The Archaeological Evidence for the New England Vampire Folk Belief with Nicolas Bellantoni

Nicholas Bellantoni will present an in-depth review of the Griswold, CT case as the only to-date archaeological evidence for vampirism in 19th -century New England.  In the winter of 1990, two boys were playing in a private sand and gravel mine in Griswold, CT. Inadvertently, they had discovered an unmarked 18th and 19th -century farming family graveyard. Research suggests that the grave-site was part of a vampire folk belief, in which rural families believed that the mischievous dead were capable of leaving the housing of their grave and transmit diseases to the living.