AI Summary
5 min readLore Alive 2: In Dreams
It started with a dream. Stukeley Tillingast, an orchard keeper in Exeter, Rhode Island, woke one night in the late 1700s in a cold sweat, having watched his apple trees wither and rot into bone in his sleep. His wife Elizabeth soothed him, told him it was nothing, that he had simply worked too hard. But the dream was prophetic. Within weeks, the Tillingast family began to die, one by one, from a wasting illness that no one could explain—and the desperate measures Stukeley would take to stop it would become the first known instance of what historians now call the New England vampire panic.
The Dream and the Dying Orchard
The Tillingasts were a farming family, rooted in the rocky soil of Exeter. Their eldest daughter, Sarah, was scholarly and dreamy, the kind of child who spent her afternoons reading among the headstones of the local burial ground because, as she told her mother, "Here I can be the me I see in my dreams." She dreamed of traveling the world alone, without a husband, writing stories. Elizabeth, who had never dreamed much at all, was quietly awed by her daughter's ambition. "I hope that you get everything you want," she told Sarah. "I will take you with me," Sarah replied.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:04) **Introduction: The New England Vampire Panic** - Aaron Mahnke sets the stage for a dramatized episode from his "Lore Alive" series, linking it to the historical New England vampire panic and his book "Exhumed."
- 2 (01:56) **Stuckley's Nightmare** - The story begins with Stuckley Tillingast waking from a horrifying dream about his apple orchard withering and dying.
- 3 (05:15) **Sarah, the Scholarly Daughter** - Elizabeth reflects on her eldest daughter, Sarah, who is intelligent, bookish, and dreams of traveling the world alone.
- 4 (08:22) **Sarah Falls Ill and Dies** - That very night, Sarah becomes ill with a fever and cough, and dies shortly after, being buried in her favorite spot in the graveyard.
- 5 (10:36) **Richard's Death and Stuckley's Vigil** - Richard dies and is buried next to Sarah, driving Stuckley half-mad with grief, leading him to keep a nightly vigil by their youngest son, Caleb.
- 6 (11:49) **Elizabeth Falls Ill** - Elizabeth herself is the next to fall sick, the fever and cough coming on fast, and she begins to experience vivid, strange dreams.
- 7 (13:55) **Stuckley's Resolve** - After Elizabeth tells him she saw Sarah, Stuckley’s face shows a look of resolve, and he leaves the house with Caleb, promising to return by nightfall.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
Welcome to Lore Alive, a special Halloween bonus series that brings dark tales from history to life with immersive sound design and voice actors. Today's tale puts us in the middle of the first known New England vampire exhumation, and the terrifying dream that plagued a heartbroken father.
Lore Alive was created by Aaron Mahnke, with writing and direction by Nicolas Tecosky, audio production and sound design by Brandon Grugle. This week's episode starred J. Garrett Mitchell as Stukeley, Sarah Palm as Sarah, and Amanda Cucher as Elizabeth.
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