In the Spring of 2002, following a lead provided by a local historian, Cyril and I visited the old part of a cemetery in northern Rhode Island. The historian had advised us that there was an old, broken tombstone with an epitaph that linked consumption and vampires. Since there was no evidence that the label "vampire" was ever used by people in New England who, suffering from consumption, exhumed their dead kin, I was naturally a bit skeptical. Poking around this old, jumbled plot of tumbled-down stones in numerous small family lots seemed like a real shot in the dark. Finally, as we walked slowly through the underbrush, I noticed a stone with a broken top. I had found it!The inscription on the finely engraved slate gravestone read as follows:

In Memory of Simon Whipple

youngest son of Col. Dexter Aldrich & Margery his wife

who died May 6, 1841 aged 27 years

Altho consumption's vampire grasp

Had seized thy mortal frame,

....................................ing minds

 
The rest of the inscription (probably consisting of two more lines) was not visible. The stone appears to have been anchored in cement, perhaps because people had tried to remove it. Unfortunately, the cement covered the last lines. Is this reference to "consumption's vampire grasp" merely metaphorical, or does it suggest that Simon or his older sister who had predeceased him was exhumed in a desperate attempt to save his younger sister, who died three years after Simon? We hope that further research will reveal the answer. For now, we must ask, "What does it mean?"