Case file · Folklore / legend
'JB 55', the Griswold vampire burial
In 1990 archaeologists excavating a colonial family cemetery in Griswold, Connecticut, found a coffin marked 'JB 55' whose skull and thigh bones had been rearranged in a skull-and-crossbones after death.
1990 CE · 41.59, -71.95 · status: official
The account
The man had suffered from tuberculosis and his grave was reopened some years after burial. Later DNA and genealogy work identified him as John Barber, a farmer who died around 1843. It is the only physical evidence of the ritual examined by scientists.