THE MORNING NEWS — SEPTEMBER 19, 1897
Superstition of Exeter Folk—A Sect of Grave Ghouls.
From the New York Press
That there exists in the thickly populated state of Rhode Island a community in which the people firmly believe in the vampire superstition and practice the rites which early in the eighteenth century were common among the Czechs of Bohemia is a curious ethnological fact. In the town of Exeter, almost within hearing of the scream of the railway whistle, graves are searched for the “vampire” and bodies, or parts of bodies, burned to save the living from his attacks.
Along the line of the railways, Rhode Island is thickly populated, and along the rivers and streams stretch for miles and miles continuous villages. But back of these densely populated regions one finds a lonely region sparsely inhabited, and a primitive civilization. The world has not moved fast in those parts, and the minds of the inhabitants are still deeply tinged with that mysticism which made their Puritan ancestors see signs and potent in the skies, and burn witches at Salem. They are natural mystics, and their isolated lives foster the natural bent of their minds.
When a person falls sick of consumption, or some other wasting disease, from no apparent cause, the case is diagnosed by the old people of the community, who are expert in demonology, as being a case of vampire. They
