In 1892 in Exeter, Rhode Island, a nineteen-year-old girl named Mercy Brown died of tuberculosis.
Her father believed she had contracted the disease from a family member who had been vampirized, who had visited her during the night and bitten her.
Years earlier, her mother, Mary, had died from the same illness, as had her sister Mary Olive.
A few years after the death of the latter, Edwin, the only son, also fell ill.
The Exeter community and Mercy’s own family believed that one of the deceased Browns had turned into what we would now call a vampire.
It was decided to exhume the bodies of the deceased family members, and it was evident from the start that the corpses of Mary and Mary Olive were decomposed.
Mercy’s body, however, still had human-like features and retained blood in the heart and liver, and they were convinced that she had infected her brother Edwin…
No one considered that Mary and Mary Olive had died years before, unlike Mercy who had been buried only two months earlier during the cold winter…
The common belief was that the girl was thus an undead creature who was draining her brother Edwin’s energy. Therefore, her heart and liver were burned, and the ashes were mixed with water and given to Edwin to drink.
“It was believed that giving a vampire’s heart ashes to its victim would save them. Unfortunately, the boy died two months later of tuberculosis.”
WAS MERCY BROWN REALLY A VAMPIRE?
She was not…
Her corpse was well-preserved simply because the girl had died in winter.
Since the ground was too hard to be dug, the body was placed in a crypt awaiting milder temperatures, a common practice at the time.
The body remained in the crypt, cold as a freezer, which caused it to mummify, retaining the appearance Mercy had when she was alive.
Without medical knowledge, however, with the ravages of tuberculosis and a naturally mummified body, people sought explanations as best they could, in this case blaming the undead.
Other cases of suspected vampires occurred in Rhode Island later on.
Mercy Brown’s Grave
Mercy Brown was buried in the Chestnut Hill Baptist Church cemetery. The body was then preserved in a crypt before being violated.
Today, the site has become a tourist attraction, favored by folklore enthusiasts and vampire story aficionados.
The account of the body’s exhumation, published in the Providence Journal, caught the attention of Bram Stoker, the author of DRACULA.
It is said that a clipping of the article was found among his notes. The novel was published in 1897.
It is thus plausible to think that Stoker may have drawn inspiration for the female characters in DRACULA (particularly Lucy) from Mercy Brown and other suspected vampires of Rhode Island.
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