In January 1892 in Exeter, Rhode Island, several members of the George Thomas Brown family had died of tuberculosis, then called consumption. Friends and neighbours believed the illness was caused by a vampire among the dead, and they decided to exhume the body of Mary Eliza Brown, who had died in 1883. Her body was examined for signs of undeadness, and her heart was burned in a ritual meant to end the sickness. The case is one of the best documented examples of a corpse being dug up to banish an undead presence. It belonged to the wider New England vampire panic of the 1800s.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.