Vampire's Grasp: The Hidden History of Consumption in New England

The story of New England's vampires begins with a scourge whose tragic trail is visible in cemeteries throughout the region. Incredible as it may seem to contemporary Americans, vampires preyed upon their not-so-distant ancestors. Vampire attacks increased dramatically during the eighteenth century and remained the leading cause of death in New England throughout the nineteenth century. But this unseen killer did not resemble the clever Count Dracula of Bram Stoker's imagination. Indeed, it was so small that it was undetectable. New England's authentic vampires, you see, were pathogenic microbes ("bacteria with fangs," as a nurse once described them). Prior to the twentieth century, a diagnosis of consumption (as pulmonary tuberculosis was called at that time) was a virtual death sentence. As the coronavirus crisis was firmly grabbing the world's attention in 2020, it struck me that if Americans in the early nineteenth century had somehow discerned the benefits of distancing, wearing a mask, and getting vaccinated, they might have stemmed the spread of pulmonary tuberculosis and I could not have written this book. Unfortunately, as I described that era of consumption in my first book on this topic, Food for the Dead: On the Trail of New England's Vampires (2001), the science that might have generated an effective strategy for flattening the curve of the consumption epidemic did not exist until after 1882, the year that Robert Koch proved that tuberculosis was a bacterial infection. By that time, most of the tragic events examined in this book had already occurred.

About the Author :
Vampire quotes --- When Michael Bell published his now classic work Food for the Dead, none of us dreamed of a global pandemic which would rival consumption for its ability to decimate towns, villages and families. Here, in the long-awaited sequel, Vampire's Grasp, Bell peels away the sensationalism of 'vampire rituals' to detail in richly sensitive and dramatic form the real and living communities threatened by consumption - and so often turning to the dead to deal with death. At once gripping and encyclopaedic in its range, this new work reveals fresh cases of historic grave rituals, and leads us on into some unjustly neglected fictional re-creations. If further proof were needed, Vampire's Grasp shows us time and again that history is so much stranger than fiction. Richard Sugg is the author of 16 books, including Fairies: A Dangerous History (2018), Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires (2020), and The Real Vampires (2023). You can see him discussing vampire beliefs with Dan Snow, and hear him talking on supernatural topics on podcasts with Jim Harold, Karen Rontowski, and Michelle Fisher. He is currently working with Steve Gamester, Alan Clements and Paddy Duffy of Saloon Media on a documentary version of The Real Vampires. @DrSugg --- Michael Bell is the ultimate folklorist on the 'real' vampires of New England. If you have any interest at all in the subject, of how, what and why they appeared, and what it might say to us in a post-Covid world, you need to get this book. Simon Bacon, editor of The Palgrave Handbook of the Vampire. --- If you thought only remote, pre-scientific societies believed in vampires, this book will enlighten you. ... In his brilliant and meticulous analysis of historical records, newspaper reports and folklore, Michael Bell traces nearly a hundred 'vampire killings' in New England and adjoining states, and sets them in their medical, cultural and intellectual contexts. -John Blair is Emeritus Professor of Medieval History and Archaeology at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of The Queen's College, Oxford. His book, Killing the Dead: Vampires, Social Anxiety and Female Power, is forthcoming. ----------------------------------- If you thought only remote, pre-scientific societies believed in vampires, this book will enlighten you. As family members succumbed to the scourge of tuberculosis, desperate New Englanders between the 1780s and 1890s found an explanation that was not irrational in the light of traditional m