How did a Darthmount scholar from a outstanding household in Woodstock, Vermont find yourself as a vampire? The story of Frederick Ransom reveals that the assumption in vampirism or the concern of the undead was not only for the straightforward and uneducated nation people.
If you hear the time period “vampire panic”, your thoughts would possibly conjure up foggy rural graveyards, torch-wielding villagers, and folksy farmers digging up their family members by lamplight. However historical past, because it typically does, has a means of proving us incorrect. This was the case with Frederick Ransom — a well-educated younger man from a revered New England household whose story reminds us that concern, particularly of dying and illness, respects neither class nor schooling.
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The American author, Henry David Thoreau wrote in his journal of 26 September 1859: “The savage in man is rarely fairly eradicated. I’ve simply learn of a household in Vermont—who, a number of of its members having died of consumption, simply burned the lungs & coronary heart & liver of the final deceased, with the intention to stop any extra from having it,”
Most probably he was referring to the vampire case of Frederick Ransom. Within the early nineteenth century, within the chilly hills of Vermont, the so-called “vampire panic” wasn’t simply superstition; it was desperation alongside the New England coast. And never even a Dartmouth School schooling might save Frederick from changing into a posthumous scapegoat for a illness nobody but understood.
A Life Lower Brief by Consumption
Frederick Ransom was born right into a outstanding household because the second son and had seemingly his complete life forward of him. He grew up in South Woodstock, Vermont together with his father Richard Ransom and Elizabeth Mather with a great deal of siblings. By the requirements of his day, he was a part of New England’s educated elite — a university scholar at Dartmouth. However tuberculosis, identified ominously as consumption, didn’t care about household names or educational ambitions.
In 1817, on the age of 20, Frederick succumbed to the losing illness. It wasn’t unusual — tuberculosis was the grim reaper of its time, claiming extra lives within the 18th and nineteenth centuries than simply about another sickness. Complete households have been ravaged by it, and missing the scientific data we now have right this moment, folks turned to folklore and determined measures.
The household physician, native doctor Dr. Frost tried his finest, however there was no remedy for the illness but, and consequently, determined makes an attempt and different cures primarily based on the supernatural grew forth.
His little brother, Daniel Ransom, wrote this about him: My remembrance of him is kind of restricted as I used to be solely three years on the time of his dying… It has been associated to me that there was an inclination in our household to consumption…
Vampirism by One other Identify
Vampire panics have been a tragically actual response to tuberculosis outbreaks, particularly in rural New England. The assumption was {that a} deceased member of the family might, from past the grave, drain the life from surviving kinfolk. The “answer” was grim: exhume the suspected corpse, test for indicators of unnatural preservation, and burn the guts or organs to cease the so-called vampire’s lethal affect.
Frederick’s household was no exception. Regardless of their standing and schooling, concern trumped motive. After Frederick’s dying, his father, determined to guard the remaining household from the sluggish dying of tuberculosis, had his son’s physique exhumed. He was frightened that his son would rise from the grave and assault the remainder of the household.
In accordance with folks perception, they eliminated his coronary heart and burned it in a blacksmith’s forge. It was in Woodstock Village Inexperienced and a public place the place all might see. It was frequent that the ashes of the stays would both be inhaled or combined into a drugs. It isn’t confirmed that this occurred to Frederick, though some sources mentioned that his stays got to his household. He was buried in Ransom-Kendall Cemetery.
Daniel wrote about his father: It appears that evidently Father shared considerably within the concept of hereditary ailments and withal had some superstition for it was mentioned that if the guts of one of many household who died of consumption was taken out and burned, others can be free from it. And Father, having some religion within the treatment, had the guts of Frederick taken out after he had been buried, and in was burned in Captain Pearson’s blacksmith forge.
A Futile, Tragic Try
Unsurprisingly, the ritual didn’t work. Tuberculosis isn’t a vampire’s curse; it’s a contagious bacterial illness. As Frederick’s surviving brother, Daniel Ransom, would later write:
“Nevertheless, it didn’t show a treatment, for mom, sister, and two brothers died afterward.”
In a contact of darkish irony, Daniel would go on to notice that it had been mentioned the household was predisposed to consumption, and that he, too, would doubtless die younger. However in a ultimate, satisfying twist to this grim story — Daniel Ransom lived to be over 80 years outdated. However though he was younger, he would always remember the concern and desperation that had his household and group in a decent grip.
The Legend of Corwin in Woodstock
One other vampire story typically seen in connection of the Ransom incident is that of Corwin in Woodstock. The story was retold in 1890 in The Vermont Commonplace, a few years later, and a few now consider that this story was truly a retelling and far modified model of Ransom. An outdated girl informed in regards to the case that had occurred fifty years earlier and that she had witnessed the burning of his coronary heart herself.
Based on the story, a younger man with the surname Corwin died of “consumption“, “ and was buried within the Cushing Cemetery in June of 1830 nook of Cloudland Highway and River Highway. Six month later, the younger man’s brother turned unwell. The newspaper claimed that native physicians, together with the revered Dr. Joseph Gallup and Dr. John Powers from the Vermont Medical School, was those claiming this needed to be the work of a vampire.
The primary brother’s physique was dug up and examined. His coronary heart, which was discovered crammed with blood, was eliminated, boiled in a pot, and buried in a gap with a seven-ton block of granite on high. To finish the grisly ritual, the positioning was then sprinkled with the blood of a younger bullock.
Though not verified, it appears to be like eerily just like the case of Frederick. There was no boy named Corwin within the information who died, however the names of the physicians did truly exist.
Frederick Ransom’s Legacy
Two years later, The Vampyre by John Polidori was revealed and is taken into account to have kickstarted the undead and vampires in trendy literature. His dying and exhumation was not the primary, and it could not be the final throughout the Vampiric Panic that threw New England again to the darkish ages.
His grave lies quietly now in South Woodstock, a reminder of the delicate line between motive and superstition, and the way grief can drive even probably the most educated folks to mild the funeral pyres of outdated legends.
So subsequent time you hear a ghost story about New England’s vampire previous, bear in mind Frederick Ransom — the Dartmouth scholar whose coronary heart was fed to fireside by those that beloved him most. Not as a result of they have been ignorant, however as a result of they have been human.
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References:
Valley Information – Among the many Undead in Woodstock
Fredrick Ransom (1797-1817) – Discover a Grave Memorial
