NONFICTION VAMPIRE STORY
Mercy Brown, The Rhode Island Vampire
The young woman who may have inspired vampires as we know them
As a child, I read the story of Mercy Brown over and over, in a worn copy of the book These Plantations, a compilation of columns that had been published in the Providence Journal newspaper about the history and the rumors that fill Rhode Island. The original columns were published in the 1930s and I was reading them in the 1980s, but Mercy Brown’s story of vampirism still seemed plausible, to me as a ten-year-old. I didn’t know if I should be terrified, or sad, or fascinated by medicine and history. I felt a combination of all these things. And I felt sorry for Mercy and her family, that this tag of “vampire” had lived with them for so long.
As I grew up, Mercy left my mind, until a few years ago when I noticed a resurgence in American vampire lore, specifically the New England “vampire panic.” The central player in one of my favorite childhood fables is now famous in her role as America’s Last Vampire.
As much as I want to believe in the supernatural and I do still allow my imagination to wander toward ghosts and ghouls, the medical reason behind New England’s vampires makes sense.
Tuberculosis.
Centuries after the Salem witch trials, science, medicine, and reason were once again battling legend, folklore and rural communities that still turned to Old World remedies.
Exact details of the story are impossible to pin down, even from ancestors of the Brown family who still live in the area, but there are some widely accepted elements.
In bucolic Exeter, Rhode Island, George Brown’s wife and daughter died of consumption, the term for tuberculosis then. When his son, Edwin, appeared to be becoming ill as well, George sent him out West where the change in weather seemed to cure him. But when another of George’s daughters, Mercy, became ill and died, Edwin returned to Rhode Island, and so did his nagging cough.
As Edwin became sicker, George lost faith in medicine. He’d already seen his wife and two of their children die. In order to save his only son, it seemed reasonable to try anything — including exhuming the bodies of his wife and daughters to see if any of them were undead.
Of the three, Mercy did not appear to have decomposed. Rather than account for the fact that she had died and been buried in January in New England, the lack of decomposition was taken as proof she was the living dead, not that it was freezing cold outside. They cut out her heart and burned it, and some stories claim they used the ashes to make a tea that they forced Edwin to drink.
Edwin did not recover. Two more Brown daughters, Jennie and Myra, eventually died of consumption as well. George Brown had only one surviving child, a daughter who did grow old enough to marry and have children of her own.
Of all the New England “vampires,” — tuberculosis had become the leading cause of death in New England in the 1800s, and thus the so-called vampire panic — Mercy Brown is believed to be the last who was exhumed. Mercy’s story became an international sensation, as people poked fun at rural communities and their beliefs. Newspaper clippings of the Brown story were found in Bram Stoker’s files and it may be that Mercy, not Vlad the Impaler, is the true inspiration for Dracula, and thus hundreds of famous vampires in Count Dracula’s wake.
In that way, Mercy Brown really is undead, with a legion of entertainment vampires following her. But she should be left in peace, and I believe a desperate family should be given some slack in this case.
You can visit her grave, along with those of the rest of the Brown family, as I did one summer afternoon. They rest under a shady tree in a small cemetery, a short walk from the road. The area is still somewhat rural and bucolic, with farm stands and hiking trails nearby. I don’t believe anything happens to her grave at night, or around Halloween, or on the anniversary of her death. And it seems that most visitors to the grave have stopped vandalizing it and instead leave flowers and toys and notes to pay their respects.
10/23/21 edit: When I first wrote this piece I was new to Medium and not yet used to the practice of linking to other stories. I’d like to link back to this piece by Sumit Kumar, one of the first pieces I read on Medium, that inadvertently connects tuberculosis and vampirism and gave me the idea to write about Mercy Brown:
References:
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