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Food for the Dead
Food for the Dead: On the Trail of New England’s Vampires | Michael E. Bell
3 posts | 3 read | 2 to read
For nineteenth-century New Englanders, “vampires” lurked behind tuberculosis. To try to rid their houses and communities from the scourge of the wasting disease, families sometimes relied on folk practices, including exhuming and consuming the bodies of the deceased. Author and folklorist Michael E. Bell spent twenty years pursuing stories of the vampire in New England. While writers like H. P. Lovecraft, Henry David Thoreau, and Amy Lowell drew on portions of these stories in their writings, Bell brings the actual practices to light for the first time. He shows that the belief in vampires was widespread, and, for some families, lasted well into the twentieth century. With humor, insight, and sympathy, he uncovers story upon story of dying men, women, and children who believed they were food for the dead. This Wesleyan paperback edition includes an extensive preface by the author unveiling some of the new cases he’s learned about since Food for the Dead was first published in 2001.
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ImperfectCJ
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Picked up my CSA share then ran to the library to pick up my hold and unintentionally made an amusing arrangement in the trunk. Food for the Dead on top of food for the living.

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wingedsnails

"Any house that is more than three hundred years old has to be haunted, if it has any character at all."

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wingedsnails
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Took me awhile to actually sit down and start reading this one, but now I'm fascinated by the research and folklore in this... (I picked this up solely based on an episode of Lore...)