Back in the 18th and 19th centuries, tuberculosis was everywhere in New England.

But people didn't call it that.

They called it consumption.

And the name kind of fit.

Now, it looked like something was consuming you from the inside out.

It started with a cough, then a fever, and then over time your body would start wasting

away.

Your face would get pale or maybe completely flushed.

Weight would drop, eyes would sink deep into the sockets, and the coughing sometimes

brought up blood.

Now for the people living back in that era, it looked like someone, or something,

was draining the life out of their loved ones. Times were different, though. There wasn't much

understanding of what was really happening. Germ theory, for example, didn't exist yet,

and doctors couldn't explain why so many people in the same family were dying, one after the other, often within just a few months.

When your mother died of consumption and then a sister followed and now your brother was coughing blood, kind of felt like a curse.

In some towns, especially the smaller, more isolated ones, people thought that something,

maybe someone, will still hanging around after death, feeding on the living.

Because you would bury someone, and then the next family member would get sick, and then

another.

It just felt like the dead were not staying dead.

All of these beliefs would eventually lead to an unsettling account of one person in

particular who was thought to be a vampire because when they looked at her corpse, she still

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