiric, sucking the essence from all who live in the house in order to sustain itself and bringing illness and death to all there.

  What is not generally known is that the writer based it on an actual building. Many Lovecraft scholars have suggested that the dwelling is based on a house that is still standing in Providence, Rhode Island, where Love-craft spent most of his life. The house, located at 135 Benefit Street, was well known to Lovecraft; his Aunt Lillian lived there between 1919 and 1920. The house was built around 1763 by a merchant named Stephen Harris. At the time, because of the religious tolerance of the area, Providence had no common burying ground, so each family had a plot of land within their own property for the burial of their dead. After the Revolution, the street was widened and renamed in order to relieve the increase in traffic along Towne Street (now South Main). Many of the small family plots were dug up and the remains were relocated to the North Burying Ground. However, it’s said that certain bodies were never recovered and still lie somewhere beneath the new street. According to legend, an elderly French Huguenot couple lived at what is now 135 and were buried within its grounds. Their bodies are alleged to have been among the ones who were missed.

  Shortly after he had built the original house, Stephen Harris’s luck began to change. Formerly, he had been a fairly prosperous merchant, but after the dwelling was erected, he began to suffer a series of calamities. Several of his vessels were lost at sea, which led to a series of financial problems for him. A number of his children, born within the house, were stillborn or died shortly after birth. Mrs. Harris began a gradual descent into madness and eventually had to be confined in an attic room where her wild screams from one of the upstairs windows often terrified other residents of the area. Some even say that she screamed in French—a language that she didn’t know. This was an element that Lovecraft included in his story for Weird Tales: when the uncle is possessed by the Thing under the cellar, he babbles in French.

  The house on Benefit Street would seem to satisfy all the inspirational criteria for the tale and, yet, other scholars have argued, using Lovecraft’s own correspondence, that the actual source of the story may have partly lain elsewhere, probably in Elizabeth, New Jersey. In one of his rare periods outside Rhode Island, Lovecraft lived for a time in New York and then moved to New Jersey. Wandering through the New Jersey countryside, he visited Elizabeth on a couple of occasions and was struck by a peculiar building in the town. He wrote in a letter:

  On the northeast corner of Bridge Street and Elizabeth Avenue is a terrible old house—a hellish place where night-black deeds must have been done in the early 1700s—with a blackish unpainted surface, unnaturally steep roof and an outside flight of stairs leading to the second storey, suffocatingly embowered in a tangle of ivy so dense that one cannot but imagine it accursed or corpse-fed. It reminded me of the Babbit house on Benefit Street…. Later, its image came up again with renewed vividness, finally causing me to write a new horror story with its scene in Providence and with the Babbit house as its basis.

  This particular house no longer exists, but there is no doubt that it proved at least some of the source for the story.

  There is, however, a possible third source for the story (one that Love-craft may have been aware of and that corresponds to the story perhaps more closely than the other sources), an account that appears in Charles M. Skinner’s Myths and Legends of Our Own Land (published in 1896). In the cellar of a house on Green Street, Schenectady, New York, a queer, pale, white patch of mold in a human shape appeared from time to time. It was swept and scrubbed away on numerous occasions, but it continually reappeared no matter what form of detergent was used. It was a large figure in the shape of a recumbent man and seemed to be composed of a fluffy, fungus-like substance. Those who dwelt in the house frequently experienced a kind of lethargy and were subject to illnesses of various kinds. Some are even said to have died there.

  The house stood on the site of an old Dutch burial ground, and speculation was raised as to what the curious outline might be. Some authorities suggested that this was the final resting place of some evil person who had been forced to flee from the Netherlands (or from some other American colony) and who was taking revenge on those who had trespassed on his grave. Others held that the site had been the location of some foul deed—a murder perhaps—and that a corpse had been hastily and shallowly buried and was troubling the inhabitants of the house that had been raised on the spot. But the most common suggestion was that the house had been built over the grave of a Dutch vampire that was continually trying to rise from its resting place, but was held in place by a virtuous spell that had been cast over the area. However, its malign influence extended far beyond the actual limits of its grave and into the house beyond, and it somehow managed to draw energy fr
om those who were dwelling there in order to revive itself. But who was the person and was he or she really a vampire?

  Schenectady is, of course, a very old city. In the mid-17th century, it was part of an area held by the Mohawk Nation, a part of the Iroquois Confederacy. Dutch settlers quickly established a small outpost in the Hudson Valley, which they named Fort Orange, but which the Mohawk named Schau-naugh-ta-da meaning “over the pine plains.” The word became adopted by the Dutch, although the meaning was slightly different, referring to a bend in the Mohawk River on which the city now stands.

  The Dutch initially established a colony there around 1661 as part of the settlement of the New Netherlands under the control of the Dutch West India Company. Its foundation is generally credited to Arent van Curler, who purchased a sizeable tract of land from the Mohawks and led a settlement there. In 1664, the English seized the colony as part of a war with the Netherlands, renaming the area New York in honor of the brother of King Charles II (James, Duke of York). But Dutch influence lingered on. It is said that in an attempt to eradicate it, the English destroyed Dutch-style buildings and even built their own houses on former Dutch sites, some of which may have included graveyards.

  This fragmentary history of the area might serve to explain the circumstances in which the house was built on a graveyard, but what of the idea that a vampire may have been buried beneath its foundations? It is perhaps worth remembering that in the famous vampire novel Dracula, the Irish author Bram Stoker makes his celebrated vampire-hunter, Abraham Van Helsing, Dutch. Indeed, Van Helsing has become almost as famous as the vampire count himself. Little is known about Van Helsing’s past except that he was formerly associated with one of the novel’s other protagonists, Dr. John Seward. It is worth noting that many of Van Helsing’s expressions are uttered in German, and it is thought that Stoker may have intended him to be of German origin, which would perhaps give him a slightly greater knowledge of vampires, as the creatures are not as prominent in the Netherlands as they are in some other parts of Europe. That is not to say, however, that vampires do not feature in Dutch folklore.

  In Dutch tradition, vampires are included in a generic group of nighttime horrors known as nachtmerrie (nightmares). These are creatures that appear during the hours of darkness to create mischief and attack live-stock—mostly horses—but that have sometimes been known to attack humans as well. The nachtmerrie can take a variety of shapes—sometimes as skinny old women, their heads covered with dark shawls and with incredibly long arms, or as beautiful young girls. Sometimes, the being can take on the form of a black creature, somewhere between a dog and a cat, which can leap on the bed of a sleeper and create awful dreams while drawing energy from him or her. The sleeper usually wakes in a sweat, exhausted and feeling vaguely ill. It is no use locking the doors or windows, for they can enter a building or a room through the smallest crack. They climb upon a victim’s chest and withdraw energy, blood, or vital fluids by sticking an enormously long tongue into the person’s open mouth. In some cases, the nachtmerrie can strangle its victim by the force of its attack. If no measures are taken against it, the creature will return and the victim will grow weaker and weaker until he or she finally expires. In some parts of the Netherlands, these creatures are also known as Waalridders and are said to be the embodiment of evil spirits who draw sustenance from the living. Nachtmerries and Waalridders can sometimes be recognized by the fact that their eyebrows have grown together. It should also be pointed out that many of the nachtmerrie are not reanimated corpses, but rather living individuals who take this form after nightfall.

  In many cases, the nachtmerrie can enter a room through a crack and perform its ghastly acts without really waking a sleeper. However, they will always signal their presence by giving the sleeper extremely bad or torrid dreams. To have one of these, say the Dutch, is a sure sign that the individual has been visited by these creatures or that it is trying to exert some form of influence over him or her. In order to create such restless dreams, the nachtmerrie does not even have to leave its house (or its grave), but can sometimes draw the good out of an individual from afar.

  So what was the fungal outline on the cellar floor in Schenectady in the late 1800s? People living in the building experienced lethargy, vague nausea, and nightmares, coupled with disturbed sleep. Was their vitality being leeched off by some kind of vampiric being and, if so, what was it? Although there is no firm evidence, some rather vague speculation to its identity may be given.

  As has already been stated, during medieval and early modern times there was a strong link in the minds of many Europeans between vampirism and witchcraft. The Dutch, however, do not seem all that preoccupied with their witches, so there were fewer major witchcraft trials in the Netherlands than in other surrounding countries. There were, however, some cases, several of which date from the time of Spanish influence in parts of the country. However, under the prevailing law the procedure of witch accusations and trials at this time was rather complicated. As in other parts of the world, many of the witchcraft accusations in the Netherlands were between people of the peasant classes and usually concerned everyday matters—the cursing of livestock or crops, the churning of butter or the making of cheese, or the loss of a valuable item, and so on. If an accusation was made, the victim could demand compensation from the alleged witch, and if that were paid or carried out, no formal trial would take place. The alleged witch might also start a formal slander against his or her accusers in which case no trial could take place. Many cases were thus settled without ever coming to court. Nevertheless, there were some witchcraft cases that do appear in official records. Although it is true that many of the instances of accusation are scattered throughout the years, there are certain periods when the courts seem rather busier in dealing with such claims.

  Between 1522 and 1525, for example, there seems to have been a spate of cases that rose out of common disagreements and developed into full-blown witch accusations. This may have been the work of the Inquisition set up by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V to hold back the advance of the Protestant religion in the country. In 1522, Trij van der Molen, a native of a small hamlet near the city of Roermond (southern Netherlands), was arrested and brought before the courts. She was accused of bothering someone in the main street of her village, after which that person had experienced an illness and bad dreams. Trij was suspected of being a nachtmerrie and, under interrogation, she admitted to having made a pact with the Devil and to drawing off energies from some of her neighbors by supernatural means. She was burned at the stake. In 1525, two women were charged with magically entering a neighbor’s house and leaping on him as he slept, riding him through the countryside all night like a horse until he woke, sweating and exhausted. Others also came forward with similar claims and the women were submitted to questioning, during which they admitted a pact with the Devil and practicing evil rites.

  In 1581, a woman named Kael Merrie, living along the Maas River, was accused of bewitching a young child and causing him bad dreams. She denied the charges, and because there was not enough evidence to bring her to trial, she was banished from her community. Even though there was little evidence against her, it was widely believed that she was a Waalridder and she was subsequently attacked by a group of vigilantes and mercenaries and was drowned in the Maas River. Two other women who were suspected of consorting with her were also captured by the group and also drowned. Although such activities were condemned, there was little that local justices could do to stop them.

  In the period between 1583 and 1592, Dutch witchcraft trials flared again, this time in the south of Holland. These trials might have come about through the more widespread use of the celebrated Malleus Malificarum in places such as Germany, which lay just across the border, and also by a more rigorous use by the Dutch courts of the Sachsenspiegel (Saxon Mirror), a book of law compiled by the Saxon administrator Eike von Ripgow. The major accusation at this time centred on the town of Goedereede. Goedereede fell within
the legal jurisdiction of Voorne and, in 1581, Pauwel Aertsz was Public Prosecutor there. Aertsz was a severe man, greatly influenced by Thomas Aquinas’s De Ketterhammer (the 13th-century Heretic’s Hammer), which dealt with demonology and considered the possibility of diabolic agents secretly living among God’s people. Consequently, the authorities were always on the lookout for the possibility of witchcraft.

  Things started off innocently enough when, in 1581, the prosecutor’s sister lent her goat to a certain Leene Dimmensdr. When the goat was returned, its milk could not be churned in order to make butter, and the prosecutor suspected witchcraft. He decided to lay a trap for her. He asked her to churn some milk taken from the goat that her sister had loaned her. If it didn’t churn, then it meant that she was innocent, but if it produced butter, there was a suspicion of witchcraft. Unsuspecting, Leene churned the butter and presented the results to the prosecutor. She was not prosecuted, but Aertsz noted the incident and marked the family down for special attention.

  Shortly afterward, Leene’s sister Nijinge was accused of sorcery. It was said that during a disagreement, she had cast a spell on a neighbor, Lenaert Jacobszoon Leerecop, causing him to be troubled with pains. He also suffered at night from troubled sleep and all sorts of wild nightmares. Again, there didn’t appear to be sufficient evidence, and no formal charge was filed, but the sisters were now firmly on the prosecutor’s radar.