THE DAILY OHIO STATESMAN — JUNE 7, 1867
[From the Wheeling (West Virginia) Register May 31st.]
There is an old superstition, dating back to the Greeks and Romans, that bodies of persons who die under sentence of excommunication do not decay, but devour their own flesh, and during the night leave their graves and suck the blood of living persons. This old superstition has been revived in this city under extraordinary circumstances. A young man who boards at one of our most respectable boarding houses has for some weeks past been growing week [sic] and pale from the loss of blood during the night. For some time he could not imagine the cause of the lassitude he felt every morning, but about a week ago he discovered a small puncture on his arm, from which it was evident that blood had been drawn, and every morning thereafter he found a new puncture upon some fleshy portion of his body. He was mystified as to how these punctures were made, and what made them.
For several nights he remained awake late in the night for the purpose of solving the mystery, but such was his weak condition he invariably became exhausted and fell asleep before morning, and always found a fresh puncture. He got an acquaintance to sleep with him, but becoming tired of watching, he too fell asleep, and in the morning there was a fresh puncture on both of them, which so alarmed his acquaintance that he refused to sleep in that room again. Between the loss of blood and his anxiety to know the
