In the late 1700;s and throughout the 1800's an odd phenomenon took place among the young women of Rhode Island:  vampirism.  Obscure compared to the Salem witch trials, this bizarre phenomenon seems to have begun in the 1790's, when a Mr. Stephen Staples dug up his recently deceased daughter in Cumberland, so al to conduct an "experiment" in order to "save" his other ailing daughter.  Just a few years later in Exeter, the mainly of Stuckely "Snuffy" Tillinghast largely took ill.  One after another died.  Some of the children, in the throes of death, said that their dead sister Sarah, the first to go, had come in the night and "pressed on their chest."  After Snuffy had lost his sixth child he decided to take matters into his own hands.  He exhumed Sarah, who by accounts of the ordeal had "fresh blood" in her heart and arteries.  Snuffy cut her heart out and burnt it.  A while later in Foster, Nancy Young, age 19 at the time of her untimely death, was plucked from her coffin and robbed of her heart.  This time the girl's family inhaled the burnt ashes of the organ to "cure" the ailments that inflicted them.  To no avail.  Four more children died.  In Peacedale, one father was convinced his dead daughter was of the vampiric persuasion and followed suit.  Young Nellie Vaughn of West Greenwich was also post-humously labeled a vampire.  In 1892 Exeter, 19-year-old Mercy Brown died of the same mystery disease--most likely tuberculosis--that took her sister and mother before her.  She was placed in a "keep" (a temporary crypt that was used to prevent burying people alive and if the ground was too frozen bo bury them at the time of their death.)  Stunned townsfolk claimed to have seen Mercy, pasty faced but nevertheless mobile, walking around town.  Brother Edwin was by this time ill, and father George decided to raid the family crypt.  To his and other bystander's horror, Mercy still appeared as fresh as a daisy and looked as if she had shifted in her coffin.  Her heart, which according to the local paper was full of fresh blood, was burned, the ashes mixed with "medicine" and given to young Edwin as a tonic.  Edwin croaked not long after.

Years later, and after the success of the novel "Dracula", among Bram Stoker's personal belongings were found clippings about the Rhode Island heart burning fad.  It has been largely speculated that he based much of his book on these events.