Beneath the idyllic façade of Woodstock, Vermont—with its pristine village green, historic homes, and postcard-perfect scenery—lies a darker history that few tourists ever discover. Here, in the early 19th century, respected citizens participated in rituals that seem almost unbelievable to modern sensibilities: they exhumed the dead, removed hearts, and burned them to ash in desperate attempts to stop vampires from claiming more victims.
This is not folklore or fiction. It is documented history—a strange, unsettling chapter in Vermont's past preserved in family memoirs, newspaper accounts, and town records. The Ransom family of South Woodstock, with their Dartmouth-educated son. The mysterious case of the Corwin boy, whose heart was supposedly buried beneath a massive stone. These weren't isolated incidents born of ignorance, but part of a wider “vampire panic” that swept through New England communities.
The Fear of “Consumption”
To understand how rational New Englanders could resort to such practices, we must grasp the terror that tuberculosis—then known as “consumption”—instilled in families. The disease often claimed multiple victims in a single household, leading desperate survivors to seek explanations beyond what contemporary medicine could provide. When science failed them, they turned to older beliefs: that the first to die might be feeding on the living from beyond the grave.
Vermont's cases stand out for their public nature and the prominence of those involved. Unlike similar incidents elsewhere that were conducted in secrecy, heart-burning rituals in Vermont sometimes became community events, attended by physicians, town leaders, and ordinary citizens alike.
The Dartmouth Student Who Became a Vampire
In the quiet village of South Woodstock, Vermont, nestled among rolling hills and pastoral landscapes, lies a dark tale that seems more at home in Bram Stoker's imagination than New England history. Yet the story of Frederick Ransom is no fiction—it's a chilling reminder of how fear and superstition once gripped even the most educated communities in early America.
A Promising Life Cut Short
Frederick Ransom was born on June 16, 1797, to Richard Ransom Jr. and Elizabeth Mather—a family of means and social standing in South Woodstock. By all accounts, Frederick was bright and ambitious. By 1817, he had secured a coveted spot at Dartmouth College, where his future seemed full of promise.
A Cruel Twist of Fate
But on February 14, 1817—Valentine's Day, in a cruel twist of fate—20-year-old Frederick succumbed to what was then known as “consumption.” Today, we recognize this wasting disease as tuberculosis, a bacterial infection that often causes victims to grow progressively paler and thinner as it ravages the lungs. The afflicted frequently cough up blood, their complexions becoming ghostly white as the disease advances—physical traits that, to the 19th-century mind, bore an uncanny resemblance to folkloric descriptions of the un-dead.
When Medicine Met Superstition
What makes Frederick's story particularly fascinating isn't just his death, but what happened afterward. Unlike most vampire panics, which typically affected poorer, rural families, the Ransoms were well-to-do and educated. Yet even they weren't immune to the supernatural explanations that filled the void where medical science had not yet reached.
Shortly after Frederick's funeral, his father became convinced that his son was rising from the grave at night, visiting the family home, and feeding on the living energy of his relatives. This belief wasn't considered outlandish at the time—even local physicians in Woodstock thought that consecutive deaths within a household could be attributed to a vampire in the family, returning from beyond to claim their kin.
A Heart Burning on the Village Green
Desperate to protect his remaining family members, Richard Ransom made an extraordinary decision. He ordered his son's body exhumed from its resting place. Under the flickering light of lanterns, Frederick's corpse was disinterred, and in a procedure that surely tested the resolve of everyone present, his heart was cut from his chest.
The organ was then taken to Captain Pearson's blacksmith forge on the Woodstock Village Green—a public space at the center of community life. There, as curious and fearful villagers likely looked on, Frederick's heart was burned to ashes on the blacksmith's anvil. This wasn't done in secrecy or shame; in Vermont, unlike other New England states, these rituals often became public events, sometimes drawing crowds of a hundred or more.
According to local folklore expert Michael Bell, town selectmen and other community leaders would frequently preside over these ceremonies, lending them an air of official sanction that seems unthinkable today.
A Brother's Haunting Memory
Frederick's younger brother, Daniel, was only three years old when these events transpired, but they left an indelible mark on his psyche. In a memoir written some 80 years later, he recalled his childhood fear of the local physician, Dr. Frost, writing that he remembered “keeping shy of the Doctor, fearing he would freeze me.” The trauma of his brother's exhumation and the family's subsequent losses clearly haunted Daniel throughout his long life.
Perhaps most poignantly, Daniel's memoir reveals the tragic ineffectiveness of the ritual. “However, it did not prove a remedy,” he wrote, “for mother, sister, and two brothers died with that disease afterward.” Despite the heart-burning ceremony, Elizabeth Ransom died in 1821, followed by a daughter in 1828, and two more sons in 1830 and 1832—all claimed by the same illness that had taken Frederick.
Daniel himself lived into his eighties, but one imagines he did so carrying the constant dread that the “family illness” might one day come for him too.
The New England Vampire Panic
Frederick's case wasn't isolated. It was part of what historians now call the “New England Vampire Panic,” a regional phenomenon that swept through Rhode Island, eastern Connecticut, southern Massachusetts, Vermont, and other New England areas throughout the 19th century.
Before medical science understood that tuberculosis was caused by bacteria spread through the air, communities desperately sought explanations for why the disease seemed to prey on multiple members of the same household. The vampire theory—that the first to die was somehow feeding on the life force of surviving family members—provided both an explanation and a potential solution, however macabre.
These rituals typically involved examining the exhumed corpse for signs of vampirism: bloating, blood around the mouth, blood in the heart or liver, or hair and nails that appeared to have grown after death. The “undead” diagnosis confirmed, organs filled with blood would be burned and sometimes consumed—eaten, drunk, or inhaled—by surviving relatives in hopes of breaking the vampire's curse.
A Story That Refuses to Die
Frederick Ransom's final resting place can still be found at the Ransom-Kendell Cemetery in South Woodstock, Vermont. His grave stands as a silent testament to a time when the boundary between the scientific and supernatural was far more porous than we might like to believe.
What makes the Ransom case particularly compelling is how it challenges our assumptions about who might fall prey to supernatural thinking. This wasn't a story of ignorant peasants in a remote village—this was a well-to-do family with a son at Dartmouth College, in a community where even medical professionals endorsed the vampire theory.
The next time you find yourself driving through the picturesque village of Woodstock, with its covered bridges and charming New England architecture, remember that beneath the postcard-perfect façade lies a darker history—one where vampires once walked, and where a blacksmith's forge once burned with the heart of a Dartmouth student who had the misfortune of dying during one of America's strangest historical episodes.
Perhaps old superstitions, like vampires themselves, never truly die.
Another vampire's heart burned on the Woodstock, VT village green?
Maybe. There is a well known legend that suggests that in 1834 the eldest son of the Corwin family of Woodstock, VT died from a mysterious wasting disease. When another son became ill, townspeople of Woodstock advised the Corwins to take precautions against a vampire.
According to legend, the eldest brother was disinterred from the Cushing Cemetery and burned. His ashes were buried in an iron container beneath the Woodstock village green. Supposedly, a few local boys decided to get together late one night and dig up the burned ashes.
Vermont's Vampire Legacy: Where Fear and Folklore Meet
The twin vampire tales of Frederick Ransom and the mysterious Corwin boy offer us more than just macabre entertainment. They provide a poignant window into how our ancestors confronted the terrifying specter of disease before modern medicine could offer explanations or cures.
What makes Vermont's vampire incidents particularly fascinating is how they transcended social boundaries. Unlike many supernatural beliefs that remained confined to the rural poor, vampire folklore infected the minds of educated physicians, college students, and respectable families. The Ransoms—with their Dartmouth-educated son—were hardly the sort of family one would expect to resort to burning hearts on blacksmith forges.
When Rationality and Superstition Collide
These stories remind us that in times of crisis, the line between rationality and superstition grows perilously thin. When faced with the inexplicable spread of tuberculosis through their families, even the most educated Vermonters reached for explanations that made emotional, if not scientific, sense. The vampire theory provided both causation (the deceased feeding on the living) and solution (the ritual destruction of the undead heart).
Today, we might be tempted to look back with a sense of superiority at these “primitive” beliefs. But such smugness would be misplaced. These rituals weren't performed out of ignorance but out of desperate love—parents trying anything to save their remaining children, siblings hoping to protect one another from consumption's relentless advance.
As we walk Woodstock's charming streets or pass by South Woodstock's quiet cemetery, these stories connect us to the very human struggle of generations past. They remind us that beneath Vermont's picture-perfect villages lies a complex history where science, superstition, love, and fear have always intertwined.
The hearts of suspected vampires may have turned to ash long ago, but their stories continue to pulse with life, teaching us about our shared humanity in the face of death's mysteries.
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