Undead Appalachia: West Virginia’s Vampires
- Bee Williams
- Apr 7
- 3 min read
During the 1800s, vampire panics gripped communities from Florida to New England—even as America surged forward into the Industrial Age. It was an era marked by rapid technological advancement and scientific breakthroughs, yet beneath this veneer of progress lingered ancient fears and superstitions. Surprisingly, West Virginia, too, has its own lesser-known tales of vampires, adding another eerie layer to this fascinating historical paradox. These are the stories of Undead Appalachia: West Virginia’s Vampires.
Morgan County Vampire
One of West Virginia’s most famous vampire-related stories comes from Morgantown. Sometime in the late 20th century (accounts suggest the 1960s, ’70s or early ’80s), a grave in a Morgantown cemetery mysteriously opened by itself, and a coffin surfaced from the earth. When authorities or caretakers inspected it, they found the corpse inside was strikingly well-preserved, showing little decay. This discovery immediately fueled rumors of a vampire – locals speculated the body had avoided decomposition by sucking the blood of the living in secret.
Reports of an undead Morgantown resident quickly captured public imagination. At first, the grave’s eruption was just a curiosity, but soon mass hysteria set in. According to local storytellers, people began gathering at the cemetery, conducting midnight rituals around the “vampire’s” grave. Some treated the site almost as an urban legend pilgrimage. The frenzy grew so absurd that it was described as “incredibly insane” by one historian of local lore.
Eventually, more rational heads pointed to possible natural causes – for example, a buildup of underground gases or a shifting water table might have forced the coffin upward, and an unusually airtight coffin could account for the body’s preservation. In short, there was likely no actual vampire, just a strange geological event. Indeed, the episode became a case study in how human nature can create monsters: people craved an explanation for the unsettling grave disturbance, and the vampire myth filled that void. The Morgantown Vampire tale is still a part of local lore, but it is generally considered debunked – a mix of natural phenomena and imaginative rumor rather than any real Nosferatu.
19th-Century Vampire Panic in Brooke County
But if one vampire in the state was not enough, there is yet another! West Virginia has an earlier brush with vampire mythology dating back to the 1800s, tied to the era’s tuberculosis epidemics and folklore brought by New England settlers. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, parts of New England were gripped by a “vampire panic” – families, desperate to stop the spread of wasting disease (consumption), sometimes exhumed relatives suspected of rising from the grave to drain life from the living. According to the Weirton Daily Times, Wellsburg (in Brooke County, then part of Virginia) had many settlers from New England and they carried these superstitions with them. Local historians note that Wellsburg’s first public cemetery (established 1814) later became entwined in a vampire-esque legend, possibly after graves were moved in 1876 – though the exact story is murky.
What is documented is how consumption (TB) ravaged communities in 19th-century West Virginia and spurred unusual attempts at a cure. By 1874, newspapers nationwide reported that some afflicted West Virginians tried drinking the warm blood of slaughtered animals as a remedy. Please remember, TB was once referred to as Galloping Consumption due to its highly contagious nature, so people were quite desperate.
In Brooke County, sufferers would trek to local slaughterhouses to drink fresh blood, hoping to absorb the “life force” and cure their illness. This so-called “blood cure” was essentially a real-life vampire practice – minus the supernatural elements – borne out of fear and folklore. One news account described a man who drank “half a tumbler of blood twice a day” alongside 10–12 others at an abattoir.
Trail of Blood
Such reports, sensational as they were, show the influence of vampire legends on public behavior during health crises. While no actual undead were ever found, the Brooke County “vampire craze” shows how folklore and desperation merged. The practice was ultimately abandoned as medical understanding improved, and today these incidents are explained as a cultural response to disease.
In short, West Virginia’s “vampires” of the 1800s lived only in the imagination and folk remedies, not in reality. Yet, these documented incidents illustrate how legends of the undead have been reported and retold in West Virginia over time, even if each ultimately leaves more questions than answers.
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