The Jewett City Vampires

ACCORDING TO TRADITIONAL stories still circulating in the eastern part of the state, belief in vampirism was not only current in nineteenth-century Connecticut, but at least one family living in the Jewett City section of Griswold translated their beliefs into grisly action. It should be noted that the New England brand of vampirism had little relation to the Transylvania-style version of the superstition popularized by novelist Bram Stoker in Dracula. Rather, the local belief was related to the conviction that some pre-deceased member of a family remained "undead" and returned from the grave to "suck the blood" from still-living relatives, thus causing their mysterious, untimely deaths. Almost always the belief tended to surface with successive deaths at an early age of members of the same family, from such ill-understood and abnormally feared diseases as "consumption" (tuberculosis), cancer and pernicious anemia.
The Jewett City vampires were all members of the Ray family, who are known to have lived in the area through most of the nineteenth century. The family consisted of the father, Henry B. Ray (1796-1849), and mother, Lucy (Downing) Ray (1791-1861), and five children, Henry Nelson Ray (1819-?), Lemuel B. Ray (1821-1845), James L. Ray (1823-1894), Elisha H. Ray (1825-1851) and Adaline Ray (1827-1897).
As the record shows, the first member of the family to die was the second eldest son, Lemuel, in March, 1845, at the age of twenty-four. Next to go was his father, Henry B., who reportedly died of consumption four years after Lemuel had been laid to rest (so they believed). But then, only two years after his father and six years after his brother had died, 26-year-old Elisha followed them to the grave. Clearly, the male Rays were being X'ed at an alarming rate.
As the story goes, the family patience ran out in May of 1854, when one of the two remaining sons of Henry B. Ray, the eldest, Henry Nelson, was stricken with dread tuberculosis and seemed ready to die at the age of thirty-five. Taking matters into their own hands, so to speak, on the night of May 8, accompanied by a few understanding friends and neighbors, the remaining healthy members of the Ray family entered the Jewett City burial ground on Main Street, shovels in hand and matches at the ready. Acting on the conviction that Henry Nelson Ray's seemingly fatal illness was caused by his brothers' emerging from the ground and draining the blood from his veins, the determined little band dug up the bodies of Lemuel and Elisha and burned them on the spot. Although father Ray may also have been suspected of participating in the ghoulish practice, something -- perhaps filial respect -- apparently spared his body from the flames.
Unfortunately, there is neither a gravestone nor any document to confirm the date of Henry Nelson Ray's death. But since there is a date of death (either on a marker in the Jewett City Cemetery or in the Griswold town records) recorded for all the other members of the family, it is entirely probable that Henry Nelson survived his "fatal" illness of 1854. The young man who caused his family's vampire panic may well have lived to a ripe old age. If so, the surviving Rays were undoubtedly convinced that their anti-vampire "medicine" had saved his life.

from Legendary Connecticut by David E. Philips / ISBN 1-880684-05-5 / $17.95

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