Vampires are pretty popular these days. You can find them fighting Slayers, sparkling during the day or making a home in Bon Temps and most people have heard the basic vampire traits; they’re not big fans of garlic, they’re burned by silver and they can be killed by a wooden stake to the heart. We know these things because they are common in works of fiction that we like to watch on TV or read about in books. However, this wasn’t the case back in the 1800s, the fear of vampires was very real and so was the case of Mercy Brown.
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The Curious Case of the Brown Family
George Brown was a farmer who lived in Exeter, Rhode Island with his wife Mary and their five children. In 1883 Mary fell ill with consumption. On the 8th December, at just 36 years old, she passed away. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the only loss the Brown family would suffer. Six months after the death of their mother, Mary’s eldest daughter Mary Olive died at aged 20. Nine years later, in 1892, Mary’s 19-year-old daughter Mercy also died from consumption. At the time of Mercy’s death, her brother Edwin had also fallen ill.
A combination of superstition and the lack of knowledge about the disease, such as how it spread, meant that villagers had their own theory on how the Brown family died. What would cause the death of so many members of the same family? The fatigue, weight loss, night sweats and bloody coughs could only be the work of one thing – a vampire. One of Edwin’s deceased relatives was feeding on the living and was making Edwin sick. To save his life, they decided to dig up the bodies of his mother and two sisters to find out which of them was responsible.
By Cbarry123 – enwiki, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4900170
The Mercy Brown Vampire
It was a cool morning on the 27th March 1892 when a small group of men gathered in the cemetery. The family doctor and a Journal correspondent were also present when the men began to dig into the cold hard soil of the women’s graves. They examined the bodies one by one. The bodies of Edwin’s mother and his sister Mary had properly decomposed as would be expected but what they found when they dug up the body of Mercy Brown filled the men with terror.
Mercy’s body had not decayed. Her face was flushed, her hair and nails had grown, and liquid blood remained in her body, including in her heart. The villagers had found their vampire.
The doctor who was present assured them that the preservation was normal. Mercy had been buried during the cold winter months after all. However, superstition prevailed and they removed and burned Mercy’s heart and liver and the ashes were fed to Edwin. Not surprisingly it didn’t work and Edwin died two months later.
The Legacy of Mercy Brown
The curious story of Mercy Brown made the news, and when anthropologist George Stetson visited Rhode Island, the story travelled much further. Stetson wrote an article published in the American Anthropologist journal. It described the New England vampire frenzy as “an extraordinary instance of a barbaric superstition outcropping in and coexisting with a high general culture…which is not so uncommon, if rarely so extremely aggravated, crude, and painful”. It wasn’t long before other newspapers were reporting on the New England vampires. In 1896 a London stage manager and aspiring novelist who was touring the US with his theatre company found some of these articles. That author was Bram Stoker. He published his novel Dracula in 1897.
New England Vampire Panic
Mercy Brown wasn’t the only New England vampire. There were multiple vampire exhumations; some had their hearts burned, others were turned face down in their grave. But what was the cause of this mass panic? What they called consumption was actually tuberculosis. During this time, the tuberculosis epidemic killed one in seven people living in Europe and the United States.
In an interview with Smithsonian Magazine, Rhode Island folklorist Michael Bell stated, “People find themselves in dire situations, where there’s no recourse through regular channels,” he explains. “The folk system offers an alternative, a choice.” Sometimes, superstitions represent the only hope, he says.
Think about what it would have taken to actually exhume the body of a relative
Michael Bell – Smothsonian Magazine
Read More: Mercy Brown is just one of the vampires in Rhode Island. Check out the tale of Sarah Tillinghast that occurred 93 years before.
Mercy Brown’s Grave
A piece of this interesting history still exists with Mercy Brown’s grave. It is located in a small graveyard, Chestnut Hill Cemetery, behind Baptist Church (also known as Chestnut Hill Baptist Church) on Ten Rod Road in Exeter, Rhode Island.
Image by Swampyank at en.wikipedia
The church was built in 1838 and was added to the National Register of Historic places in 1978 due to its historical significance.
Mercy Brown’s grave is located in the Brown family plot under a large tree and is adorned with colourful flowers and keepsakes that people have left behind.
If visiting, the grave of another Rhode Island vampire, Sarah Tillinghast, is located only 2.5 miles away.
