Mercy Brown vampire incident

1 History
In Exeter, Rhode Island, the family of George and Mary
Brown suered a sequence of tuberculosis infections in
the nal two decades of the 19th century. Tuberculosis
was called consumption at the time and was a devastating and much-feared disease.
The mother, Mary, was the rst to die of the disease, followed in 1888 by their eldest daughter, Mary Olive. Two
years later, in 1890, their son Edwin also became sick.[1]
In 1891, another daughter, Mercy, contracted the disease
and died in January 1892. What remained of her body
was buried in the cemetery of the Baptist Church in Exeter after being desecrated.
Friends and neighbors of the family believed that one of
the dead family members was a vampire (although they
did not use that name) and had caused Edwins illness.
This was in accordance with threads of contemporary
folklore linking multiple deaths in one family to undead
activity. Consumption was a poorly understood condition
at the time and the subject of much superstition.
George Brown was persuaded to give permission to
exhume several bodies of his family members. Villagers, the local doctor and a newspaper reporter exhumed the bodies on March 17, 1892.[1] While the bodies
of both Mary and Mary Olive had undergone signicant
decomposition over the years, the more recently deceased
Mercy was still relatively unchanged and had blood in the
heart and liver. This was taken as a sign that the young
woman was undead and the agent of young Edwins condition. Her lack of decomposition was more likely due
to her body being stored in freezer-like conditions in an
above-ground crypt, during the 2 months following her
death.

Mercy Browns gravestone in the cemetery of the Baptist Church

in Exeter

The Mercy Brown vampire incident, which occurred

in 1892, is one of the best documented cases of the
exhumation of a corpse in order to perform rituals to banish an undead manifestation. The incident was part of the
wider New England vampire panic.
As superstition dictated, Mercys heart was removed from
Several cases of consumption (tuberculosis) occurred in her body, burned, and the remnants mixed with water and
the family of George and Mary Brown, in Exeter, Rhode given to the sick Edwin to drink. It was thought that givIsland. Friends and neighbors believed that this was ing the victim of consumption ashes of the vampires
due to the inuence of the undead. Two family mem- heart would cure them, but he died two months later.[1]
bers bodies were dug up, and, exhibiting the expected
level of decomposition, were thought not to be the cause.
Daughter Mercy, however, who was held in a freezer-like,
above-ground vault, exhibited almost no decomposition. 2 In popular culture
This was taken as conrmation that the undead were inuencing the family to be sick. Mercys heart was burned, The Mercy Brown incident was the inspiration for Caitln
mixed with water and given to her brother Edwin, who R. Kiernan's short story, So Runs the World Away,
was sick, to drink, in order to stop the inuence of the which makes explicit reference to the aair. It has also
undead. The young man died two months later.
been suggested by scholars that Bram Stoker, the author
1

of the novel Dracula, knew about the Mercy Brown case

through newspaper articles and based the novels character Lucy upon her.[2] It is also referenced in H. P. Lovecraft's "The Shunned House".[3] Mercy Browns story was
the inspiration for a young adult novel, Mercy: The Last
New England Vampire by Sarah L. Thomson. Rapper B.
Dolan also wrote a song from the perspective of a ctitious party involved in the case in his song The Hunter
from his 2010 LP Fallen House, Sunken City.[4]
The Mercy Brown incident is depicted in the 2015 lm
Almost Mercy, written by B. Dolan and Tom DeNucci,
directed by DeNucci and starring Bill Moseley and Kane
Hodder. The lms main characters Emily (played by
Danielle Guldin) and Jackson (Jesse Dufault) visit the
grave of Mercy Brown and call themselves the Friends
of Mercy, and in a ashback sequence the lms characters from the present day appear as characters in the story
of Mercy. [5]

References

[1] Tucker, Abigal (October 2012). The Great New England

Vampire Panic. Smithsonian Magazine: 3. Retrieved 29
June 2013.
[2] http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/
The-Great-New-England-Vampire-Panic-169791986.
html
[3] Spiers, Richard (2004). Mercy Brown: A Real Rhode
Island Vampire. Underworld Tales Magazine. Retrieved
18 June 2011. As Lovecrafts Mercy Dexter character allows the plot to ow, he cagily reveals, "[don't] hire anyone
from the Nooseneck Hill country seat of uncomfortable superstitions. As lately as 1892, an Exeter community exhumed a dead body and ceremoniously burnt its
heart in order to prevent certain alleged visitations.
[4] The Hunter lyrics.
[5] Horror Asylum: TOMMY DENUCCI'S 'ALMOST
MERCY' COMING TO VOD THIS MAY.

Bell, Michael E. (2001). Food for the Dead On the Trail of New Englands Vampires. New
York: Carrol & Graf Publishers. 338 pages. ISBN
0786708999.
Connecticut Public Television (1996). Vampires in
New England (TV Documentary).

External links
Smithsonian Magazine account of Historical Vampires
O.T.I.S.(Odd Things Ive Seen): A Firsthand Account of Mercy Browns Grave
Mercy Brown at Find a Grave

EXTERNAL LINKS

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