FIELD FILE · MERCY-BROWN-VAMPIRESPECTRALFOLKLORE
Mercy Brown, the Exeter Vampire
Also known as Mercy Lena Brown, Rhode Island vampire, New England vampire panic
In 1892 Exeter, Rhode Island, neighbors exhumed 19-year-old Mercy Brown and burned her heart, convinced she was a vampire draining her dying brother.
Mercy Brown is the best-known figure in New England’s “vampire panic,” a folk belief that ran through rural Rhode Island, Connecticut and Vermont in the 18th and 19th centuries. It had nothing to do with caped counts. Instead, when tuberculosis – then called consumption – swept through a family one member after another, some people believed that a dead relative was somehow feeding on the living from the grave, and that the only cure was to dig up the corpse and destroy its heart.
The Brown family of Exeter, Rhode Island, was devastated by the disease. George Brown’s wife, Mary Eliza, died of consumption in December 1883, and their eldest daughter, Mary Olive, followed in June 1884. Their son Edwin fell ill around 1891 and spent many months in Colorado Springs seeking a cure before returning home no better. Then, in January 1892, 19-year-old Mercy Lena Brown died of the same disease.
With Edwin wasting away, neighbors persuaded George Brown to let them examine his dead. On March 17, 1892, a group of men, accompanied by a local physician, Dr. Harold Metcalf, and a newspaper reporter, opened the graves at Chestnut Hill Cemetery. The mother and elder sister had decayed to bones. But Mercy, dead only about two months and kept in the cold of a New England winter, appeared well preserved, with liquid blood in her heart. The doctor said this was entirely natural; the villagers took it as proof. Her heart (and, by some accounts, her liver) was burned on a nearby rock, and the ashes were mixed into a drink for Edwin. He died on May 2, 1892.
The case was covered by newspapers and has been studied by folklorists such as Michael Bell, whose book Food for the Dead traces many similar exhumations across New England. Newspaper clippings about the case were reportedly found among Bram Stoker’s papers, and some scholars think it influenced Dracula (1897). Mercy’s weathered gravestone behind the Chestnut Hill Baptist Church remains a place of pilgrimage, especially around Halloween.
- Type
- Spectral
- Status
- Folklore
- First reported
- 1892
- Best-known location
- Chestnut Hill Cemetery, Exeter, Rhode Island
- Also called
- Mercy Lena Brown, Rhode Island vampire, New England vampire panic
- Reported in
- Rhode Island
What witnesses describe
No monster was ever seen: the “vampire” was a dead family member believed to drain the life of relatives from the grave, its supposed signs being fresh blood, a lack of decay or a body that seemed to have shifted in its coffin.
Where and when it’s seen
Family burial grounds and church cemeteries in rural southern Rhode Island and other parts of New England, especially in households struck by tuberculosis in the 1800s.
Notable sightings
- December 1883The first death Exeter, Rhode Island
Mary Eliza Brown died of consumption, followed six months later by her daughter Mary Olive, 20, beginning the family’s run of tragedy.
- January 1892Mercy dies Exeter, Rhode Island
Nineteen-year-old Mercy Lena Brown died of tuberculosis while her brother Edwin was gravely ill with the same disease.
- March 17, 1892The exhumation Chestnut Hill Cemetery, Exeter
Neighbors, a doctor and a reporter opened the Brown graves. Mercy’s heart was burned and the ashes given to Edwin as medicine; he died on May 2.
What could explain it?
- The deaths were caused by tuberculosis, a contagious bacterial disease that spreads easily within a household – which is why it seemed to move from one relative to the next.
- Mercy’s apparent freshness is fully explained by her recent death and burial during the coldest months of the year, as the attending doctor pointed out at the time.
- Blood remaining liquid in the heart, swelling and other changes are normal parts of decomposition that were misread as signs of the undead.
- The ritual drew on older European folk medicine and belief rather than on literary vampires; Mercy’s case is generally considered the last in a series of New England exhumations.
Legend, culture and tourism
Mercy Brown is Rhode Island’s most famous legend. She is discussed by the Rhode Island Historical Society, Smithsonian magazine and History.com, referenced in H.P. Lovecraft’s story “The Shunned House,” and remembered in songs, books and documentaries. Visitors still leave tokens at her grave; please treat the small, still-used cemetery with respect.
Places to visit
The churchyard where Mercy Brown is buried; her gravestone stands among those of her family.
Where it’s reported
Mercy Brown, the Exeter Vampire in the news
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Sources
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