Died as a newborn girl, Ruth Ellen Rose's family believed she was one of the undead, a vampire rising from the grave every night to feed on her siblings, slowly dying of the same disease as her. To prevent this, they decided to dig up her body and cut out her heart.
In the serene forests and misty cemeteries of 19th-century New England, fear didn't always come at night—sometimes it crept through the window of a sickroom, carried on the breath of a debilitating cough. One such unfortunate victim of this grim tradition was Ruth Ellen Rose, a 15-year-old girl whose low, tragic life and incredible afterlife are forever entrenched in Rhode Island folklore.
Born in 1859 in Exeter, Rhode Island, Ruth Ellen Rose lived – and died – at the heart of America's so-called vampire panic. New England, though a landscape of tidy farms and Puritan towers, harbored a persistent, unshakable fear: that the dead might rise from their graves not in corporeal form, but as a spiritual parasite, sucking the life out of surviving relatives. The consumption that we now know as tuberculosis ravaged families so regularly that superstitions took root like stubborn weeds.
Her mother was Mary Taylor of the Dixon and Peckham family, but she died in 1866. Her father, William G. Rose, was a farmer, mill superintendent and first president of Exeter Grange. He was also a lieutenant colonel in the Rhode Island militia. He remarried to Mary Ann Griswold Morrarty. Her ex-husband was from the Tillinghast family and this was probably one of the things that sealed Ruth's fate.
Ruth's illness was ponderous and agonizing, coming in waves. In 1874, when she was only 15, she died of a devastating disease. But death, according to Exeter's terrifying tradition, was not always the end.
A family cursed with blood
Shortly after Ruth's death, her siblings began to develop telltale signs of tuberculosis. She had plenty of them, and while many of them lived long lives, there were also some who died earlier. As did Emma Tillinghast, her half-sister, who died of tuberculosis, although her death is most often said to have occurred in 1870, when she was 16 years ancient. This epidemic also claimed the lives of their younger brothers Horace and Edwin. In most documents, Ruth is not even mentioned among the children's flock, so the details of the story are sometimes lost in legend.
And rumors circulated. William Rose, Ruth's father, was not only a grieving parent. Whispers claimed that he dabbled in druidic rituals, obscure rituals passed down from the Old World. At least that's how stories about him have evolved to this day. Local legend still tells of an antique stone altar hidden in the woods of Peace Dale, where he is said to have made secret offerings to stop the spread of the mysterious disease plaguing his house.
Perhaps it was superstition, or perhaps sadness turned to madness, but that same year William exhumed his daughter's body. Sam cut out Ruth's heart and burned it in flames in an attempt to stop the undead curse. Ashes were scattered – a desperate and macabre medicine intended to sever the supernatural connection between the dead and the dying.
The legacy of unearthed daughters
Ruth's tragic end was not without precedent. The story takes a darker turn when we look at her stepmother's lineage. Mary, her stepmother, was a Tillinghast, and this family carried stories of vampires. Stukely Tillinghast, whose own daughter, Sarah Tillinghast, had died decades earlier of tuberculosis, and was similarly suspected of preying on her family from beyond the grave. Echoes of this ancient curse seemed to pass through the generations like a genetic disease, or perhaps, in the eyes of these frightened villagers, a vampire legacy.
So it wasn't just illness that haunted these families, but also their shared history, in which the graves never really rested and tragedy would strike twice.
The restless grave
Today, Ruth Ellen Rose lies in an unmarked grave in South Kingstown Historic Cemetery No. 11, commonly known as Rose's Lot. Or maybe she is not there at all, because her grave was never found. Her father and stepmother's gravestones stand, worn but intact, while Ruth's resting place conspicuously lacks any lasting traces. Perhaps it has been lost to time – or perhaps it was deliberately left nameless to deny the restless dead a connection to this world.
The land itself retains a particular unease. Locals have told of strange happenings in the overgrown cemetery – flickering lights, ghostly footsteps and the sound of distant, raspy coughing when no one else is around. Some say Ruth's spirit still lingers, bereft of peace by the violence of her end and the stains of fear in her family.
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The Restless Dead of Rhode Island: The Vampire Legend of Ruth Ellen Rose
Died as a newborn girl, Ruth Ellen Rose's family believed she was one of the undead, a vampire rising from the grave every night to feed on her siblings, slowly dying of the same disease as her. To prevent this, they decided to dig up her body and cut out her heart.
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Food for the Dead: The New England Vampire Trial 2011933367, 9780819571700 – DOKUMEN.PUB
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/6505849/william-greene-rose
Rhode Island Vampires: No strangers to this scourge. Ruth Ellen Rose, 15, Exeter 1874 – Avocado
Image Source: Pixabay.com
