The Atlas Obscura Podcast · Tuesday, November 3, 2026
Jerome Campbell discusses an 1892 piece published in the New York Tribune that detailed vampire superstitions in Rhode Island related to consumption.
“Those interested in folklore should know of recent developments of the vampire superstition in Rhode Island. They believe that consumption is not a disease, but the result of the operations of a mysterious creature called the vampire, which fastens itself upon a family and unseen and therefore indestructible by other means,”