New England's vampire panic gripped ordinary families in the 1790s–1890s, leading them to exhume corpses searching for signs of the undead—a phenomenon explored in Aaron Mahnke's new book Exhumed. Mercy Brown's 1892 case became the infamous climax, but the book traces 80% of its pages through interconnected folklore, corpse medicine, bloodletting, and the genuine terror of tuberculosis that drove desperate people to horrifying acts. Understanding the why behind these beliefs transforms judgment into empathy. Tuberculosis victims were often blamed for transmitting disease posthumously, turning grieving families into exhumers seeking supernatural explanations for an invisible killer they couldn't prevent.