FtV - The Demon Vampire of Manchester
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Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistants assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm

I'm told it's super easy to do at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of $45 for three-month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com. Welcome, legendary listeners. Thanks for tuning in to From the Vault, a second look at some of our classic episodes. Look for a new episode every week. Now, can you go back and listen on your own at ournewenglandledges.com? You bet.

But you won't get the added bonus of an After the Legends segment featuring new commentary about that episode from your old pals Jeff and Ray. So let's open up the New England Legends vault and revisit another legendary episode. Hey kids, welcome to the vault. Good to have you back here in the vault where we're going hunting for a demon vampire of Manchester. First aired March 11th, 2021. Enjoy. Cough, cough.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, Jeff. No coughing when we're out in public. Folks here in Manchester, Vermont are starting to stare, man. Sorry. I swear I only took a sip of water and it went down the wrong pipe. It's funny. You can't cough or sneeze in public anymore. Everyone freaks out because, well, COVID. No, I totally get it. I didn't mean to cough.

Luckily, this is a small town and there's not too many people around. Manchester, Vermont. I feel like we need to stress the Vermont part because there's Manchesters in five of the six New England states. Which one doesn't have a Manchester? Rhode Island. Oh.

Rhode Island is the only New England state without a Manchester. Okay, got it. Anyway, Manchester, Vermont looks like a New England postcard. It does. Here on the main street of Manchester, you've got the white-steepled church, well-maintained colonial houses, historic homes, town hall. I mean, it's right out of a movie. It is very pretty. But you know, a town this pretty does have its secrets. Oh, what have you heard? Well, there's a haunt or two in Manchester, but we'll save those for another trip.

So get your garlic and wooden stakes out, Ray, because today we're searching for the demon vampire of Manchester. ♪

I'm Jeff Belanger. And I'm Ray Ogier. Welcome to episode 186 of the New England Legends podcast. If you give us about 10 minutes, we'll give you something strange to talk about today. Manchester, Vermont is the next stop on our mission to chronicle every legend in New England, one story at a time. But if you'll permit me one quick jump out of New England for just a second. Okay, where? I want to take you guys to Eastern Africa to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro.

I'm thrilled to announce that my brand new book, The Call of Kilimanjaro, Finding Hope Above the Clouds, just went on sale this week wherever books are sold. It would mean a lot to me if you guys would buy a copy of this deeply personal memoir that I wrote back in 2017 about my climb to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro. It was a life-changing experience, and I'm thrilled to share this story and pictures with you.

And while you're reading Jeff's new book, be sure to grab yourself a hot cup of tea from our sponsor, Nuwadi Herbals. That is a great idea. Big stories require unique teas and blends. Ray and I have been enjoying Nuwadi Herbals teas, oils, and balms for months now. I love how these great tasting teas have been incorporated into my life. In the afternoon, I love their sweeter teas like their Lemon Sun and my daughter's favorite, the Strawberry Moon.

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Okay, Jeff, so we're looking for a vampire in Manchester, Vermont. A demon vampire, Ray. Yeah. Yeah, right. A demon vampire. Right. Now, this is not going to be the first vampire we've chased in New England. No, those legendary listeners who've been with us a while may remember we found two different vampires in Rhode Island, one in Connecticut, and this will make our second in Vermont.

That's right. Way back in Episode 8, we explored the story of a vampire in Woodstock, Vermont, which is only about 40 miles northeast of us as the crow flies. It's an epidemic for sure. What we know about Manchester's demon vampire, we found in Judge John S. Pettibones' A History of the Town of Manchester, Vermont, that he published in the 1860s.

It covers stories from the town's history from its earliest European charter in 1761 through the Revolutionary War and all the way up to the mid-1800s. Now, we've seen many old books like these written about various towns we've explored. It seems like almost every town has a local history book like this. I love how they're filled with a ton of mundane information, like who bought which parcel of land, how many cows a farmer has, how many mills are in town, things like that.

And then these books also have stories of witches and vampires. And that's where we come in, right? Yes. I mean, to weed out all the boring stuff and find those nuggets. Okay, to meet the demon vampire of Manchester, Vermont, we're going to head back to 1789 and set this up. It's the winter of 1789 here in Manchester, and we're at the home of Esquire Powell, who lives here with his second wife, who is the widow of Joseph Harris. And that's when Captain Isaac Burton comes calling.

Captain Burton requests the widow Harris' daughter's hand in marriage. Esquire Powell consents, and Rachel Harris and Captain Burton are soon married. Folks in town describe Rachel Harris as a fine, healthy, and beautiful girl. The couple seem mostly happy. But then, Rachel suddenly gets ill just a few months after they get married. There's hope it's just a cold, or at worst, the flu. But as weeks go by...

The cough just isn't going away. It becomes clear this is consumption, the wasting disease. As the fall of 1789 turns to winter and then a new year, Rachel's health is getting worse and worse. Rachel succumbs to consumption February 1st, 1790. She's buried in the cemetery in the center of town.

Time goes on as it does, and by the following winter, Isaac Burton is looking to fill the empty void left by his wife, Rachel. So he goes fishing back in a familiar pond. What do you mean? Esquire Powell has a daughter named Hulda by his first wife. So Captain Burton comes calling at the Powell house once again.

and this time requests Hulda Powell's hand in marriage. Esquire Powell shrugs, gives the okay, and soon Hulda and Isaac are married. I guess he's sort of keeping it in the family. So folks in town point out that Hulda Powell is a healthy, good-looking girl, but they'll tell you she's not as beautiful as his first wife. Still, I guess she'll do for the folks in Manchester. The couple have only been married a year when Hulda feels that little tickle in her throat. Cough, cough.

Oh no. Yeah, wait now. Maybe it's just a cold. Or maybe it's the flu. But as weeks go by with no letting up in her cough, and with Hulda looking more frail by the day... Yep.

Hulda also has consumption, and it's not looking good. Hulda is wasting away. Folks in the Powell family and the Burton family, as well as some close friends, start to whisper. I'm like this. I'm like this. I'm like this.

Pretty soon, they're convinced that Hulda is the victim of a vampire. And clearly, that vampire must be Rachel Harris, Captain Burton's first wife. Locals have heard about how to deal with vampires before. The vital organs of the vampire must be consumed by the victim. It's the only way to break the spell. Now, at first, Captain Burton thinks the idea is preposterous. Come on, who could believe such a thing in this enlightened age?

But as Hulda gets worse and Isaac is faced with the prospect of burying his second wife, he becomes desperate. And desperate times call for desperate measures. Not only that, once Isaac makes up his mind that his first wife, Rachel, must indeed be a vampire who is attacking poor Hulda, he gets mad. And that anger spreads to other family members. They're working themselves up into a frenzy over this until it becomes clear that

there's a monster in town. Her name is Rachel Harris, and this vampire must be dealt with. It's a cold February day in 1793 when a dark decision is made. With shovels in hand, members of the Powell and Burton family make their way to the boneyard, where they start to dig through the snow first, and then through the frozen ground. For three years, almost to the day, Rachel Harris Burton has been in the ground. And now, with the dirt removed...

Her casket is opened, and there's her corpse. These folks must feel some remorse at their own actions because they seem to be in a hurry to cut Rachel's chest open and quickly remove what's left of her heart, lungs, and liver. Or maybe they're in a rush because a crowd is starting to gather to watch the proceedings. The Powells look disgusted as they quickly close the coffin lid again.

and push the whole affair back into the ground. Meanwhile, more people are flocking to the boneyard to watch. Dozens of onlookers is turning into hundreds of people. I can only imagine what's going through the heads of the Burton and Powell families right now. Yeah, they look disgusted, but likely disgusted with themselves too. Still, they're scared and desperately trying to save Hulda. The family carries Rachel's vital organs over to Jacob Mead's blacksmith forge.

And all the while, the audience is growing. Hundreds of people have gathered to witness this event. The remains of Rachel's vital organs are burned in the forge until they're ashes. Timothy Meade mixes the ashes into an oily elixir and hands it over to Captain Burton, who offers the concoction to his wife Hulda, who drinks it down. The hundreds of witnesses declared that Manchester's demon vampire has officially been slayed. And that brings us back to today.

Okay, well, here's the million-dollar question. Did it work? Did it save Hulda? Well, I guess it depends on who you ask. Hulda died September 6th, 1793, about seven months after she drank the elixir containing Rachel's ashes. Oh, got it. So if you're a believer, then Hulda likely would have died within days or weeks without the elixir, and maybe she died seven months later because the vampire had already done too much damage.

Right. And if you're not a believer, then the elixir had no effect or maybe a placebo effect at best, because ultimately, Haldit died from consumption or tuberculosis as we know it today. Tuberculosis is still a horrible plague that's taken over one billion, that's billion with a B, lives between the years 1800 and 2000. It's contagious and often lethal. The way America and other first world countries dealt with it was through a strategy called search, treat and prevent.

Basically, contact tracing for people who have TB, testing thousands of others, and then treating those identified as sick.

Treatment included financial support for those who were sick so they could still support their families. And one of the biggest tragedies with TB was sometimes sick people had to keep working because their families depended on them. So they go to work sick and, of course, they infect others. By offering financial support, those folks could stay home and not spread it further. Finally, in the 1960s, preventative therapies became available to those who had been exposed.

It took a real group effort and years of dedication to beat TB in the United States. And the toll was heavy. We know when there's a virus, people get scared. They do. In the absence of clear answers, they'll resort to acts that seem irrational in hindsight. The crazy thing is, the cure of eating the ashes of an alleged vampire, well, it's worked before. Someone tried it, ate the ashes, and they got better.

You could speculate that this person was going to get better anyway because some people did, but the remedy only has to work once or twice for the legend to spread and for people to keep trying it. Because sometimes when dealing with a monster, the only remedy is a miracle. And sometimes if a miracle isn't offered, you've got to try it.

You've got to try to force one. It takes a village to face a pandemic. We all know that. And it takes a village to keep the New England Legends podcast going and growing. Yes, it does. Our Patreon patrons are the backbone of everything we do. These folks kick in just three bucks per month and get early access to new episodes, plus bonus episodes and content that no one else gets to hear. Please head over to patreon.com slash New England Legends to sign up.

And please do pick up a copy of my brand new book, The Call of Kilimanjaro, Finding Hope Above the Clouds. I appreciate your support. We'd like to thank our sponsor, Nuwadi Herbals, and our theme music is by John Judd. Until next time, remember, the bizarre is closer than you think. We'll break it down right after a word from our sponsor.

Boy, we talk about consumption a lot. Well, let me reiterate. First aired March 11th, 2021. Right, yeah. We were in the thick of it. We were in the thick of COVID where... Somebody was coughing at the beginning of the episode. That's right. And that freaked everybody out. Yeah. And because if you remember, if you can put your mind... And by the way, I've wiped most of these memories or drank them away. I don't remember one or the other.

You'd hear someone coughing, something you hear every day and you think nothing of. But back then, you'd be like, your head would snap, and you'd be like, should I run? How do you feel now about coughing, though? I don't even hear it anymore. Really? I'm back to normal. It still grosses me out. Well, sure. It was like, ugh. And nobody heard this, but we took a pause so I could cough.

You did. It's not so much that. You know what it is? It's like being at a restaurant, being in tight quarters with somebody. Sure. Or you're at a store and somebody just starts coughing without covering their mouth. Oh, wow. It's just like, wow.

In an elevator? Yeah, sure. Right? But you still think about COVID. It's still in the back of your mind, like, oh, we almost died because of coughing. Yeah. And then it was a lot worse way back when, too. And people are still getting it. Yeah. It's not over. That's right, yeah. It's more manageable now. Right. And so, no, but it's funny how...

I'm still seeing people posting things about like the vaccine was fake. It was this, it was that. I'm like, to what end? You know, like everybody was trying their best. And so, but it just reiterates the point, which is normal, rational people who make good decisions most of the time

When they're really scared, don't make good decisions. And by the way, that's everybody. I'm not singling anyone out. If you are ever afraid, you are not about to make a good decision. Right. Whatever it is. Like, what should I have for dinner? Like, it's going to be bad. You're going to mess that up. Right? Yeah. Because when you're afraid, the rational part of your brain does not work. It is shut down. You are fight or flight. Those are your options. Right. Or freeze. And so if we're scared, we start...

looking at anything, right? Whether that's grasping onto a conspiracy theory or, you know, locking ourselves in a bubble and hoarding toilet paper. Right. And, and don't even look at me anymore, you know, like none of these things are totally rational. Right. Um,

But at the same time, one of the things about tuberculosis that was different was that this was not like a couple of weeks or a couple of years. This was decades. And collectively, and by the way, all the stuff you heard about COVID was said about tuberculosis too. Wow.

well, I got to work. I might have this little cough, but whatever. I'll just be careful around people. I need to work or my family starves. Yeah. Tough to argue with that. Yeah. You know, um, but I still have to cobble shoes. That's right. Yeah. I still, if I don't work, my family doesn't eat. Yeah. So, you know, tell me, tell me not to go because I might get someone sick. And so I get it. I get it. They went through all the same things, but collectively they really, um, as a nation, I think we, we, we got on top of it. And the,

The fact that you don't have to worry about tuberculosis anymore. There's plenty of countries in the world where you do. It's still a problem. So yeah, but when you're scared, you don't make rational decisions. You end up digging up your loved ones, cutting open their chest, burning their hearts, drinking the ashes. Accusing people of being vampires. And not just vampires, but demon vampires. Demon vampires. It's a whole other level of vampire. Yeah, that took it to another level.

That was just like, oh my goodness. But yes, we've covered many a vampire story around New England because they kept coming up. And around COVID, man, they were just so relevant. Oh, yeah. And still are, right? I mean, you think about that. You're just like, okay, there'll be another thing. Yeah. There always is. We learn from the past. Yeah. We didn't really learn.

when COVID hit. Like, we don't remember. Right. Like, how do we deal with this? It's been a while. Yeah. Hopefully the next one, though, we'll be prepared. Well, Spanish flu was the last time where, like, truly you could walk outside and die, you know? Like, and that was 1918. Right. And so the problem was nobody was alive, really. Yeah, but it's still not that long ago where you can't read about it. No, 100 years. Or what they do 100 years ago. Yeah, essentially. Look it up. But,

Bet your chat GPT could help you out with that situation. Totally. And still, we went into this COVID thing with like, we don't know what to do. We didn't. Yeah. Because we weren't alive the last time it happened. Even though tuberculosis was well into the 40s, even the 50s, 1950s, before it really started to go away. But even that's too long. Like, I wasn't alive then. Right. You weren't alive then. Our parents were just being born. Yeah. Right? And so. Still no excuse. No.

No, you know what? You keep saying that. And it reminds me of when I used to host trivia and I would ask a question about the Brady Bunch, right? Now I wasn't around. Well, I was, but when the first episodes aired, I was too young to watch it all on reruns. Of course. I know a lot. Yeah.

And you'd ask a question about that. And somebody would yell out, I wasn't even born when that show came out. But you're still aware that it's a thing. You probably saw reruns. You read something about the fact that there's six kids, three girls, three boys. And so that just reminds me of that. But just because you weren't born yet doesn't mean we can use that as an excuse. It was. And OK, let's keep going with Brady Bunch, right? That was part of the culture. Right, right, right. Well after the show ended. Because like you said. Oh, yeah. It's always been there.

They made movies. You and I watched that as reruns. Sure. It was probably on every day. Every day after school. It would be Fox 25 or whatever. So what we wanted were cartoons, but they didn't have that for us. Right. So we would sit and watch like Brady Bunch. Brady Bunch, Sanford and Son, whatever was on in the afternoon. Yeah. Those shows that like had their time and actually probably did better the second round.

Probably. Yeah. You know, like, yeah, Sanford and Son, what's happening. Yep. Remember that show? Oh yeah. Like I never saw it when it came out, but I saw it in the reruns. Right. Ha! Rerun! Sorry. I didn't even mean that. Um, but that's a little, I wonder if they knew at the time, like we're going to call you rerun because this show is going to be way bigger. I wonder if reruns were a thing.

Yet. When, like the 70s? It must have been. Well, Star Trek. Well, they would have reruns if they didn't have a new episode. Was it called a rerun? I don't know. Well, so syndication. Yeah. Yeah, a little different. Star Trek was the first to like. Was it? Because Star Trek didn't do that great when it first aired. Yeah. It did enough to get a couple seasons. And then the contracts everybody signed.

No one got any of the back end. No, not back then. So they could practically give that show away and stations all over the country were like, oh, I can have Star Trek and fill my Saturday afternoons for pennies? Right. Okay. And suddenly Star Trek got way bigger years after it was canceled. And then the movies started because the syndicated reruns.

created a phenomenon. Yeah, and nobody got paid. Except whoever created the show. They got paid for the movies. Yeah. Right, but for those episodes, they weren't getting anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why you see so many of these stars from the 60s and 70s at Comic-Cons. Yeah. Because they need the money. They're not getting anything from the reruns. Including William Shatner, which is crazy. But he's done so much. No, he's fine. I think he enjoys it for the most part. Yeah, but I think it's like $150 for a photo op or something.

It's crazy. It's a lot. It's ridiculous. And then you're like... And I would never do it until I see him right there and I'm like...

150 bucks to get a picture with Kirk. I don't think I've ever spent that much. I think I've taken pictures from afar. I think I did that when I was with you. Yeah. We were at Comic-Con. Yeah. Took a picture of like Rob Schneider or something. Yeah. You'd have to, but you'd have to like zoom in and circle and go, trust me, that's him. Right. Like I promise I'm not fooling you. Yeah. And it really all, we're getting way off track, but it's just an autograph or a picture and it's like a split second. You don't even get to have a conversation with him, which is the only way I accept, uh,

the whole autograph thing or photos is if there's a story that goes along with it or a brief moment of conversation. Otherwise I'm not standing in line just to be a, you know, cattle moving through. But imagine if you're him, I make $150 every 25 seconds. Right. Isn't that crazy? I guess the more you sign, the faster you get through that line, the more money you're making. Click picture. Thanks. Nice to meet you. Next. Not even that sometimes. Right. Just a scowl. Yeah. Oh my gosh.

Speaking of vampires. Yeah. Right? Like, uh, who's, how are you bringing it back? I'm trying. So who's, did he ever play a vampire? No, but who's the vampire, right? Who's preying on who here, right? Oh yes. There you go. Using the power of fame. You want your picture taken with me. That's good. Uh,

Anyway. No, that was a good bring back. I tried. It was, you know, I tried. But yeah, so the vampire stories, we did a plenty back in COVID. But maybe these stories are like help remind next time a pandemic or an epidemic comes around. You can, I would hope we all remember COVID now. Yeah. But I would hope these stories can say like, yeah, we've been here before. It'll be okay. Let's try to stay calm. We're going to end up in the medical journals. Yeah.

Yeah, if you want to fix whatever's happening now, just listen back to the older episodes when there was issues and how did they deal with it. And it's all because of New England Legends that we're all surviving today. Some professor's going to be like, I'm phoning this one in. We're going to listen to like three episodes while I go get coffee. I can see that happening. Yeah.