Laura Wright 
Long before the Twilight series, long before Interview with a Vampire and Salem’s Lot, there was once a deep-rooted fear in America. During the Nineteenth Century, rumors circulated, particularly in New England, about the surge of vampires. This is a growing collection of very real episodes of vampire panic in America.
- In Jewett, Connecticut, townspeople exhumed the bodies of two brothers in 1854. They believed they had returned as vampires and were feeding on the living.
- In Placedale, Rhode Island, William Rose exhumed his daughter, in 1874. He believed she was now a vampire and draining the life from other relatives in the house.
- In Chicago, Illinois, a Dr. Dyer reported that the relatives of a consumption victim had exhumed her body and burned her lungs. They believed she was taking the relatives with her into death.
We Americans often assume stories and folklore of vampires to be far more European, but we have our own legends of the notorious blood-suckers.
