On a chilly February day, villagers in Manchester, Vermont, gathered in a square to stop a vampire who was about to suck the life out of a juvenile woman. By burying her and burning her remains, they thought they could ward off the undead curse.
New England, with its bleak forests, rugged hills and centuries-old cemeteries, has long been fertile ground for ghost stories, witch trials and ghostly folklore. But perhaps one of the most bleak and disturbing chapters takes place in a sleepy little southern Vermont village – Manchester, 1793 – where the inhabitants have turned on one of their dead in a desperate attempt to stop a creeping, unseen killer: tuberculosis.
This is the incredible story of Rachel Burton (née Harris), a woman whose body was dug up, mutilated and burned in front of a crowd of a hundred, believed to be a vampire sucking the life of her husband's recent wife from beyond the grave.
The death of Rachel Harris
In the delayed 18th century, Captain Isaac Burton, a respected deacon in the local Congregational church, buried his first wife, Rachel Harris, after she succumbed to tuberculosis (an vintage term for tuberculosis). Consumption was a sluggish, devastating disease – it could wipe out entire families one by one in a cruel, merciless attack. For early New Englanders, it was reasonable to suspect some supernatural perpetrator.
We know her story as told by Judge John S. Pettibone (1786-1872). A lot of time has passed since this source. She was a juvenile woman, about 20 years vintage, buried about 1792 and described by the judge as “cool, healthy, beautiful girl” before her death. The ritual was described in his manuscript History of Manchester from around 1860 in a section titled The story of a demonic vampire.
A year after Rachel's death, Captain Burton remarried, taking Hulda Powell as his second wife. But it wasn't long before Huldah began to wither as well. She had characteristic symptoms: persistent cough, fatigue, night sweats and alarming weight loss. The similarity of her symptoms to Rachel's aroused superstitious suspicions. In an era without germ theory, people did not understand how tuberculosis spread, but they knew when a deadly pattern seemed unnatural.
In New England folklore, there was a terrifying explanation for such tragedies: the dead could feed on the living.
Vampire drug for consumption
According to local beliefs, if a deceased family member was suspected of preying on his relatives, there was only one way to stop him. The corpse had to be exhumed and the damaged organ – usually the heart or liver – destroyed, sometimes feeding the ashes to the afflicted or simply burning them in the hope of severing the connection between the dead and the living.
Sources differ as to when the exhumation took place. Some say it was about three years after Rachel's death. Some say that it was in February 1793, when Hulda's health deteriorated, that the townspeople and Burton's family decided on this morbid course of action. Rachel Harris' body will be exhumed and any malevolent influence she had over Hulda will be broken in a public ritual.
Reports suggest that between 500 and 1,000 people gathered at Manchester Cemetery to witness the ritual – an astonishing turnout for a remote colonial village, but an indication of the fear and superstition prevalent among the community.
It appears that many places, such as Manchester, Vermont, where Rachel Burton was exhumed and burned in the town square, were founded by educated, rather than the most superstitious and religious, men. This appears to have changed after the Revolutionary War, when it was described as a place of drunken gambling and superstitions such as vampirism.
Timothy Mead presided over the ritual, and his relative Jacob Mead lit a nearby forge. The freezing operation was performed in broad daylight, with religious leader Deacon Burton presiding over the spectacle.
Rachel's heart, liver and lungs were removed, although contemporary accounts do not specify whether there was anything particularly “unusual” about the condition of her remains – although it did not matter much. The ritual was an crucial part.
The organ was then placed in the forge of blacksmith Jacob Mead and burned to ashes in front of the gathered crowd. As reported in an account from 1860: “It was the month of February and good sledding.” It was believed that by burning the most crucial organs, they would destroy the vampire's connection with the living and stop the spread of the disease.
Often during these rituals, patients would swallow ash from burned body parts, often mixed with tonic to drink. It is not stated directly, but it is likely that it also happened here. But for what purpose? Hulda Burton died in September 1793, just a few months after the gruesome exhumation. The disease had already consumed her, and no amount of superstitious ceremonies could stop it.
However, the failure of the ritual did little to discourage similar practices throughout New England. The vampire panic continued for decades, culminating in renowned cases such as the exhumation of Mercy Brown in 1892 – an eerily similar case a century later in the same region.
A terrible reminder
Today, there is little sign of where Rachel Harris Burton's grave at Factory Point Cemetery in Manchester was disturbed. Time and weather have worn away many of the vintage tombstones, and the blacksmith's forge has long since cooled down.
The Vermont Folklife Center has placed a marker and marker at the cemetery in 2022 honoring the story of Rachel Harris Burton. Her grave is notable for its distinctive stone carved by Zerubbabel Collins, who is a very renowned family of sculptors.
But if you find yourself in Manchester, Vermont, walking through one of its age-old cemeteries on a foggy evening, think of impoverished Rachel – accused of death, desecrated for superstition, and forever part of the incredible legacy of America's vampire panic.
After all, the most disturbing stories in history are not always hidden as deeply as we think.
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Rachel Burton's Vampire: A Gruesome 18th Century Exhumation in Vermont
On a chilly February day, villagers in Manchester, Vermont, gathered in a square to stop a vampire who was about to suck the life out of a juvenile woman. By burying her and burning her remains, they thought they could ward off the undead curse.
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THE VAMPIRE OF MANCHESTER | William G. Pomeroy Foundation
Manchester commemorates resident 'vampire'
Image Source: Pixabay.com
