Probably Offensive

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercy_Brown_vampire_incident

“

The Mercy Brown vampire incident, which occurred in 1892, is one of the best documented cases of the exhumation of a corpse in order to perform rituals to banish an undead manifestation.

In Exeter, Rhode Island, the Brown family suffered a sequence of tuberculosis infections in the final two decades of the 19th century. Tuberculosis was called “consumption” at the time, and was a devastating and much-feared disease.

The mother, Mary, was the first to die of the disease, followed in 1888 by her eldest daughter, Mary Olive.

In 1891, another daughter, Mercy, contracted the disease and died in January of 1892. Two months later her brother, Edwin, also became sick.

The father, George, believed that one of his dead family members was returning from the grave as a vampire and causing his son’s illness. This was in accordance with threads of contemporary folklore linking multiple deaths in one family to undead activity. Consumption was a poorly understood condition at the time, and the subject of much urban mythology.

George Brown persuaded several villagers to help him exhume the bodies. While the bodies of both Mary and Mary Olive had undergone significant decomposition over the intervening 4 years, the more recently buried body of Mercy was still relatively intact. This was taken as a sign that the child was undead, and the agent of young Edwin’s condition. The cold New England weather made the soil virtually impenetrable, essentially guaranteeing that Mercy’s body was kept in tomb-like conditions during the 2 months following her death. Therefore, the lack of decomposition was not surprising.

Mercy’s heart was removed from her body, burnt, and the remnants mixed with water and given to the sick Edwin to drink. Unfortunately, despite all his efforts, George was unsuccessful in protecting his son, who died two months later.”

Nothing new here, still working overnight getting paid to play video games while I wait for shit to do. One of my favorite gigs so far.