FtV - Mercy Brown: The Rhode Island Vampire
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Welcome, legendary listeners. Thanks for tuning in to From the Vault, a second look at some of our classic episodes. Look for a new episode every week. Now, can you go back and listen on your own at OurNewEnglandLegends.com? You bet. But you won't get the added bonus of an After the Legends segment featuring new commentary about that episode from your old pals Jeff and Ray. So let's open up the New England Legends Vault and revisit another legendary episode.

Hey kids, welcome to the vault. Welcome to the vault. Good to be back with you. This is an episode we've discussed a lot, or subject we've discussed a lot, but this is the original, the OG New England Vampire, Mercy Brown. First aired March 28th, 2019. Enjoy.

There are such beings as vampires. Some of us have evidence that they exist. Even had we not the proof of our own unhappy experience, the teachings and the records of the past give proof enough for sane people's... Jeff, what are you reading? Oh, Bram Stoker's Dracula. Oh, that's a classic. I love that. Now, why are you reading it to me in a graveyard in Exeter, Rhode Island, though? Because just behind us, Ray, lie the remains of Mercy Brown, the Rhode Island Vampire.

I'm Jeff Belanger, and welcome to episode 84 of the New England Legends podcast. If you give us about 10 minutes, we'll give you something strange to talk about today. And I'm Ray Ogier. We appreciate you joining us on this mission to chronicle every legend in New England one week and one story at a time. We do. We'd like to thank our Patreon patrons who are sponsoring this week's episode. Thank you. These folks help us with hosting and production costs each week so that we can keep talking to you and taking you on these journeys. And we'd like to thank you for joining us on this mission to chronicle every legend in New England one week and one story at a time.

If you go to patreon.com slash newenglandlegends for only three bucks a month, you get early access to new episodes plus bonus content that no one else gets to hear. So thank you for being a part of this movement. Also, if you don't already subscribe to our podcast, you should because it's totally free on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts or wherever you're listening right now.

But do us a favor and post a review. Tell your friends. Yes. Because that's how others find us. All right, Jeff, so you're telling me there's a vampire buried right behind us in Chestnut Hill Cemetery? Well, that's what some locals believed back in 1892. And what they did about it was so gruesome that it made the news. Oh, man. All right, so let me grab some garlic, holy water, and a wooden stake while we set this up. ♪

It's the early 1880s in the southern Rhode Island town of Exeter. And locals are on edge because there's a plague moving through the region. A plague? They call it Conundrum.

Consumption. Oh, consumption, or tuberculosis as we know it today, is indeed a plague. It's also a terrible way to die. When the tuberculosis bacteria gets into your lungs, it begins to eat away at everything it comes into contact with. Yeah, I know. Your lungs slowly fill with blood and pus. Oh. And then you start coughing just like you would with a chest cold. Okay.

You cough up your own blood along with the tuberculosis bacteria, which makes it highly contagious to anyone breathing nearby. As the bacteria continues to grow in your lungs, more and more blood fills your chest cavity, making it harder and harder to breathe, you can imagine, right? Your final days and hours are torture as you slowly drown in your own blood and die from lack of oxygen. Oh, that sounds awful. I mean, really, really terrible. Right. Tuberculosis could kill you in a matter of weeks, Jeff.

They call that galloping consumption. Okay. It could kill you over the course of years. Some people live with this for the rest of their lives. But it made them weak and frail, but it wasn't enough to kill them. But what you described is a modern understanding of how the bacteria works. Right. In the 1880s, the medical community was just beginning to understand contagion. Go back another generation, and plagues like consumption, plagues that could wipe out families and even neighborhoods, was believed to have a more preternatural root.

For many centuries leading up to the 1880s, people believed consumption was spread by vampires. Vampires? Yeah. Like Dracula vampires? Well, Bram Stoker won't publish his horror masterpiece Dracula until 1897.

He would be the first to make vampires, you know, kind of alluring. Before him, though, vampires are walking corpses. Wow. They drain the life force from those around them to keep themselves alive. But it's at the expense of the living. Well, that's pretty scary. Yeah. But it makes sense that if you don't understand contagious diseases, that there's some carrier or monster who's coming for you. I can see how people would get scared about that. So it's December of 1883 here in Exeter when consumption claims its first victim in the Brown family.

Mary Brown, the mother of the family, passes away. Now keep in mind, 1883 is a more enlightened era. No one in the Brown family believes they're dealing with any monsters. It's just bad luck that takes the life of Mary. But seven months later, in 1884, the Browns' oldest daughter, Mary Olive, also dies from consumption. More bad luck. But then the Browns catch a break for a few years until their only son, Edwin, takes ill with consumption.

His father, George, is distraught. As you can imagine, he doesn't want to lose another family member. So he pulls what money he can and he sends Edwin off to Colorado. It's believed that that cool, dry mountain air is good for people with consumption. Maybe it's even a cure.

So Edwin heads west, where his health mostly holds steady. All right, and we jump ahead to 1891. George Brown's daughter, Mercy, becomes ill with consumption. And this time, it's progressing quickly. George struggles whether to inform his son about his sister. But in the end, he decides the truth is probably the best course. He writes a letter to Edwin, giving him the horrible news. And meanwhile in Colorado, Edwin's health is also starting to deteriorate.

When he reads the word about his sister's illness, he decides he's going to come home to be with his father and be with Mercy. All right. Now it's January of 1892, and Mercy is dying. Edwin is home and also quite ill, and George Brown is doing all he can to hold himself together. On January 17th, Mercy passes away. She was only 19 years old. Oh, that's terrible. George is heartbroken again. Consumption has now claimed his wife and now two of his daughters.

You need to remember that when a person dies in New England during the wintertime, they're not buried in the ground. They're not? No, the ground's frozen. Oh, yeah. Bodies are placed in a small outdoor structure called a keep, where they will keep until spring when the ground thaws and you can bury the dead. So Mercy is placed inside a stone crypt called a keep next to Chestnut Hill Cemetery. Many of these keeps feature a bell that hangs on the outside just above the door with a rope that

that runs on the inside of the little room. Oh, God. Is that because... Yeah. If you wake up in there not dead, just pull the rope and someone will be along to let you out.

Some say that's where they get the expression, a dead ringer. Oh, that does give you the willies, doesn't it? It does. So as the winter progresses, so too does Edwin's consumption. January turns into February, February turns to March, and Edwin is only getting worse. Imagine what George Brown is going through. Consumption has taken his wife, two daughters, and it's getting ready to finish off Edwin. Who knows if his other daughters will be next?

This is his darkest hour. George's neighbors and friends are heartbroken for him. No one should have to go through the emotional torture of watching everyone in your family slowly die. There's a saying that God doesn't give you more than you can handle.

but this seems far beyond anyone's standards. I agree. That's when some of the old-timers in town grabbed George's ear. Well, what do they say? Well, when doctors and science don't have the answer, folklore does. Huh. These old-timers start whispering about a vampire. It's the only explanation that makes sense as to why this good family would suffer so greatly. Losing everyone in the house while neighbors up the road lost no one. You know,

It must be a vampire. They suspect the vampires rising each night and feeding on Edwin's dwindling life force. While crying vampire may seem absurd, there are signs beyond everyone in the Brown family dying. So sometimes Edwin woke up in the morning to find blood on his mouth and neck.

Clearly, that's a sign a vampire is sucking the literal lifeblood from him. Right, not him coughing up his own bleeding lungs in the night while he's laying down, right? Well, I guess it could be that. So these old-timers suggest the vampire may be one of George's family members, maybe even one who's already in the ground. Now, while that sounds crazy to George Brown, he's beyond desperate. Yeah.

If he has a one in a billion chance of saving his last remaining son, he's going to take it. So on a relatively warm day, March 17, 1892, George does the unthinkable. He agrees to exhume his wife Mary and daughter Mary Olive to look for signs. Over at Chestnut Hill Cemetery, they dig. They open Mary Brown's casket and find she's pretty decomposed, which means she can't be the vampire. So they move down to Mary Olive's grave.

She, too, is in a state of decomposition. This is horrible. Then the locals glance over at the stone keep near the edge of the cemetery. They know Mercy is in there. So they walk over and open the door. To their horror, Mercy's body seemed to have moved or shifted in a way. She's not lying flat on her back like she was when they placed her in here back in January, exactly three months ago to the day. They pull Mercy's body out of the keep and remove the cloth covering her.

To their horror, they see that she hasn't decomposed at all. But the expression on her face seems slightly different. Now everyone is spooked. There's another test they need to conduct, though. And this is the most horrible yet. They enlisted the help of a local doctor named Harold Metcalf with the promise of warming libations. They want him to surgically open Mercy's chest cavity and examine her heart.

When the doctor cuts open Mercy's chest, everyone is shocked to discover liquid blood in her heart. The old-timers gathered need no further proof. Mercy is clearly the vampire.

So Edwin chokes down this horrible potion, knowing full well he's drinking the ashes of his sister's vital organs.

But everyone is desperate. A reporter from the Providence Journal covered the story. Providence Journal, March 19, 1892. Testing a horrible superstition in the town of Exeter. Bodies of dead relatives taken from their graves.

They had all died of consumption, and the belief was that live flesh and blood would be found on the one who fed upon the bodies of the living. The article goes on to describe the scene of the exhumation. We need to defend poor George Brown here. He's not some bumpkin who goes around digging up his dead family. He's a desperate father trying for a long shot on a miracle to save his dying son.

I'm a dad. Ray, you're a dad. Can you honestly say that if you had a one in a million chance to save your dying child, you wouldn't take it no matter how crazy it sounded? I'm with you, Jeff. I'd want to know I tried everything. So did this gruesome elixir work on Edwin? No. He died less than two months later on May 2nd, 1892. And that brings us back to today.

Jeff, this story just makes me sad. And I'm right there with you, Ray. But there's a lesson here, too. Plagues have happened before. They will happen again. And when they occur, society loses our minds.

Think about the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s or Ebola outbreaks that threaten to spread globally. When this wrath of God stuff occurs, we look for something beyond science to explain it because we turn primal real fast. All right. How do we explain how mercy hadn't decomposed, how her body had moved, and then the liquid in her heart?

Since the late 1800s, we've learned a lot about death and decomposition. Because Mercy's body was stored out in the keep all winter, the cold temperatures would have dramatically slowed down the decomposition process. Oh, okay, like in a city morgue where they keep the bodies in cold storage. Exactly. So before the days of embalming, a body can sit up, move around, and contort as the muscles tighten and dissolve. The blood in the organs can congeal and liquefy multiple times as part of the natural process.

Even more frightening, as bacteria eats away at the internal organs, gases are released into the chest cavity, meaning you can kind of like puff up. And sometimes if you move a body full of air, that air can get pushed out past the vocal cords, causing the corpse to groan. Oh, that's really freaky.

All right, so maybe I didn't need to bring the garlic holy water and wooden stake today. All those remedies have their roots in folklore. The garlic comes from people who've suffered from porphyria, which is a term for blood diseases where the afflicted are often sensitive to bright light and their skin becomes pale and discolored and their lips and gums can erode, revealing more teeth, making them look like fangs. And they often have a severe intolerance for foods with high sulfur content like garlic.

The holy water is a little more self-explanatory. If a vampire is evil, the holy water should burn them and scare them off, theoretically. All right, but what about driving the wooden stake through their hearts? That's been done with corpses of those believed to be a vampire. It's not so much about putting wood into the chest of the vampire as it's meant to nail the corpse to the ground so it can't get up at night and feed on the living.

The strangest part of Mercy's story is that though burning her internal organs and feeding them to her brother sounds like Dark Ages sorcery, the remedy has worked in the past. You're kidding.

All right. It may have worked one in a thousand attempts. And you can argue that the sick person was going to get better anyway. Okay. Or the sick believed that they were cured and that was enough. But it only has to work once or twice throughout history for people to start talking about it and keep trying it. Well, of course. The placebo effect. I mean, even today, some sick people get well taking placebos. Jeff, there is one more interesting bit worth noting before we leave Mercy Brown to rest in peace. What's that? What's that?

Well, some of these newspaper articles about Mercy got passed around quite a bit. This was, of course, before the days of sharing posts on social media. Folks would clip out newspaper articles and send them to people. Some of these articles made their way to Scotland, where they were found in the research files of one Bram Stoker. So it seems Mercy Brown played a part in giving the world the most famous vampire of all time.

I love how interconnected we are with all these stories and legends. It's worth reminding everyone that 1892 was not the Dark Ages. Right, yeah. The world was getting pretty modern at that time, so the idea that someone would turn to an ancient folklore remedy like this was pretty shocking.

I promise this could happen again today, given the right plague and the right circumstances. I first wrote about Mercy Brown in my very first book, The World's Most Haunted Places, and she's pretty much captivated me ever since. If you'd like to see pictures of Mercy Brown's grave by the great Frank Grace, go to our website.

at OurNewEnglandLegends.com and click on episode 84. At our website, you can also find some upcoming dates for my ongoing story tour, plus see clips from the New England Legends television series available on PBS and Amazon Prime. We'd like to thank Michael Legge for lending his voice acting talents this week, and our theme music is by John Judd. Until next time, remember, the bizarre is closer than you think. All right, we'll break it down right after a word from our sponsor.

If your kid thinks, I'm not a math kid, think again. With Mathnasium, every kid can be a math kid. At our learning centers, we customize math instruction for each student, so advanced kids get challenged and struggling kids get better. Visit Mathnasium.com to find a location near you. Mercy, mercy, mercy. We talk about her a lot because she got really relevant around COVID. That's right. March 28th, 2019. Oh, you have the date. Yeah, that was when this episode aired. Oh, okay, okay. I think we... Well...

Oh, 2019. Okay. 2019. I thought you were calling out the date for COVID, but that was 2020. Yeah, so it was 2020. But I think COVID was still sort of... It's called COVID-19 because it came around in 2019. So yes, but this is a story that got really relevant around the time of COVID because we had a pandemic and people were dying and people were scared and...

We said, you know, this has happened before. We started doing lots of vampire stories. She was not the first, but she was the most prominent because it was so modern, 1892. Yeah, yeah, not too long ago. That's modern time. That was the same year as the Lizzie Borden murders, to give you some perspective. Yeah, were there vampires involved with that too?

Not as far as we know. Not as we know. Right. You know what, though? They're still investigating. That could be a theory that could be the only theory that hasn't been floated. Right. So now they've all been covered. So, yeah, this isn't the Dark Ages. This is not at all. This is very modern time where people were shocked at this. But one of the things that I thought was sort of relevant, and I did look this up,

up, and I have it here in front of me, I was looking at average life expectancy. From that time? From that time to now. To now, okay. And so this is really fascinating to me. So we live in a time of modern medicine and vaccines and all kinds of things. To give you some perspective, it's the CDC's numbers. Center for Disease Control only goes back to 1900, but close enough, right? Close enough. Okay, yeah.

The average life expectancy in 1900. Want to take a guess? All people in the United States? 1900. Still modern times. Sure. 1900. 67 years old. 48. No.

47 to 48. What was it 100 years before that? I don't have that, Ray. I have until 1900. But I mean, you just imagine that it was 36. Yeah, right. So 47, 48 was the average life expectancy of all people in the year 1900. Yeah. In 1918, it dipped...

You can see the chart there. Oh, yeah, yeah. It dipped to 39. That, of course, was the Spanish flu. Oh, okay. Killed a ton of people. So that's an anomaly. This is the average. It's because of things like that. Okay. Yeah. But then it goes right back up, and it keeps climbing, keeps climbing. In 1920, 61. Okay. You know? In 1960, we were up to about 69. And today, you know...

now this year it's about 78, 79. All right. That's a big jump. In a hundred years, you went from 48 to 78. Yeah. That's 30 more years of living. Right. Right. Uh, because of things like vaccines and better medicine and better healthcare and things like that. Your, your quality of life today is actually significantly higher than it ever was in the 1900s or even the 1930s or forties or fifties or sixties. Right. So, um,

We've come a long way. Yeah. And we've solved some of these problems. Yet, pandemics are going to happen. Right. As we saw with COVID, as we saw with the Spanish flu of 1918. We just weren't alive. So I think that these stories are relevant because when something big happens and we get scared, we do lose our minds. And we will again. Yeah. You know, and we start trying things that, you know, maybe are not the best for us. Yeah.

Like swallowing disinfectant? Bleach or whatever. Yeah, like, yeah. Don't... Ingest it. It'll work. Ingest. I think we should start ingesting the disinfectants. Clean the inside. It's a scary thing, right? So we don't know who to believe, but I don't know if turning on science is always the best answer. Turning on it, yes. Yeah. We must. I think as a society, we need to let the doctors do what they're doing. Right. We need to let the experts do what they're doing. We get way too involved. Sure.

Now, let me also say, I also recognize one size doesn't fit all with medicines and treatments and things like that. So, you know, one size doesn't even fit all genders, right? Like men process certain things differently than women do and so on. And you process things differently at different ages, too. Absolutely. Your body changes, I think they say, every seven years or something. I caught allergies like five years ago.

And you can... And you never had them before. And you can outgrow allergies that you grew up with. So, yes, things change, and so... It's not a science. Science is not necessarily a science. Well, the problem is we hear about the exceptions, and of course there's exceptions. Of course there's people that take certain medication and have a really bad reaction to it. That's...

That's not, that doesn't happen. Most people, it saves their life. Right. One or two, it doesn't. Yeah. And that's why those commercials on TV, they tell you this could cause, this could cause this, this and that and that. Yeah. If I see a drug on TV, I already know I don't want it.

On TV, right. If it's during a football game, I'm like, you know what? I don't want whatever it is. Probably not for me. And they don't even tell you what it's for. Yeah. You just see a guy playing the drums and walking on the beach and smiling and playing with his kids. He's happy. And you're like, oh, clearly I need that. You don't see him when the side effects kick in, though. Yeah, he's like, oh!

In the bathroom. I'm going to be here a while. Sometimes the side effects are worse than the actual condition. Yeah. You're like, I'll take the condition over the side effects. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sounds horrible. Bleeding from the ears. No, thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Your eyes could fall out. Really? That doesn't seem good. Um, so. Just a chance though. Right. Or you could become a vampire. Yeah. Oh, to bring it back. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. See what I did? Uh,

Thanks for reeling us in. Mercy Brown, people get upset when you talk about her. We've gotten hate mail over the years about Mercy. Like, leave this poor girl alone. She's not a vampire. We never said she was. No, I think we were just telling stories. People thought she was. Yeah. And reacted the way they did. Right. We never said she was. And...

We're not trying to prove that she was either. No, but I think you have to tell these stories. Yeah. Because this kind of stuff happens and could happen again. You too could be a vampire someday. Someday someone's digging you up. I'm going to put it out there publicly. Here it is on the record. If I'm gone, I don't care too much about my corpse. I don't either. I really don't. Absolutely. If you want to study it for science, if you want to launch it out of a cannon, you know, like...

Have some fun with it. I'm done. Right? My use with it is finished. Pose me doing something at my funeral. Put me behind a radio board or whatever. Right. With the headphones on. Yeah. Do whatever you want. Whatever you think is best. Everyone could take a turn slapping me if they want. That might be fun. And I'll give money to charity. 20 bucks per slap.

Final slap And then the money goes to charity Wow Yeah I'm gonna do that But I don't care what you do with my body I can honestly say I've never slapped a corpse No but how cool would that be? What would that feel like? Would it hurt your hand? Is it soft? Or would you go right through? I'm pretty sure Imagine this Okay imagine This charity event's happening With someone else Like the 20 bucks a slap And you're like Oh I'm gonna try it I'm doing it

think about this. Like, I know me. Yeah. I would be like, okay, it's his wishes or her wishes. I will pay the 20 bucks for this charity they care about and I'm gonna go ahead and slap a corpse. I bet whatever that felt like on your hand, you would remember the rest of your life.

of your life. Oh, you'd have that feeling in your hand forever. 20 years later. Not just remember, but it's there. It's there. You could be like... That victim feeling. Remember when I slapped a corpse and your hand would suddenly tingle? You'd be like, oh. Oh, you're so right. I should not have done that. That would happen. You'd feel the cold or whatever. Ah.

Whatever it was, it would feel unnatural. It's almost like running over roadkill in your car. Oh, yeah. You can feel that, can't you? You're like, oh, sorry. I know the deer was... Yeah, it's already gone, but it's that feeling of going over something soft. Yeah, but crunchy. Oh, yeah.

You just killed it more than it was already killed. You had a terrible idea, slapping the corpse. Oh, I think it's great. Somebody's got to do it. Tell us and we'll come to your funeral and we'll slap you. And we'll just be talking about it for years. I want to try it. This hand can't be washed clean. This doesn't come off. Well, I told you, I'm looking for new events to have for radio. Yes, radio. And that could be one of them.

I could team up with a funeral home. They could sponsor it. No one claimed this guy. So he's a John Doe. Yeah. So we're going to slap him for charity. Or maybe somebody will donate their body to slapping. That would be great for the funeral home.

That could be one of their packages. Oh, that'd be amazing. Anyway, coming back to Mercy Brown. Yes, Mercy Brown. She's the OG because we have newspaper articles on her and we know more about her than some of the others. We've covered many other vampires around New England, but sometimes all we have... Not that she's a vampire. Not that she's a vampire. And not that that's a bad thing. No, it's totally okay. You can be a vampire. Be any pyre you want. But some of the other ones, all we had to go on was like,

two sentences in a news article saying, you know, so-and-so's ashes were burned, suspected a vampire. Like, that's all you have, and you just basically have to guess at the rest. So sometimes very little, but this one we had more to go on, and so we still talk about mercy down there in Chestnut Hill Cemetery in Exeter, Rhode Island. ♪

If you love chilling mysteries, unsolved cases, and a touch of mom-style humor, Moms & Mysteries is the podcast you've been searching for. Hey guys, I'm Mandi. And I'm Melissa. Join us every Tuesday for Moms & Mysteries, your gateway to gripping, well-researched true crime stories.

Each week, we deep dive into a variety of mind-boggling cases as we shed light on everything from heists to whodunits. We're your go-to podcast for mysteries with a motherly touch. Subscribe now to Moms and Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts.