NEW
DISCOVERY - WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
Following
a lead provided by someone involved in genealogical research--a
person who probably spends as much time in graveyards as a folklorist
or Goth freak--Michael Bell and Cyril Place recently visited the
old part of a cemetery in northern Rhode Island. The researcher
had advised them 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, Michael and Cyril were 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,
Michael, who was following Cyril as he walked slowly through the
underbrush, shouted, "I found it!" The inscription on
the finely ingraved 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 yearsAltho
consumption's vampire grasp Had seized thy mortal frame,
....................................ing
minds |