BELLOWS FALLS-On Thursday, Sept. 5, at 6:30 p.m. at the Rockingham Free Public Library, acclaimed authors Eileen Charbonneau and Eileen O'Finlan will take a dark look at what happened when two European folk beliefs arrived in what would become the United States in their new novels Spectral Evidence and The Folklorist, respectively.
O'Finlan's The Folklorist is a dual-timeline story set in 1970s and 1830s Vermont. It explores the New England Vampire Panic of the 19th century and its family echoes. Charbonneau's Spectral Evidence weaves a story around Mary and Philip English, both accused of witchcraft during the Salem hysteria of 1692.
"I thought I knew a lot about witches before I began researching Spectral Evidence," Charbonneau explained in a news release. "But much of that came down from popular culture depictions."
She says she found the actual history most interesting. "Like many people, I thought that the greatest witch hunts of history came during the so-called 'Dark Ages,'" she says. "But the period of the Renaissance is where we find them. In 1692 Salem, they even seeped into our own modern American origins. Witch hunts happen in periods of momentous change and are born out of fear … fear of change, fear of the power of women, fear of the world being turned upside down."
Charbonneau also found that persecution spread around New England. But it did not reach other parts of England's colonial empire. "Setting my novel both in Salem and also in its close trading partner, Canada's Newfoundland, helped me explore the reasons that it did not take hold there."
For O'Finlan, writing The Folklorist brought her home to her family's deep Vermont roots. Our notions of vampires stem from the 1897 novel Dracula and all the popular culture interpretations and spin-offs that followed. But vampire culture is much older.
"Stories of the undead coming back to harm the living are quite old in Europe," the author explains. Her novel explores the little-known history of the New England Vampire Panic of the 1830s. Her story is told through the eyes of a young scholar of the 1970s with a family connection.
O'Finlan also found fear to be a great motivator. Whole communities of New England tried to fight the surge of tuberculosis (then known as consumption) by resorting to Old World practices. Gruesome practices were based on the superstition that the dead were coming back to feed off living relatives. It included ways to tamper with or desecrate the bodies of loved ones.
Eileen explains, "In Woodstock, Vermont, an exhumed heart was burned on the town green," O'Finlan said. "In Manchester, hundreds attended a heart burning on the blacksmith's forge."
Together, Charbonneau and O'Finlan offer a talk on European beliefs about witches and vampires following those who emigrated to the U.S. How did these beliefs manifest in New England's early centuries? Why has our fascination with witches and vampires continued? And what does it say about us?
They hope many will join them for this event.
This Arts item was submitted to The Commons.