Missouri's Old Lead Belt vampire--Orlin Eaton (maybe)--was accused of leaving his grave and poisoning children. While the historical record concerning Orlin was sketchy, the historical context is not: World War I was raging in Europe, child mortality was on the rise in the mining camps, Hungarian immigrants in the Lead Belt were held in suspicion, and the miners needed someone to blame. Out of the subsequent riots emerged a folktale with roots in the blood libel of the Middle Ages, and the Chronicles digs deep to show the continuing relevance of such stories to our own time. History, folklore, and ethnology converge in this episode with disturbing implications for us all.

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