The England Vampire Panic
A bizzare panic amidst a scientific attempt to explain illness
4.7 (13)
36 mins
Discover the waves of vampire fear that periodically swept through 18th-19th-century Britain, fueled by folklore, unexplained deaths, disease, and stories of the undead. Explore how beliefs surrounding vampires and revenants could lead communities to exhume bodies and perform rituals intended to prevent the dead from returning.
Ep 1:
Burning the Dead to Save the Living
In a frozen Rhode Island graveyard, a dying boy drinks ashes from his sister's burned heart—tracing how tuberculosis and old Serbian folklore collided into America's vampire panic.
Ep 2:
Vermont's Vines and the Tillinghast Curse
Before Mercy Brown, Vermont and Connecticut families dug up their own dead—vines growing between coffins, orchards dying in dreams, and a girl named Sarah blamed for her siblings' deaths.
Ep 3:
Mercy Brown's Shadow Over Dracula
A skeleton arranged like a Jolly Roger, a misremembered legend, and the strange true story behind Bram Stoker's Dracula close out New England's century of vampire panic.
Discussions (5)
Jim
Level 9 · 6 days agoMercy wasnt the first case
Mathew
Level 9 · 6 days agoWhole families wiped out one by one and no one knew why. Of course they blamed the dead. What else were they supposed to do with no germ theory and doctors still arguing about bad air.
Alice
Level 9 · 6 days agoTB killed 1 in 7 people and nobody knew why. Vampires made sense.
