Editing Vampire (section)

===American Vampires===
An outbreak of tuberculosis in the 19th century in New England caused a Vampire panic. Tuberculosis, also known as consumption, was understood to be caused when a dead relative began to drain the life of their surviving relatives. Corpses of the dead relatives were dug up and organs ritually removed, such as the heart, and burned to stop the vampire from attacking the local population. These practices were limited to New England and spread by a moral panic and some real panic but a complete lack of understanding of Tuberculosis. Notable figures are Mercy Brown of the Mercy Brown vampire incident of 1892. She and many of her family members died from consumption and the remaining ones, fearing for their lives, exhumed the dead. Mercy's body showed the least amount of decomposition having been stored in a crypt which acted like a freezer, and so gripped with idiot-boomer fear the town removed her heart and liver burned them. This story went national and collectively everyone looked on in horror at what the then-backwoods small townsfolk of New England were doing, and intervened to stop it.

Louisiana has a strong history of vampires within its folklore traditions. Many of these appear around the same time as the New England Vampire Panic and history nerds suspect an origin in tuberculosis. New Orleans being a dummy thick port city saw many travelers who would have easily spread diseases. With a very lax understanding of germ theory and more non-existent ways of containing them outside of ship quarantine, diseases spread fast. Many of the New Orleans/Louisiana vampire myths are heavily tangled New Orleans Voodoo. It is sometimes referred to as Mississippi Valley Voodoo to describe the wider region it is practiced in. It is a cultural form of the Afro-American religions developed by the West and Central African populations of the Louisiana area. Voodoo is one of many incarnations of African-based spiritual folkways, rooted in West African Dahomeyan Vodun. This subculture is an important staple of vampire fiction, with Louisiana being a recurring setting, as well as characters practicing voodoo. Important plants such as garlic may have found their way into vampire myths from voodoo wards. Do not confuse this with etsy witches appropriating plant theory. In the 1980s and 90s emo and goth subcultures split off and a few groups known as “Real vampires” began to form in New Orlands.