The New England Vampire Panic

Join Kelli as she explores the exhumation and re-killing of Mercy Brown, a girl suspected of being a vampire feeding off of her living relatives in a small town in Rhode Island, 1892.

Intro and Outro music credit: Nedric

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Sources:

Food for the Dead: On the Trail of New England Vampires by Michael Bell
The Great New England Vampire Panic by Abigail Tucket for the Smithsonian

Insta: @beardwrites

Chapters

• 0:29 Intro
• 2:23 Tuberculosis
• 7:57 19th Century Vampirism
• 9:45 Mercy Brown
• 18:09 Vampire Panic
• 22:05 Outro

Transcript

The New England Vampire Panic

Intro
Welcome to A Popular History of Unpopular Things, a podcast that makes history more fun and accessible. My kind of history is the unpopular stuff - disease, death, and destruction. I like learning about all things bloody, gross, mysterious, and weird. 

So here’s a fascinating story out of the late 19th century New England, that’s the late 1800s. On March 17, 1892, a man named George Brown gave permission to have the grave of his recently deceased daughter, Mercy Brown, exhumed. A handful of men, a doctor, and a journalist were in attendance. The doctor performed an autopsy on Mercy Brown, who had died a few months prior. The doctor found that Mercy Brown was… well-preserved. Her heart had blood clots and her lungs showed evidence of tuberculosis. But the townsfolk weren’t there to find out her cause of death - they were there to prove she was killing from beyond the grave.

Mercy Brown is among a handful of people in New England in the late 1800s that were posthumous victims of Vampire Panic - a time when people believed that vampires from beyond the grave were responsible for the rising death tolls in their sleepy farm communities.

In today’s episode, we’re going to explore what was happening in New England in the late 19th century that might explain why people would be driven to the conclusion that their recently deceased were actually vampires killing their still-living family members. We have a perfectly logical explanation for what was killing people, and it wasn’t vampires. But this is an interesting period of time when small towns were driven mad by the idea that vampires lived amongst them.

So let’s take a look at the story of Mercy Brown and the New England Vampire Panic as we try to understand this microcosm of life in late 19th century America.

Tuberculosis
Ok, so I didn’t give you the full story with Mercy Brown. Let’s break it down with more detail, and periodically I’ll interject with relevant historical context and information. 

Mercy Brown was one of several children born to George and Mary Eliza Brown of Exeter, Rhode Island. It was a small farming community that, at the time Mercy was alive, was plagued with tuberculosis. Back then, they called it “consumption.” 

So let’s talk about tuberculosis.

Tuberculosis, commonly shortened to TB, is a bacterial infection that mainly affects the lungs. It typically spreads person-to-person through the air on little droplets that you expel when you cough or sneeze. So, like most respiratory bacterial infections. 

Common symptoms include coughs that last for weeks and with blood and/or mucus, chest pain, weight loss, fatigue, fever, chills, night sweats, a loss of appetite… honestly, the usual symptoms one gets with a respiratory infection. It’s your body's way of trying to fight off the bacteria. Tuberculosis can also affect other parts of your body - the kidneys, spine, or sometimes the brain. It’s not as common, but it’s possible.

Now before you start turning into a hypochondriac - just because you have a nasty cough does not mean you have tuberculosis. We’re living in the world of Covid, flu, RSV, colds, and other upper respiratory infections - coughing is a common symptom of a lot of illnesses. And while tuberculosis is very much still around in the world, if you live in a developed country, you will likely not encounter it.

You can get vaccinations for TB. I went and had a look at my old childhood vaccination records - I did not get a TB vaccination, because I don’t think it was super common for kids born in the late 80s in the US. I know my husband did, though, but he was born in the 70s in the UK. Turns out, the US is one of two countries that does not routinely vaccinate against TB because we have very low instances of it. The other country that doesn’t, for anyone interested, is the Netherlands. It is given to kids in other countries where TB is more common. So that’s that, then.

But regardless, back in 19th century New England… people didn’t have vaccines for things like tuberculosis, or as they called it, consumption. Though vaccines go back to the late 18th century and were used in the US as early as 1855 for things like smallpox, the vaccine for TB wasn’t invented until 1921. Antibiotics, used to treat bacterial infections, weren’t discovered until 1928 with Alexander Fleming and his discovery of penicillin. So essentially, there was no treatment for consumption. And people weren’t even 100% sure about what caused it!

Now scientist Robert Koch had identified the tuberculosis bacterium back in 1882, a few years before the Brown family started to deal with consumption. But information didn’t spread as quickly back then, so it’s unlikely the people of rural Exeter would have known that this mysterious illness plaguing the people was the result of tiny, virtually invisible bacteria. It’s hard to understand something if you can’t physically see it - especially if it’s a relatively new scientific advancement like germ theory. 

Now, an 18th-century description of consumption describes that, quote: “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.” It was a brutal disease, and at one point, accounted for a quarter of all deaths in New England.

So when we talk about 19th-century New England, Mercy Brown, and everything that comes with this story, please remember that this is the pre-antibiotic world, where people were still uncertain of where diseases came from, and how they spread.

Back to the Brown family.

The first to die was George’s wife, Mary Eliza Brown. Six months later, George’s daughter, Mary Olive, died. A few years after that, it was Mercy Brown. Then, George’s son Edwin Brown got sick. It was a rough couple of years for the Brown family and George was beside himself. His son Edwin was once a healthy teen, but now he was frail and sick. The local doctor told George that Edwin had consumption, which we now know is tuberculosis, which explains why the boy got so pale so quickly.

Consumption was ravaging much of New England in the late 19th century. It wasn’t just the Brown family - there were dozens of families going through the same thing. And, as is natural, people were trying to solve the crisis - what was causing these otherwise healthy people to suddenly get so sick, and then die? There didn’t seem to be a rational explanation. The people of Exeter, living out in the country, had their own ideas.

They believed that their dead loved ones were vampires, and were sucking the souls of the living from their graves.

Ooooookay. So let’s take a couple of minutes here to look at the 19th-century version of a vampire.

19th Century Vampirism
We’re not talking the sparkly, moody vampires of today. It turns out that vampires go back a long time. What a vampire looks like, or how it came to be, depends on different folklore. Slavic folklore tells us that if an animal jumped over a corpse, that corpse could become a vampire. In Russian folklore, one could become a vampire if they were witches in life, or if they rebelled against the Orthodox Church. Yeah, that’s a good way to keep your people in line, I guess. 

Now in the 18th century, that’s the 1700s, Europe went through a period where people thought they saw vampires everywhere. They exhumed bodies and staked the corpses, went on vampire hunts, the whole thing. Vampire panics broke out across the continent. By the time the 19th century rolled around, that’s the 1800s, the image of a pale, sickly-looking vampire became the standard. This helps explain why the people of Exeter believed there were vampires sucking out the souls of the Brown family - the once healthy Browns were falling weak, going pale, in a suspiciously short period of time. Consumption? Nahhhh. Vampires!

What happened in New England during their late 19th century Vamprie Panic was what we call Folkloric Vampirism - meaning, it was a locally believed trope that when there was a series of unidentifiable deaths, especially within a community or a family, then it must be a case of vampires. What else would explain why this small community was suffering in this way? Local areas like this are rife with folklore and legends - and the idea that a vampire was the cause of a family’s suffering was part of that set of beliefs. 

Mercy Brown
So when George Brown’s family started dying all around him, turning into pale, sickly versions of themselves, the town was certain that there were vampires about.

One thing they believed was that the vampires would prey on their own family. So the people of Exeter assumed that George’s wife Mary Eliza, his daughter Mary Olive, or perhaps Mercy was a vampire.

First they dug up George’s wife, and they found a decomposed body. This told them that the elder Mary was not a vampire - she clearly wasn’t leeching Edwin’s life force away, as she was a rotten husk of a corpse.

Then they dug up Mary Olive, the older daughter - another decomposed body.

Finally, they dug up Mercy - and please remember she was only just buried a few months prior to this - they found a corpse that was not fully decomposed. But what was even more chilling was that her body was turned upside down in the grave. By this point, they were pretty convinced. It wasn’t hard, I mean they were out there looking for the tiniest bit of evidence that there was a vampire in the Brown family. And if you’re looking for it, any strange happenings will be enough to convince you. But to be sure, they cut open her heart, and they found what they believed to be evidence of fresh blood - or at least, clotted blood that wasn’t fully decomposed yet. For the people of Exeter, this was all the proof they needed - Mercy was a vampire, and she was sucking the life out of her brother Edwin.

It’s worth noting that George wasn’t here for this. In fact, there’s evidence to suggest that he didn’t really believe anyone in his family was a vampire. It was his neighbors who convinced him to exhume the bodies.

Now, Mercy was in the ground for more than two months. Normally, it can take up to a decade for a body to fully decompose. But by two months, Mercy should have been more or less bones. So when they exhumed her body and found her somewhat intact? They believed it was something supernatural. 

It wasn’t supernatural, of course. We can explain this one away with science, as we usually do. We know that the cold preserves bodies for longer - this makes sense, as the lower temperature slows down the rate of decay. Think back to my episode on the Andes Flight Disaster - the survivors were able to keep the bodies of their dead on ice, literally and metaphorically, so they could consume the flesh without it going bad. So while Mercy had begun the process of decomposition, the fact that she was interred and then exhumed during a New England winter meant that she was still recognizable. But for the people of Exeter, this just proved she was a vampire.

The body turned over in the grave? This was is a little harder to explain away.

So folklorist Michael Bell, who wrote the book Food for the Dead: On the Trail of New England Vampires, has spent his life researching the folklore of New England, with a particular interest in these local vampires. He went and spoke with Everett Peck, a descendant of Mercy Brown’s. Peck had a pretty convincing explanation of what happened here. I’m quoting what Everett said from Bell’s book - the link is in my podcast description.

Quote.

“Now, let me say one more thing on this. During my time - not their time, you know - when I was younger, a lot of people was buried and they never was embalmed. Today, you’re dead when you’re in the ground, because if you’re not, they finish filling you when they embalm you. Years ago, you wasn’t embalmed. You’re dead, you’re dead; and you’re in the ground, buried… Now, when this Mercy Brown was buried, there was no embalming. It’s possible she weren’t quite dead when they put her in there. Why was she turned over Everything today is different than it was years ago.” End quote.

Mercy’s descendant here is thinking that though Mercy “died” of consumption, perhaps she wasn’t *fully* dead yet, and was buried alive. Perhaps she flipped over in her grave, trying to get out. I mean, it’s as good an explanation as any! I can buy it!

But the people of Exeter were convinced she was a vampire - only a vampire would still be intact, would have blood in the heart after months of being buried, and would have the power to turn over in their grave. So what did they do with this information? They had by now made up their minds that Mercy Brown was a vampire, and was the reason Edwin Brown was sick. 

First, they removed Mercy’s heart, and burned it on a nearby rock. This, in their minds, killed the vampire. So that’s that problem sorted. They did the same to the liver - removed and burned down to ashes. But they still had to cure Edwin, so they turned to something that was common practice in the Western world, particularly in Europe - corpse medicine.

Now I did a whole episode on corpse medicine a few weeks ago. If you want to know more about hooooow and whyyyyy, then go give that one a listen. It’s pretty gross, though, so fair warning.

Anyway, corpse medicine was apparently still alive and kickin’ in small towns in 1892. The ashes of Mercy’s charred, vampiric heart and liver were turned into medicine. Edwin took his corpse medicine as prescribed, and whaddyaknow! He was not cured. He died not too long after the whole incident. A real tragedy for the Brown family.

But doesn’t this just sound… extreme? We certainly know that not everyone believed in vampirism. Consumption wasn’t a new illness. It’s not like people had been staking the exhumed bodies of their dead loved ones for hundreds of years as a common practice.

So I took a look back at the newspaper headline from 1892, the one that mentioned Mercy Brown’s death and how they claimed she was a vampire. This comes from the Providence Journal. It reads, quote, “EXHUMED THE BODIES. 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 that fed upon the bodies of the living.” End quote.

So it’s clear to me that the newspaper wasn’t as emphatic about this solution as the people of Exeter were. The language is telling. They call it a “horrible superstition,” and outright say that the family died of consumption. This tells us historians that what the people of Exeter believed was not the common belief. This is a case of small-town superstition vs. big-city science and medicine. Did the public at large believe in vampires in 1892? No. And again, the word “vampire” here is more folkloric - we’re not talking Edward running around and luring sad teenagers into his coven. The locals in this small, dying farming community held more superstitious beliefs in contrast to a world accepting new realities about science and medicine - diseases were caused by germs, little microbes. Not miasma, not God, not the Devil, not outsiders, and certainly not vampires. But this was clearly no solace for the people of Exeter, who when faced with a family seemingly crumbling from the inside, clung to their traditional beliefs and fears.

Now the doctor involved in all this, Dr. Metcalf, the one who did the autopsy on the heart and liver, also didn’t believe the vampire theory. He told George Brown, and by proxy the neighbors in Exeter, that the family was dying of consumption. But they pressed him anyway until he agreed to exhume and check out the bodies of Mary Eliza, Mary Olive, and Mercy Brown.

A reporter for the Providence Journal in 1892, who is unidentified, published a story that apparently recounts Dr. Metcalf’s thoughts here. Quote.

“The old superstition of the natives of Exeter, and also believed in other farming communities, is either a vestige of the black art, or, as the people living here say, is a tradition of the Indians. And the belief is that, so long as the heart contains blood, so long will any of the immediate family who are suffering from consumption continue to grow worse; but, if the heart is burned that the patient will get better. And to make the sure certain the ashes of the heart and liver should be eaten by the person afflicted.” End quote.

So there we are - this is an old superstition from small, New England villages, potentially traced to indigenous magic, though I can’t corroborate that myself.

Vampire Panic
But this wasn’t an isolated incident. The Brown family was the only family in Exeter, Rhode Island dying from consumption in 1892, but they weren’t the only ones in all of New England. And they weren’t the only town that exhumed a body in search of a vampire.

Way back in 1793, hundreds of people attended a ceremony in Manchester, Vermont, where a heart was being burned at a blacksmith’s forge. The town chronicler wrote that, quote, “Timothy Mead officiated at the altar in the sacrifice to the Demon Vampire who it was believed was still sucking the blood of the then living wife of Captain Burton. It was the month of February.”

In 1830, Woodstock, Vermont. In the middle of town, a vampire's heart was burned.

In Griswold, Connecticut, archaeologists found a grave where the corpse had been… rearranged after his death in the 1830s. The skull was removed from the body and placed on top of the ribcage, along with his thighbones. Analysis revealed that damage to the corpse was done five years after death, showing that this was also a person who was exhumed and perhaps “re-killed” as a suspected vampire.

Another case - In Jewett City, Connecticut, 1854, the townspeople had exhumed several bodies of suspected vampires that people believed were coming out of their graves at night to kill the living. 

The link between these different events? Tuberculosis outbreaks. In times when consumption was running wild, the people sought an explanation - why here, why now? For some, it was easiest to blame vampires. And as more and more towns and people exhumed bodies looking for potential vampires, the more socially acceptable this act became. It’s not so radical or strange when others have done it. As Folklorist Michael Bell believes, quote, “people find themselves in dire situations, where there’s no recourse through regular channels. The folk system offers an alternative, a choice.” End quote.

Mercy Brown ended up being one of the last of New England’s vampires. The mid- to late-19th century was a time of change, of social and scientific progress. At a vampire exhumation in 1854, one Connecticut journalist writes that, quote, “we seem to have been transported back to the darkest age of unreasoning ignorance and blind superstition, instead of living in the 19th century, and in a State calling itself enlightened and Christian.”

So for the 19th-century world, the New England Vampire Panics were not commonplace. They were relics of an older world that believed more heavily in superstition, perhaps like the one that existed two hundred years earlier in 1692, the year of the Salem Witch Trials. 

Despite this, vampires stayed in the public imagination. Only a few years after Mercy Brown’s exhumation, Bram Stoker wrote his most famous novel - Dracula. 

Shortly after the Mercy Brown incident, the New England Vampire Panic ended. The US and the world in general were moving on from the old traditions of the past, particularly the idea that the dead were killing the living. As the world adopted more scientific explanations for disease, superstitions like the one the people of Exeter believed died down. Mercy Brown ended up being one of the last “vampires” in this friction between the old ways and the new, the transition from traditional to modern. And though we can look back on her today and know that she was a victim of Vampire Panic, this story shows us a microcosm of life in New England on the cusp of the modern age.

Outro
Thanks for joining me for this episode of A Popular History of Unpopular Things. My name is Kelli Beard, and I hope you’ve enjoyed the story of the New England Vampire Panic. Thank you for supporting my podcast, and if you haven’t already checked out my other episodes, go have a listen! I recommend checking out The Salem Witch Trials, episode 2, for another look into how New England societies responded to the changing times. For more information about corpse medicine, go listen to episode 12.  Be sure to follow my podcast, wherever you listen, so you know when new episodes are dropped. And stay tuned to get a popular history of unpopular things.