Previously: Hot Montauk Monster Summer.
Mercy Brown wasn’t a vampire. Not really — not even though she’s filed under the page title “Mercy Brown Vampire Incident” at Wikipedia. She was simply a girl who died from tuberculosis at a time when tuberculosis wasn’t widely understood. She did, however, have the misfortune of belonging to a family who had lost many members to tuberculosis — and, well, when everyone you love starts dropping like proverbial flies, all due to the same illness with the same bizarre symptoms?
Some people don’t respond well to these sorts of circumstances.
Most people don’t respond well to these sorts of circumstances.
Most people, however, also do not go and dig up their dead family members with the goal of tearing out and burning their hearts due to suspected undeadness as a response to these sorts of circumstances.
[Like what you read? Check out Dangerous Games To Play In The Dark, available from Chronicle Books now!]
It’s worth noting that the Mercy Brown vampire incident is actually a bit less weird in reality than it’s usually made out to be; news coverage from the time makes it pretty clear that George T. Brown — Mercy’s father, and the one responsible for her exhumation following her death in 1892 — didn’t actually believe the vampiric superstitions that dictated the whole dig-up-the-body-and-burn-the-heart song and dance; he was, however, desperate, and desperate people will sometimes resort to even the most outlandish of possibilities when it seems that there is truly nowhere else to turn.
But the New England Vampire Panic of the 19th century? That was certainly a thing, and the Mercy Brown incident plays into it in a big way. Not for nothing is she usually called “the last vampire.”
Consumed: Tuberculosis in the 18th And 19th Centuries
Tuberculosis ran rampant in both Europe and North American in the 18th and 19th centuries, reaching epidemic proportions and killing at a rate of 800 to 1,000 per 100,000 people in the early decades of the 1800s. To be clear, tuberculosis wasn’t new at this point; in fact, there’s evidence that the bacterium that causes it — Mycobacterium tuberculosis — is ancient. But with the Industrial Revolutions occurring on both continents, conditions amenable to Mycobacterium tuberculosis grew — and so, too, did cases of the infection itself.
Few actually referred to it as tuberculosis at the time; it was more broadly known as consumption, so named for the weight loss that presented as one of its primary symptoms (it seemed to consume those who had it). A whole host of symptoms also accompanied consumption, however, including a deep-seated cough — which often brought up bloody mucus — and a constant fever, which often gave tuberculosis patients a pale complexion, bright eyes, and rosy lips and cheeks.
(These symptoms also led to the heavy romanticization of tuberculosis — pale skin, shining eyes, and red lips and cheeks both were, and in many cultures remain, considered beautiful, leading to “tuberculosis chic” becoming A Thing… but that’s perhaps a story for another day. For more on this angle, check out Carolyn A. Day’s book Consumptive Chic: A History of Beauty, Fashion, and Disease.)
But although tuberculosis was, perhaps, less gruesome in its general appearance than other common fatal illness at the time (smallpox, for instance — death by smallpox was definitely not a “pretty” death), it still inspired great fear as it ripped through entire populations — and in New England, that fear became literally supernatural. Indeed, folk beliefs gave the term “consumption” a whole new meaning: In this view, it wasn’t the illness that consumed the individual; it was previous family members who had also had it, and subsequently died from it.
The word “vampire” wasn’t necessarily used to describe this belief — but that’s functionally what the belief held: That consumption was vampirism, and that those who died from it rose from the dead and consumed those still living to whom they passed on the illness.
And how does one kill someone who is already dead?
By destroying the heart, of course.
Which brings us to the New England Vampire Panic.
Vampires In New England: The 19th Century Vampire Panic
By the late 1800s, the scientific community had confirmed that tuberculosis was contagious, learned how it spread, and determined what caused it — but news traveled slow, and access to that information was limited.
As such, when tuberculosis struck a family home during the 19th century — particularly one in isolated locations — explanations for the quick and deadly spread of the illness were few and far between. The same was true for the changes a body underwent after death; postmortem decomposition was not, at the time, widely known or understood.
Combine this with a strong presence of vampire-related folk beliefs, and, well… you can see how things might have gone poorly in some areas — like, for instance, a number of places in New England: Namely, Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts (my home state!), and Rhode Island.
It would go a little something like this:
One member of a household would become ill. They would seemingly waste away, and subsequently pass, and then be interred in the family plot. Then, quickly following upon the heels of this first death, another member of the household would become ill. After displaying the same symptoms for some time, they, too, would expire and be buried next to the family member who predeceased them. And then it would happen again. And again. With a highly contagious infection like tuberculosis, an entire family could be decimated in short order.
But at some point — maybe one or two deaths in — people would become suspicious. Murmurs would begin — whispers that something was… feeding off of the family, causing them all to fall ill, one by one, as whatever responsible for it worked its way through each member.
There was only way to know for sure whether the dead family members were really dead… or whether they were undead, and returning home each night in their quest to eat, to feed, to consume:
Dig up the buried bodies.
Examine them for signs of… unnaturalness.
And, if need be, open up the chest, tear out the heart, and burn it until it was nothing but a pile of ash.
Surely that would keep them in their graves. Right?
It did, but not for the reasons these folk beliefs held: They weren’t vampires at all, and, as such, hadn’t been vacating their graves nightly in the first place. But between 1790 and the early 1900s, at least 12 and possibly as many as 20 or more people in Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island who had died of tuberculosis were exhumed, examined, and cracked open in this way, becoming enough of a trend to give the whole thing a name: It’s frequently referred to as the New England Vampire Panic, and it only stopped when tuberculosis became both a known quantity and less of a problem, thanks to both detailed study, and — crucially — the development of a vaccine.
There’s one particular “vampire” case from this era, however, which has eclipsed all others in its infamy — largely because it’s the best documented of these cases.
I’m talking, of course, about Mercy Brown.
The Mercy Brown Vampire Incident
The Brown family lived in Exeter, Rhode Island — an area which, in the late 19th century, was rural and isolated, home only to a few families doing their best to farm in soil not well suited to the task.
In 1883, there was George, and there was Mary Eliza. There were also their children: Mary Olive, Annie Laura, Edwin, Mercy Lena, Hattie, Jennie Adeline, and Myra Francis. George and Mary Eliza were 41 and 36 years old; the children, meanwhile, ranged in age from 19 (Mary Olive) to just one year (Myra Francis). Mary Eliza would not survive the year — she had become ill with consumption and died in early December.
Mary Olive became ill with the same sickness and followed her mother to the grave almost six months to the day later: Mary Eliza had died on Dec. 8, 1883, and Mary Olive on June 6, 1884.
And although the remaining members of the Brown family experienced a brief reprieve, illness again struck the household in 1892 — the same illness: Edwin, then 24, grew ill with it, as did Mercy, by then 19. Edwin went to Colorado Springs to convalesce, but Mercy died from it in January.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and when Edwin, his health rapidly failing, returned to Exeter to die in the comfort and company of his family home in March of 1892, George T. Brown took it upon himself to have the remains of his wife and two daughters exhumed. Mary Eliza and Mary Olive, both in the grave for close to eight years, were nothing but dust and bones — but Mercy, dead and buried for barely longer than two months, was a different story.
Her body “was in a fairly well preserved state,” reported the Providence Journal on March 17, 1892 — likely due to having been buried in the cold New England winter, and therefore preserved by the low temperatures, although neither Brown nor the reporter would have known that at the time — and her heart, when it was removed, found full of “clotted and decomposed blood.” Her liver, too, was removed, and although there was no blood present in it, it was, like the rest of her remains, well preserved.
For what it’s worth, the Providence Journal did further report two days later that, according to the doctor who examined Mercy’s remains following her exhumation, her body was “in a state of natural decomposition, with nothing exceptional existing”; additionally, the doctor noted that the blood present in the heart was “just what might be expected from a similar examination of almost any person after the same length of time from decease.”
But superstition contradicted the doctor’s words: “So long as the heart contains blood,” it claimed, according to the Providence Journal, “so long will any of the immediate family who are suffering from consumption continue to grow worse”; however, should the heart be burned — and, ideally, consumed along with the liver — the patient “will get better.”
This, reportedly, is what George T. Brown did, despite also apparently not really believing in the superstition in the first place: He had Mercy’s heart and liver burned, and a tonic made of their ashes. It’s claimed that the tonic was given to Edwin in an attempt to save his life — but it failed to have the desired effect: Edwin died on May 2, 1892.
George outlived nearly all of his children: All but Hattie died before their 25th birthdays, and all but Hattie died of tuberculosis. George himself remained tuberculosis-free, reaching the ripe old age of 80 by the time he died in 1922 — just a year after the BCG vaccine against tuberculosis was first used. Hattie, for her part, lived until 1954, marrying twice and having three children of her own.
The Vampire’s Legacy
Despite the fact that the Mercy Brown story is ultimately less about the vampire side of things and more about how we do (or don’t) cope with the loss of our loved ones, it has proven a persistent inspiration for fictional vampire tales; indeed, it’s sometimes claimed that even the most notable vampire story of all has ties to the Mercy Brown incident: One theory suggests that not only did Bram Stoker know of the Mercy Brown case, but that Dracula’s Lucy Westenra was based in part on Mercy herself — even going so far as to theorize that the name “Lucy” is a portmanteau of Mercy’s full name (“Mercy” plus “Lena” equals “Lucy”).
Personally, I’m not sure I buy that — although it has been pointed out by people much more knowledgeable myself that the way Lucy and other victims who are fed upon by the titular vampire does line up quite closely with the “tuberculosis chic” look.
What’s more, there are also a not-insignificant number of other, real life incidents that demonstrate the superstitions at work within the Mercy Brown case: Frederick Ransom of Woodstock, Vermont in 1817, for instance, or John Barber of Griswold, Connecticut in 1843. In Poland, meanwhile, every so often a “vampire burial” is discovered — remains in a grave which have been laid out with a sickle on their chests in order to prevent a suspected vampire from rising.
Like I said: Mercy Brown wasn’t a vampire.
Not really.
But in the throes of desperation, most of us can turn anyone into anything we need them to be.
Sometimes, it’s the only way we can convince ourselves to keep going.
Further Reading:
“The Great New England Vampire Panic” by Abigail Tucker at Smithsonian Magazine. A solid overview of the big picture of the New England Vampire Panic, this piece was published back in 2012; it remains an excellent entry point, however — to the subject itself, to Mercy’s story in particular, and to body of folkloric research zeroing in on both.
Related:
“Meet The Real-Life Vampires Of New England And Abroad” by Abigail Tucker at Smithsonian Magazine. Want to know more about some of the other people who suffered a similar fate to Mercy Brown’s? Here’s a companion piece to that first one, written by the same writer and published at about the same time, that’ll give you a place to start. It’s worth noting that vampire panic was a thing in Europe as well as the United States — which this piece also addresses.
“Have Mercy” at the Rhode Island Historical Society. The Rhode Island Historical Society has access to aaaaaaall the news coverage and official records pertaining directly to the Mercy Brown incident, and they’ve very kindly incorporated all of it into a piece published at their blog in 2016. If you want receipts on the story’s details, they’re all here.
Mercy Lena Brown at Find A Grave. Mercy — and most of her family — is interred in the Chestnut Hill Cemetery in Exeter, Rhode Island. (Hattie is the only Brown family member to be buried elsewhere, likely because she actually, y’know, survived, grew up, and moved away; you can find her in Riverside Cemetery in South Kingston, Rhode Island, just a town or two south of Exeter). Her grave is something of a legend tripping spot these days; if you go, treat the place with respect. It’s a cemetery, after all, and it’s full of… actual people, not fictional characters.
Lore podcast, episode “They Made A Tonic.” The Mercy Brown incident was the topic of the very first episode of Lore, which remains one of my favorite weird history/folklore/urban legend podcasts. It’s told well — very atmospheric — and still worth listening to all these years later. You can find the original episode from 2015 here; however, there’s also a remastered version available that was released in 2021. It was also included in the Lore television show’s first season, which was released in 2017.
“The History Of Tuberculosis” by Thomas M. Daniel, Respiratory Medicine. Want to know more about the history of tuberculosis, from its literally ancient origins up through the development of its vaccine and treatments? Here’s a surprisingly readable overview from the peer-reviewed Journal Of Respiratory Medicine, published in 2006.
“Bioarcheological And Biocultural Evidence For The New England Vampire Folk Belief” by Paul S. Sledzik and Nicholas Bellantoni, American Journal Of Physical Anthropology. If you’re going to dig into the New England Vampire Panic, this piece is a must-read. If you’re curious about what people observed in the bodies they were digging up in the 19th century that made them point and yell “VAMPIRE!” — and, particularly, what each of the cases had in common — this is where you’ll get all that detail. Note that this piece is from 1994, so it’s, uh, getting up there in years (as am I; as are we all), but it remains one of the most notable works of scholarship on the subject; most of the research that came after it is in direct dialogue with it.
“Vampires and Death in New England, 1784 to 1892” by Michael E. Bell, Anthropology And Humanism. Also a necessary read for anyone interested in the New England Vampire Panic. Michael Bell is the folklorist who studies this subject; these days, pretty much any coverage of the story includes a look at his work. Mercy Brown is covered in great detail here, although she is by no means Bell’s only focus.
Food For The Dead: On The Trail Of New England’s Vampires by Michael E. Bell. Looking for more of Michael Bell’s work on the New England Vampire Panic? Good news: He literally wrote the book on the subject. Originally published in 2001, it was later updated in 2011. This is the 2011 edition.
Distillations podcast, episode “Vampire Panic.” Lore’s episode on Mercy Brown comes at it from the storytelling angle, and the result is lots of fun. If you want something that’s a bit more demystifying, though, the science podcast Distillations from the Science History Institute is a fascinating listen. You’ll get a little bit of everything here — the science of tuberculosis, the social history of panics like the New England Vampire Panic, a look at the folklore, and so on. There’s also a full transcript, if you’d rather read it than listen to it. (This podcast was new to me, but I’m glad I found it while working on this little annotated bibliography of mine — it’s definitely going into my regular listening rotation!)
“A Halloween Mystery; Did Dracula Have Tuberculosis?” at the American Lung Association. Well? Did he?
The Pallbearer’s Club by Paul Tremblay. One of my Halloween reading recommendations back in 2022, The Pallbearer’s Club is one of my favorite Tremblay novels. (It’s second perhaps only to Head Full Of Ghosts.) An excerpt from my review of the ARC I was so kindly provided with over at NetGalley:
“The fun of a Paul Tremblay book is figuring out, bit by bit, exactly what kind of story you’re reading. It’s always something — a ghost story, a demonic exorcism tale, an apocalypse narrative — and yet, it’s also always… different. Unexpected. Because one of the many things Tremblay excels at is taking a well-worn trope or genre and then turning it, spinning it into something new.
The same is true of The Pallbearer’s Club, which, it turns out, is a vampire story. But as we follow our protagonist, the pseudonymous Art Barbara, as he grows up in Massachusetts, finds a place in the punk scene of Providence, and drifts in and out of the orbit of his friend Mercy, becoming convinced that she’s a variety of vampire in the process — we also come to realize that it’s also a story about conformity, and nonconformity, and what we’ll do — the lengths to which we’ll go — to fit in somewhere, anywhere. To find our people.”
You’ll note that name there, in the second paragraph: Mercy. This is more than just an homage to Mercy Brown — although it’s also much more complicated than just a modern retelling of her story. There are layers to peel back here — competing narratives told by unreliable narrators; a form that keeps shifting and changing; a tale that’s—again quoting from my NetGalley review — “like a Magic Eye image: There’s always something else to see if you look at it the right way.”
Although Mercy Brown has served as the inspiration for countless pieces of vampire media and storytelling, this one is by far the most interesting to me — hence why I’m including it above all others.
Happy reading, friends.
Guard your heart.
In more ways than one.
***
Follow The Ghost In My Machine on Bluesky @GhostMachine13.bsky.social, Twitter @GhostMachine13, and Facebook @TheGhostInMyMachine. And for more games, don’t forget to check out Dangerous Games To Play In The Dark, available now from Chronicle Books!
[Photos via svenstorm (1, 2), print57 (1, 2)/Flickr, available via CC BY-ND 2.0 Creative Commons licenses; Wikimedia Commons, available via public domain]
Leave a Reply