Setting to rest the idea of vampires

KENT — In 1990, a sand and gravel company began excavating a pit in Griswold, Conn., a town in the southeastern part of the state.

The crew broke for the weekend, and on a Sunday, a group of boys made their way to the site and started sliding down the wall of the pit, some 50 feet.

And to their amazement, commingled with terror, they dislodged a couple of human skulls.

One boy skedaddled home and told his mother, who suspected he was telling tall tales.

The boy felt snubbed, and quite rightly so.

So he went back, grabbed one of the skulls, and brought it home.

Nicholas F. Bellantoni, the state archaeologist emeritus, gave a talk at Town Hall, sponsored by the Kent Historical Society on Sunday, Oct. 16, about the New England folk belief in vampirism, and how archaeology and anthropology help us understand why people thought vampires were responsible for tuberculosis, and what they did about it.

“When I excavate, I’m not just collecting arrowheads. I try to understand who these people were, to go from the artifact to the mindset that created the artifact.”

Bellantoni said that when human skeletal remains are found, the first task of investigators — in this case, the State Police — is to determine how old the remains are.

If they are 50 years old or more, it’s probably a job for the state archaeologist.

It turned out that in Griswold, the sand and gravel company was digging in an unmarked cemetery.

One of the graves had been, er, rearranged.

The leg bones had been broken and placed across the corpse’s chest, and the head removed.

At first the police thought the remains might have been from victims of serial killer Michael Ross, who murdered eight women and girls between 1981 and 1985.

But once the bones were analyzed, it was apparent that the investigators were dealing with 19th-century remains.

The excavation was tricky, but eventually Bellantoni’s team found 28 graves.

Of those, three had brick and/or stone crypts within the graves.

They also had initials and numbers indicated in brass tacks, hammered into the now-rotted wood of the caskets. The corpse in question was “J.B. 55.”

A search of the town’s land records found that the site had been part of a farm belonging to a family named Walton, who settled in Griswold in 1692.

The site was a family cemetery, with no tombstones.

Bellantoni developed a hypothesis: The dismembered corpse in the graveyard represented a manifestation of the New England folk belief that vampires, not tuberculosis (or “consumption,” as it was called), were responsible for deaths — especially deaths within a family.

To prevent the corpse from rising, it was disinterred and rearranged in a manner that was directly contrary to Christian burial practices of the time.

The evidence seemed to back it up. J.B. was a big man for the time (mid-19th century), 6 feet tall, and had four tuberculosis lesions on his ribs.

Bellantoni dug around further in the historical record and found that New England, eastern Connecticut and western Rhode Island in particular had a lengthy tradition of belief in vampires.

But not the Dracula sort of vampire.

“No bats,” he said. “This isn’t Bela Lugosi.”

Because people did not understand how tuberculosis was spread, the belief in vampirism, and the dismemberment of corpses, was actually a public health measure.

“People were dying. They were willing to try anything.”

Even digging up a body, breaking bones, and cutting off heads.

“It was done out of fear, and out of love.”

When the excavation was complete, the remains were reinterred. A ceremony was held, and members of the Walton family, now far-flung, attended.