STORICAL HALLOWEEN SPECIAL: MERCY BROWN AND THE NEW ENGLAND VAMPIRE PANIC

We all know about Eastern European vampires but did you know that right here in America we had our own vampire panic? Yup. It turns out New England was kind of a scary place the first 200 years of colonial and then American rule. Listen to today’s episode to learn about the New England Vampire Panic and Mercy Brown, the teenaged purported vampire.

Further Reading

The Great New England Vampire Panic, Smithsonian Magazine

The Last American Vampire, History

Food for the Dead: On the Trail of New England’s Vampires by Michael E. Bell

Transcript

This is the Storical Halloween Special. The veil is thin and the dead walk among us. Before you indulge in some tricks or treats, enjoy this episode about Mercy Brown, the last American vampire.

My dearest Listeners. Happy Halloween. It’s time for our annual Storical Halloween Special because it is the most wonderful day of the year and I want to make sure you start it off with a spooky story.

We all know about eastern European vampires but did you know that right here in America we had our own vampire panic? Yup. It turns out New England was kind of a scary place the first 200 years of colonial and then American rule.

So let’s dive into it, imagine yourself a villager in a rural town watching as your friends and family waste away from a mysterious illness.

Chapter 1: Vampire Panic

Since Vampire lore is so closely associated with Eastern Europe, you may be wondering, how did a vampire panic come to grip the United States?

Well, remember that America is the great melting pot and the folklore and superstitions were passed down from the original Germanic immigrants that settled in states like Pennsylvania as well as the hessian mercenaries who fought in the revolutionary war.

Much like the hysteria that swept Salem in 1692, the fear of vampires swept New England in the 1800s. Over the course of a century, 70 dead bodies of suspected vampires were exhumed to check for signs of vampirism.

And if they found a body that was still in good shape or appeared to have blood or longer hair or longer finger nails, they would perform a ritual to kill the vampire.

And what that ritual was really depended on where you lived. In Vermont cemeteries tended to be in the town square. This meant that there was no way to really keep a vampire hunt hush hush and so it would become a public spectacle with many people trying to join – and this is like the mob scene in beauty and the beast where people are grabbing torches and pitchforks.

In Rhode Island where our story today takes place, the ritual was particularly gruesome. The heart would be removed and if they found evidence of liquid blood, they would drive a stake through it and burn it.

Interesting to note, in the last two episodes of Storical when we talked about the Gilded Age families of New York, we talked about how having a summer home in Newport Rhode Island was the way to flaunt your wealth.

This was during the same time period and not far away! So again, how did this happen in the gilded industrial age where there’s new technology every 5 minutes? Simple, these events took place in more rural communities that were largely cut off from the main city centers.

For all of New England’s claim to fame as the puritan capital of the world, in the 1800s in Rhode Island, very few of the people were especially religious. In fact, the older sister of Mercy Brown, only joined a church 2 weeks before she died.

So you’ve got a rural community that’s not very religious at least compared to their friends over in Salem, and you’ve got decades of folklore and superstition talking about these undead creatures, and you’ve got people dying left and right from any manner of illness, why wouldn’t it be a vampire?

Chapter 2: Mercy Lena Brown

Ok so that is kind of the cultural backdrop of today’s tale. These vampire rituals happened throughout the 1800s but the last and most famous such case was that of 19 year old Mercy Brown in 1892 in Exeter, Rhode Island.

The Brown family’s woes began with the death of Mary Eliza in 1882 to consumption. Consumption is what they called tuberculosis and it was called that because people would waste away, literally being consumed.

It was a seriously horrible way to die. Here is how a writer in the local paper put it: “The emaciated figure strikes one with terror,” “the forehead covered with drops of sweat; the cheeks painted with a livid crimson, the eyes sunk...the breath offensive, quick and laborious, and the cough so incessant as to scarce allow the wretched sufferer time to tell his complaints.”

With symptoms like that its honestly no wonder people thought there was something supernatural going on.

Anyway, Mary was the wife of George Brown and mother to daughters Mary Olive and Mercy, as well as to Edwin.

Only a year later, Mary Olive died at just 20 years old. While patriarch George Brown never showed any symptoms of the disease, both Mercy and Edwin contracted consumption in 1891.

Mercy’s father George was desperate to save Edwin as he was the only son and girls weren’t valued – so Edwin was sent to Colorado Springs believing that the change in climate would help.

And He did appear to get better but poor Mercy died of consumption in January 1892. Edwin returned home and once there started to exhibit symptoms of the disease again.

The townspeople were suspicious. While they didn’t really use the term vampire in new England at that time, it was believed that the undead would suck the life force of the living thus making the victim waste away with consumption.

At this point they had seen the entire Brown family get decimated and people were afraid that if they let the vampire continue unabated, their family’s would be the next to come down with consumption.

George Brown was convinced to let the villagers exhume the bodies of his wife and two daughters. And interestingly, George did not actually believe that it was a vampire. But as we saw with the Salem witch trials, people were hysterical and I think George probably made a calculated decision that if he just let them exhume the bodies that would be the end of it. He had to live there after all.

The town doctor also didn’t believe in the vampire myth but did agree to oversee the exhumation.

So they dug up the bodies, what then did they find?

Well Mary Eliza and Mary Olive who had died almost 10 years prior were as can be expected, pretty decomposed so they were no longer vampire suspects.

Mercy however who had only died a few months prior in the dead cold of winter, was of course preserved and still looked life-like. It appeared that her hair and nails had grown. The villagers removed her heart and it still had blood in it – likely because of the tuberculosis.

So Obviously Mercy was the vampire responsible for the deaths of her family members and was making Edwin sick. So they removed her heart and liver, burned them to ash and then mixed them with water and had Edwin drink this macabre potion.

Edwin improved for a time but ultimately died two months later.

Now this happened in 1892 and made international headlines. The press were the ones calling Mercy Brown a vampire. A young Bram Stoker was actually touring the United States with a theater company at that point while also working on his novel Dracula. It is believed that Stoker had newspaper clippings about this case and based the character of Lucy on Mercy Brown.

And yes, Lucy was a teenager who was wasting away. And then her dead body was exhumed with a doctor looking on so definitely tracks.

George Brown lived until 1922 and remained in Exeter. While Mercy Brown was not really a vampire, her story has given her immortality in that we’re still talking about her 130 years later. It is still possible to visit Mercy’s grave, people leave flowers, vampire teeth, and other offerings. Her ghost is said to haunt a local bridge and it is said that when she is about the smell of roses wafts in the air.

If you’d like to learn more about Mercy Brown, I will link to some resources in the show notes.

Ok, That’s all for today. I wish you tricks, treats, and spooky sweets. Happy Halloween my dearest listeners.