Clipping DMB B18

**Did Mercy Brown become a vampire?**

## Info

* by Gordon Alexander Day Staff for The Day
* New London, Connecticut Sunday
* October 25th 1981 Page B18
* https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=CXYfAAAAIBAJ&sjid=XXUFAAAAIBAJ&pg=1767%2C5794736

### Article Text

*Was it a vampire that borrowed the corpse of Mercy L. Brown, to spread death to her family and her neighbours? .. Or was it TB that killed them?*

*“They was tough people in them days … it weren’t TB … it was the vampiah” claims Reuben Brown, who today lives just a mile from Chestnut Hill Cemetery in Exeter, R.I., where the incidents supposedly occured. “She was my cousin, Mercy Brown” he said.*

*In rual Ehode Island, south of Providence, the vampire legend lives. When shadows of clouds cross the hunter; moon and the dead leaves of autumn rattle in the trees, thoughts of Mercy Brown come to the minds of rural Rhode Islanders. Fears of ghouls, ghosts, and witches on broomsticks are all upstaged by stories of the Rhody vampire.*

*Rueben Brown, an 85-year old craggy-faced New England Yankee, lives in a two-century-old converted stagecoach house and looks after his dairy cows and 30 cats, his health is failing but his mind is sharp. A conversation with him becomes a shouting match, with Brown holding the floor as he tells his favorite story.*

*Brown’s raspy voice doesn’t falter as he swears that his Uncle George’s daughter, Mercy, was the vampire responsible for the death of his uncles wife, Mary, a daughter, Mary Olive, a son Edwin and several members of a neighbor family.*

*“My old friend, Charlie Sweet told me this story he swears to God was true … he was there when they dug up Mercy,” Reuben said.*

*Reuben Brown says Mary Brown, his uncle’s wife, died Dec. 8, 1883. They thought she died of “consumption,” the name at the time for tuberculosis.*

*Six months later, on June 9, 1884, a daughter, Mary Olive, 20 died of the same disease. In 1892 another daughter, Mercy L. Brown, died, leaving only a son, Edward, who contracted the same disease a year later.*

*It was then, according to Reuben’s story, his uncle George and cousin Edwin concluded that a vampire was responsible for the deaths as well as the deaths of seven girls who lived near by. All the bodies were said to have borne teeth marks on their necks.*

*A committee was formed, led by the Browns, consisting of relatives and close friends who visited the family plot on the Ten Rod Road (now Route 102) to see which one was the vampire.*

*Sweet, apparently the tale’s originator, was there and watched as the bodies of Mrs. Brown, Mary Olive, and Mercy were exhumed. According to Sweet, Mrs. Brown and Mary Olive had decomposed to skeletons, Mary {Mercy}, on the other hand, looked as frech as the day she was buried, in spite of the fact that she had been in the grave for more than a year, according to Reuben’s retelling.*

*Further examination of Mercy’s body revealed that she had fresh blood in her heart. Two members of the group, so the story goes, cut out mercy’s heart and carried it, still dripping blood, to an adjacent rock where it was burned. The bodies were returned to their graves, the group convinced that they had found and killed the vampire.*

*Reuben Brown says this act didn’t help Edwin, who died a year later of TB. The father, George Brown, however, lived to be 80 and is buried witht he rest of his family in the old Chestnut Hill Cemetery.*

*According to Dr. Raymond McNally, author of “In Search Od Dracula” and an an expert on Vampire Lore, accounts of the Mercy Brown incident were published in the now defunct New York World and those clippings, found among Bram Stoker’s working papers, led to the novel Dracula, published in 1897.*

*Dr. Buckland’s book claims 19th century Rhode Islanders believed in vampires and backed up these views by occasionally exhuming graves of family members to see if they were vampires. If the dead were determined to be vampires, the families burned the hearts or remaines to rid themselves of whatever afflictions the vampires might have caused.*

*The paranoia was similar to that surrounding the witchcraft trials of Salem, Mass., in 1692, which resulted in about 20 persons being put to death for allegdly practicing witchcraft, McNally said.*

*The recent Dracula or vampire renaissance has resulted in scores of new books, movies, plays and TV specials where the vampire is portayed as anything from a suave monster to a nice guy-comic with a biting sense of humor.*

*The most memorable interpertation of Stoker’s usperstar was given by the widely imitated Bela Lugosi who appeared in Hollywood’s first Dracula film. Lugosi’s performance depicts Count Dracula s a suave but sinister aristocrat with a heavy Hungarian accent and tube of Bryicreem on his slicked-down hair. Lugosi was so impressed with the role he later adopted the “Dracula Look” as his own and upon his death was buried in his Dracula trappings, cape and all.*

*In later years, for a change of pace, George Hamilton played Dracula in ‘Love at First Bite’ as a young dashing character with a sense of humor and an attraction for singles bars.*

*Rhode Island vampires, Buckland says were neither as glamorous nor as dramatic as Stoker’s character. They couldnt or wouldn’t turn into bats, didn’t dress in tuxedos or wear long black capes.*

*Rhode Island vampires, Buckland says, did their thing differently, usually preying on friends and members of the immediate family.*

*Demonologist Edward Warren of Monroe, Conn., claims vampires were possessing demons moving from one body to another, preying on family and friends as they slept. These nocturnal visits would result in diseases such as Consumption or Pneumonia for the victim. When the victim finally died, the demon would possess his or her body and move on to other victims, using the new body as a base of operations.*

*Reuben Brown, ending his story with a twinkle in his eye, admitted that imagination is a powerful thing, which leads one to think that this old Yankee enjoys spinning a tale… a tale that he has told so often that he is starting to believe it himself.*

*Perhaps Reuben Brown is like all of us who enjoy a good scary story around Halloween and like to believe in Robbie Burns; “things that go bump in the night.”*

*According to Buckland, who sounds like he too only believes half of his findings, said 'the educated man or woman should no more turn his back on a legend than a good painting … neither will stand up too well under analysis in the light of day.“*

### Citations

**Chicago:** Alexander, Gordon Alexander. "Did Mercy Brown Become a Vampire?" The Day (New London, Connecticut), October 25, 1981, Sunday, Vol 101 No. 7 ed., sec. B. Accessed November 11, 2018. https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=CXYfAAAAIBAJ&sjid=XXUFAAAAIBAJ&pg=1767,5794736.

**APA:** Alexander, G. A. (1981, October 25). Did Mercy Brown become a vampire? The Day, p. B18. Retrieved November 11, 2018, from https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=CXYfAAAAIBAJ&sjid=XXUFAAAAIBAJ&pg=1767,5794736.

**MLA:** Alexander, Gordon Alexander. “Did Mercy Brown Become a Vampire?” The Day, 25 Oct. 1981, p. B18. Google, news.google.com/newspapers?id=CXYfAAAAIBAJ&sjid=XXUFAAAAIBAJ&pg=1767,5794736. Accessed 11 Nov. 2018.