The Vampire Graves of Jewett City: The Legend of Connecticut’s Undead, Blood-Sucking Vampire Family

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The strange tale of the Jewett City Vampires begins in the middle of the 1800s, when a local family began to notice that they were falling victim to a strange illness. Henry Ray and his three sons were slowly wasting away, each day a bit weaker than the last, almost as if something was visiting them in the night, sucking the life force from their bodies. The family attempted everything they could to diagnose the men, but despite their efforts, their relatives continued to die, thin and frail, shadows of their former selves.

In May of 1853, the family held a meeting. The Rays believed that the undead were stalking the countryside, targeting the farming community, and feeding on victims in the dead of night, turning their friends and family members into foul creatures who would rise from the grave and do the same. Fearing the return of their brothers, the Ray family marched to the local cemetery, exhumed the bodies of their dead, and set them ablaze. When the flames died down, the vampire hunters rearranged the bones, then re-buried the bodies, this time for good.

The drastic measures seemed to work. As the years wore on, the mysterious illness began to slowly disappear, and the countryside was once again safe from the threat of the undead. http://weekinweird.com/2016/07/16/the-v ... re-family/