American farmers in New England in the 1800s believed that people who died of tuberculosis would become “vampires”, rising from their graves to take the lives of their relatives.

In November 1990, three boys in Griswold, Connecticut discovered an abandoned cemetery while playing. Authorities exhumed the remains of 27 people, including 5 men, 8 women and 14 children, from 28 graves. Scholars identified this as an old burial ground known as the Walton Family Cemetery.

Tomb number 4 attracts the most attention. “The other remains all have normal bone positions, except for this person,” said Nicholas F. Bellantoni, a retired Connecticut archaeologist. On the coffin lid is engraved the word JB 55, abbreviating the full name and life expectancy of the deceased.

Under the coffin lid, Bellantoni and his colleagues discovered a strange arrangement of bones. “His two femurs were placed diagonally across his chest,” he described. “The chest bone was fractured. The skull was split. At that time I was very confused, not knowing what I was seeing.”

After research, scholars believe that JB passed away in the early 1800s and that this particular set of remains is related to folklore beliefs about vampires in the New England area, northeast of the country. United States, including Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island.

“Based on the damage to the ribs, it can be determined that JB has tuberculosis,” Bellantoni said. “There are many large farming families in New England. Because they don’t know about the mechanism of disease transmission, they let people with tuberculosis eat at the family table or let them sleep in the same room with 5 or 6 siblings, causing the disease to become an epidemic.

Pulmonary tuberculosis spreads because tuberculosis bacteria are released when a person with tuberculosis coughs, speaks, sneezes, or spits. Patients experience loss of appetite, fatigue, weight loss, chills in the afternoon, night sweats, chest pain, difficulty breathing and coughing up blood. At that time, the infectious disease was so scary that many people believed that those who died from it were “vampires” who would leave their graves to suck the blood and take the lives of their loved ones.

New Englanders in the 1800s believed that to end “vampires”, they had to exhume the deceased’s grave to “kill” again. Bell recorded 80 such cases, mainly in remote areas of New England.

“This was done out of both fear and love,” Bellantoni said. “Many relatives are dying and they have no way to stop it. They don’t want to exhume their graves, but they have to do so because they want to protect the living.”

The best method to determine whether a person is a “vampire” is to examine the body to see if there is any blood left in the heart. If left, the dead person is considered a “vampire”. The heart will be removed and burned, sometimes family members have to inhale the smoke from the burned heart.

Bellantoni believes that about 4 or 5 years after JB died, his family exhumed the remains for a vampire-killing ritual. Perhaps because the remains no longer had a heart, JB’s family handled it by placing the skull and femur into a skull and crossbones shape.

After JB 55’s grave was discovered, his remains were sent to the National Museum of Health for study and a sample from the femur was sent to a DNA laboratory for analysis. However, the technology of 30 years ago yielded few results and identification was impossible.

Now that modern tools such as DNA testing and genealogical data are available on the Internet, experts have determined that JB 55’s last name may be Barber. They checked old cemetery and newspaper records to see if any Barbers had ever lived in Griswold.

They discovered an 1826 newspaper obituary about the death of a 12-year-old boy named Nathan Barber, whose father was John Barber. Researchers found a coffin with the symbol NB 13 near the grave of JB 55. Late last month, they released a report, concluding that the “vampire” remains was John Barber.

“He was probably a hardworking farmer. You can see that from his bones and the condition of his spine,” Bellantoni said.