THE EVENING STAR — APRIL 4, 1891
The belief that diseases are caused by the dead is of great antiquity. It was applied in the case of vampires, which were supposed in the middle ages to be the spirits of deceased individuals, which left their graves at night and sucked the blood of the living. The most horrible part of the fancy, which set all Europe panic stricken a few centuries ago, was the theory that the victims were obliged themselves to become vampires after death. To prevent this thousands of suspected corpses were dug up in order that their hearts might be transfixed with stakes to prevent the fiends from going abroad. In 1875 the body of a woman in Chicago who had died of consumption [any wasting disease] was exhumed and her lungs burned, under he persuasion that she was drawing there after her into the grave. Passing over a hidden grave is thought in some parts of England to produce a rash, while in New Jersey the same cause brings about incurable cramps in the foot. In China and Scotland also people are reluctant to save a drowning man for fear that the latter, if his life is preserved, will do some dreadful injury to his savior. The Scotch believe that the spirit of the last person buried has to keep watch in the churchyard until another is entombed there, to whom he delivers his charges. The duty of the latest interred to stand sentry at the graveyard gate every night until relieved often gives much uneasiness to he deceased’s surviving friends in thinly inhabited parts of the country.
From— Evening Star. (Washington, D.C.), 04 April 1891. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
