Griswold – Nearly 100 peopled turned out this morning to be chilled by more than the autumn wind as they learned the real life stories of the Jewett City vampires.

State Archaeologist Nicholas Bellantoni and Griswold Municipal Historian Mary Deveau led the final walk in the monthlong Walktober celebration of history, culture and nature in eastern Connecticut by taking participants on a tour of the Jewett City cemetery. They came to see the graves of the Ray family.

Faced with a family epidemic of tuberculosis, on May 8, 1854, family members and friends made their way to the old cemetery in a desperate attempt to save the life of a third brother who was stricken with the disease. The local folk remedy called for digging up the bodies of Henry Ray's two brothers, who had died of the disease, and burn the bodies “on the spot.”

The concept, Bellantoni explained, was that those who had recently died of the dreaded consumption were sucking the lives out of surviving family members, causing them to sicken and die.

Bellantoni and other experts on what is called the New England vampire belief, often give lectures and cemetery tours at Halloween time, but he told his audience this morning that these Griswold farmers were not ignorant, superstitious fools. They were merely reacting to the evidence around them in the days before germ science in response to a fear that the entire family could be wiped out.

“The doctors couldn't help them,” Bellantoni said, evoking sympathy from the dozens of onlookers. “The church couldn't help them. Maybe it was the dead who were really undead who were sucking the life away from the living.”

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