The Mercy Brown Vampire Incident

In March 1892, the residents of Exeter, Rhode Island, gathered at Chestnut Hill Cemetery for an exhumation that would become one of the most famous vampire incidents in American history. The Brown family, devastated by tuberculosis, had come to believe that their deceased daughter Mercy was rising from her grave to drain the life from her dying brother Edwin. What followed was a ritual as old as medieval Europe performed in the modern United States.

The Brown Family Tragedy

The Brown family was systematically destroyed by tuberculosis—the “consumption” that ravaged nineteenth-century New England. Mary Eliza Brown, the mother, died of the disease in 1883. Her eldest daughter, Mary Olive, followed in 1884.

In 1891, Mercy Lena Brown, just nineteen years old, fell ill. She died on January 17, 1892, and was placed in an above-ground crypt in the cemetery, as the frozen ground prevented burial.

Edwin Brown, the only son, had also contracted tuberculosis. By early 1892, he was clearly dying. Desperate to save him, the family turned to folk beliefs that still held power in rural New England.

The Vampire Tradition

The belief in vampires—or “consumption vampires”—was surprisingly common in nineteenth-century New England. When tuberculosis swept through families, people sometimes concluded that the dead were rising from their graves to feed on the living.

The “cure” involved exhuming the recently dead and examining their bodies. If a corpse showed signs of “life”—blood still liquid, organs not fully decayed—this was evidence of vampirism. The heart would be removed and burned, and the ashes fed to the dying victim.

This was not mere superstition to the people who practiced it. They were watching their families die one by one from an invisible disease they could not understand or treat. The vampire explanation offered both an explanation and a solution.

The Exhumation

On March 17, 1892, with the consent of George Brown, the father, the bodies of Mary Eliza, Mary Olive, and Mercy were exhumed. A local doctor, Harold Metcalf, supervised.

Mary Eliza and Mary Olive, dead for years, were merely skeletons. But Mercy, dead less than two months and preserved in the cold of the above-ground crypt, still appeared relatively fresh. When her heart was removed, it reportedly contained liquid blood.

This was taken as proof of vampirism. Mercy’s heart and liver were burned on a nearby rock. The ashes were mixed with water and given to Edwin to drink.

The Aftermath

The folk medicine failed. Edwin Brown died on May 2, 1892, just two months after consuming his sister’s ashes.

The incident attracted newspaper attention even at the time. Reporters from Providence and Boston covered the story, treating it as an example of rural superstition persisting in the modern age.

Legacy

The Mercy Brown case became one of the most thoroughly documented examples of the New England vampire tradition. It was among the last—public health understanding of tuberculosis was advancing, and the practice would die out in the following decades.

Some researchers believe the Mercy Brown case influenced Bram Stoker, who was writing “Dracula” around the same time. The author kept newspaper clippings about New England vampires, and certain elements of his novel may reflect this American tradition.

The grave of Mercy Brown in Chestnut Hill Cemetery has become a pilgrimage site for those interested in vampire folklore. Visitors leave offerings and sometimes claim to see her ghost near the grave.

Assessment

The Mercy Brown incident reveals how supernatural beliefs emerge from human desperation. The Brown family was not ignorant or malicious—they were watching their loved ones die and seizing on any hope of salvation.

That hope led them to an act that seems barbaric to modern sensibilities: digging up a teenage girl, cutting out her heart, burning it, and feeding the ashes to her dying brother. But in the context of 1892 rural Rhode Island, it was a rational response to incomprehensible tragedy.

Mercy Brown remains a symbol of how the vampire legend evolved in the New World and how supernatural belief persists even in modern times.