| Edition |
Wesleyan pbk. ed. |
| Description |
1 online resource (xiv, 384 pages, [8] pages of plates) : illustrations, map |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Contents |
Acknowledgments -- Prologue -- chapter 1. This awful thing -- chapter 2. Testing a horrible superstition -- chapter 3. Remarkable happenings -- chapter 4. The cause of their trouble lay before them -- chapter 5. I am waiting and watching for you -- chapter 6. I thought for sure they were coming after me -- chapter 7. Don't be a rational adult -- chapter 8. Never strangers true vampires be -- chapter 9. Ghoulish, wolfish shapes -- chapter 10. The unending river of life -- chapter 11. Relicks of many old customs -- chapter 12. A ghoul in every deserted fireplace -- chapter 13. Is that true of all vampires? -- chapter 14. Food for the dead -- appendix A. Chronology of vampire incidents in New England -- appendix B. Children of Stukeley and Honor Tillinghast -- Notes -- Works sited -- Index -- About the author. |
| Summary |
"Close your eyes and imagine a vampire: Your mind's eye may conjure up Count Dracula with bared teeth and a shiny tuxedo. But, another kind of vampire was believed to live in rural New England long ago. Author and folklorist Michael E. Bell has spent twenty years pursuing this forgotten vampire tradition. His discoveries will surprise and enthrall skeptics, believers, and all readers of this engaging book." "Bell's odyssey began in 1981 when Rhode Islander Everett Peck told him a family story passed down for generations. In 1892, months after young Mercy Brown succumbed to tuberculosis, her body was exhumed from a local graveyard. Relatives cut out her heart, burned it on a nearby rock, and fed the ashes to her dying brother, hoping to cure him of the wasting disease. They feared that Mercy had become a vampire, sapping her sibling's vitality to provide sustenance for her own spectral existence. Or, had she become a scapegoat, blamed for the baffling affliction ravaging her family?"--Jacket. |
| Note |
Print version record. |
| Subject |
Vampires -- New England -- Folklore.
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Folklore -- New England.
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Diseases and history.
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New England -- History.
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Folklore.
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Tuberculosis.
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New England.
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SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Folklore & Mythology.
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Diseases and history. (OCoLC)fst00895205
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Folklore. (OCoLC)fst00930306
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Vampires. (OCoLC)fst01163968
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New England. (OCoLC)fst01241913
|
| Genre/Form |
Autobiography.
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Electronic books.
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Folklore. (OCoLC)fst01423784
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History. (OCoLC)fst01411628
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| Other Form: |
Print version: Bell, Michael E., Ph. D. Food for the dead. Wesleyan pbk. ed. Middletown, Conn. : Wesleyan Univ Pr c2011 9780819571700 (DLC) 2011933367 (OCoLC)712117808 |
| ISBN |
9780819571717 (electronic bk.) |
|
0819571717 (electronic bk.) |
|
