by Aaron Mahnke
First published 2026
Aaron Mahnke explores the bizarre medical beliefs and folklore that drove 19th century New Englanders to dig up their dead family members. The Lore podcast creator spent a decade researching the forces behind incidents like the 1892 exhumation of Mercy Brown, a 19-year-old who died of consumption alongside her mother and sister. Mahnke traces how European vampire folklore merged with American pseudoscience to create the New England Vampire Panic of the 1890s. He examines everything from George Washington's death to Mary Shelley's writing of Frankenstein, connecting mummification techniques, executioner practices, and corpse-based medicines to show how Americans understood the boundary between life and death. The book reveals that Brown's disturbing exhumation reflected widespread beliefs about science, magic, and the human soul that persisted well into the modern era. Mahnke offers readers a window into forgotten American attitudes about death and disease that shaped an entire region's response to tuberculosis outbreaks.
Genres: biography, folklore, non-fiction, history-of-medicine, history-of-science, american-history
Vibes: dark, haunting, investigative, scholarly, thought-provoking
Tropes: cultural-mythology, historical-investigation, scientific-misconception
Setting: New England, America
Period: 19th century, 1890s, 1892
368 pages · Hardcover · Running Press Adult
Content warnings: death, medical-trauma, terminal-illness