To get rid of the vampire it is necessary to exhume the body and burn the parts, generally the heart, where the vampire lives and administer the ashes in some manner to the living and afflicted ones. There is a strong element of mysticism in the minds of these people, and it is not perhaps strange that the dread scourge pf consumption which baffles medical science and sweeps away many of the sturdy New England race should be invested by them with the weird superstition of the vampire.     The most recent case of an outcrop of the vampire superstition occurred last March. George T. Brown, a respectable farmer of Exeter, lost his wife about eight years ago, his daughter Olive two years later, and his other daughter Mercy, last January, all dying from consumption. Mr. Brown’s son Edwin, a young married man, is also a consumptive. He went with his wife to Colorado Springs, having heard of the curative properties of that place in cases like his, and staid there for 18 months, but got no better. Then a longing came to him and his wife to see again the pine trees and the old familiar faces in Rhode Island, and he came back to Exeter, his native town.     On March 17, shortly after his return, it was decided to dig up the bodies of his mother and sisters and see if the vampires were still at work. A physician was sent for from the village of Wickford, a considerable distance away. He came and made an examination of the exhumed bodies. In the heart of Mercy, the last of those who had died, was found blood. The heart and lungs of the dead girl were thereupon burned. How the ashes were disposed of was

kept a profound secret. Only a few people were allowed to be present at the cremation and no detailed account of it can be obtained, but it must have been a weird ceremony on the bleak New England hillside with the March winds blowing over the desolate country.     The Gleaner, a paper published in Pawtuxet valley, gives an account of another case of similar nature of another case of singular nature which occurred in the town of Foster, R. I., some years ago. Levi Young, who lived on a farm in the southwest corner of the town, had a large large family of boys and girls. Some of them died young from consumption and the others showed signs of the disease. When Nancy, one of the girls, had been ded three months, the body was exhumed and burned “to kill the vampire,” while the remaining members of the family stood around and inhaled the smoke. These things took place in the most densely populated state in the union but among a people living in isolated regions, among whom all ancient traditions and superstitions are tenacious of life. From— The Anaconda Standard. (Anaconda. Mont.). 19 June 1892. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.