May 5, 2024 • 16 mins
Unearth the chilling truths that lurk in the shadows of history as we recount the New England Vampire Panic, where the dread of disease transformed into a fear of the undead. Together with expert folklorists Michael Bell and Paul Barber, we uncover how 18th and 19th-century communities were ensnared in a web of superstition, leading them to disturb the eternal rest of their dearly departed. This is not mere fiction; it's a stark revelation of the lengths to which fear can drive humanity, a journey through an era where tuberculosis's pall cast a much more sinister specter across the New England countryside.
Gather 'round as we share the poignant account of Mercy Brown, a symbol of an epidemic's grip on the human psyche, and how her community's desperate acts may have sparked the imagination of none other than Bram Stoker. The tenebrous practices of the past, designed to protect the living from the clutches of those thought to feast upon them from beyond the grave, are brought to light, painting a vivid picture of the battle between an invisible killer and the visceral response it provoked. Join us for this excursion into a time when the fear of the unknown fanned the flames of dark folklore, and discover how the vampire myth we know today is deeply rooted in the misfortunes of a bygone era.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Smartacus.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Tells.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
History.
Alright, enough with the echoand fanfare.
You're here for history, right,and not that boring crap you
learned in high school.
This stuff's actuallyinteresting, like things you've
never heard about the Civil War,cleopatra, automobiles,
monopoly, the Black Plague andmore Fascinating stories,
interesting topics and somedownright weird facts from the
(00:28):
past.
It's a new twist on somestories you may know and an
interesting look at some thingsyou may have never heard.
So grab a beer, kick back andenjoy.
Here's your host, smarticus.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Hello history enthusiasts, welcome back to
another episode of SmarticusTells History.
I am, of course, your host,smarticus.
Another episode of SmarticusTells History.
I am, of course, your host,smarticus, accompanied by my
co-host, phoenix.
Hello, today we will beembarking on a chilling journey
into the past, a time when fear,superstition and the unknown
disease collided to create theNew England Vampire Panic.
(01:02):
Let's discuss consumption, andI'm not talking about
tuberculosis.
You'll get that joke later.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Okay, well, our food is not actually a food, it's a
drink.
Can you hear the tinkling ofglass and ice?
Speaker 3 (01:19):
It's a drink.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Can you guess what it is?
It's a bloody mary, which isprobably really tacky
considering what we're gonna betalking about, but oh well,
that's a kick.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
I now remember why I don't drink Bloody Mary.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Oh yeah, why's that?
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Because they're freaking disgusting.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
You're the one that put soy sauce in it.
Hey, I followed the recipe.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
The recipe told me to put a little bit of soy sauce
in it, so that's what I did.
Okay, I'm going to come overhere and drink my apple juice.
I'm a big boy now.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Is it real apple juice or is it your crone?
Speaker 3 (02:07):
No, it's apple juice.
It's apple juice and cranberryjuice.
I mixed them.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
That's pretty yummy.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
It is.
It's pretty tasty yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Nice, okay, well so, yeah, we're having bloody Marys,
although Barticus thinksthey're pretty disgusting.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
He's very against it.
Not a fan.
I endured for you guys.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
That's right, the sacrifices we make.
So, moving right along, I'mgoing to need you to picture
this in your head Ruralbackwoods of New England during
the tail end of the 1700s andinto the mid-1800s.
The landscape is dominated bysmall, tight-knit communities
(02:56):
trying to scratch out a livingSounds really quaint, until you
learn that there is a terriblemonster roaming around at night,
slowly sucking the life out ofpeople For a family or friend.
It doesn't discriminate.
In those tiny towns, long ago,it was believed to be the dearly
departed, inflictingconsumption on others from their
graves.
Newspapers would call themvampires.
(03:17):
But what exactly was it, andhow did this superstition grip
the imaginations of those livingin this era?
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Sounds scary until you look back on it with the
lens of modern medical science.
What was believed to be undead,draining life from those still
alive, has since been revealedto be tuberculosis or, as they
called it, consumption.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Funny how two things can be true at the same time.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Yeah, yeah, isn't it?
But the question still has tobe asked how did the people of
these little towns come to thinkthat the wasting disease was
some kind of vampiric creature?
There's a lot of theories aboutthat from historians and
folklorists.
One from the latter group,michael Bell, asked that same
question, especially since itwas usually family members who
(04:01):
were accusing their deceasedloved ones of slowly killing
other family members andneighbors, which, I mean, is
kind of true.
I mean, yeah, retroactively,yeah, yeah, but they weren't
running around, you know, with astraw, yeah, with a straw.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Creeping in through the window at night and going
thanks, I'll be back tomorrow Toanswer.
It's important to remember that, even though Robert Koch
identified the tuberculosisbacterium in 1882, that
information didn't reach mostrural towns until long after the
panic.
Even then, there wasn't a drugtreatment available until the
(04:43):
1940s.
That aside, it's important tonote that around that area
during the 1700s were a lot ofSlavic and German immigrants.
Naturally, what they broughtwith them were superstitions
from the old country, such asghouls and vampires.
These Slavic influences didn'tdiminish over the centuries
because immigrants never stoppedcoming.
Even during the RevolutionaryWar, Hessian mercenaries came
(05:04):
over and then decided to stay.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Bell believes that all the new waves of immigrants
believing in these superstitionsis why these beliefs of the
life-sucking creatures from thegraves stayed so long in New
England.
Beliefs of the life-suckingcreatures from the graves stayed
so long in New England.
Another folklorist, paul Barber, has actually examined and
found ways that the mythactually makes practical sense
to an extent.
To the unschooled, he asserts abloated corpse would look like
(05:26):
it had just eaten.
A corpse after being stakedscreams when the building.
Bacterial gas of naturallydecaying body escapes.
The newly made whole.
Ew yeah whole Ew yeah, ew.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Ew, it's gross, but still a really good point.
But if you know anything aboutpeople during that time, the
first thing that should come toyour mind is that they were
puritanically minded.
So how did they get to thepoint where they were willing to
exhume their loved ones anddesecrate their bodies?
That's right, folks, anddesecrate their bodies?
That's right folks.
New England had people all overthe woods cutting up bodies,
pulling out hearts and livers,burning them and then making a
(06:00):
drink out of the ashes to giveto those believed to be victims
of the undead.
Maybe it would be better thanyour drink.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
I mean I'd try it.
Just once, maybe twice, justonce, To quote the Smithsonian
Magazine article about the sametopic.
Contrary to their puritanicalreputation, rural New Englanders
in the 1800s were a fairlyheathen lot.
Apparently, only 10% of thepopulation belonged to a church.
Rhode Island, for instance, wasoriginally founded as a haven
(06:33):
for the religiously opposed, soin the place of organized
religion, what they had weresuperstitions.
We're talking about magicalsprings that could heal dead
bodies that bled when theirmurderer was present, burying
shoes by the fireplace toprevent the devil from shimmying
down the chimney like SantaClaus Right.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
They had some wild ideas back then.
Which brings us back to theexhumations.
In these rural areas,especially during the late 1800s
after the Civil War, young menwere not wanting to come home if
they ever could, which meantthat the populations were
dwindling to just the old andinfirm, marinating in their old
ways and beliefs.
An exhumation, even ifgrudgingly done, would have been
(07:12):
viewed by everyone involved asa sign of doing everything that
could be done to stop the.
And that brings us to one ofthe most famous ones, mercy Lena
Brown of Exeter, rhode Island.
This girl's story is crazy.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Painting a new picture.
Exeter, rhode Island, duringthe latter end of the 19th
century, after the Civil War,was mostly a farming community
with soil that was partlyfertile.
The population was down due tothe war, young men taking the
new railroad out west in searchof better opportunities.
In 1892, there were 961 peoplewhere there had been 2,500 just
(07:50):
70 years before.
Waves of tuberculosis wererushing into the area for
decades.
That's pretty crazy.
It dropped by over half, rightyeah.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
And especially considering how slow things were
back in the day, like duringthis time, just 70 years was all
it took.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
Right yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
The Brown family lived on the eastern side of
town in a small homestead of 30to 40 acres.
In 1882, the family was hit bythe disease.
Mercy's mother, mary Eliza, wasthe first to succumb to it.
Next was her sister, mary Olive, the following year.
She was quite a beloveddressmaker and member of the
community.
According to the obituaryarticle that is still in the
(08:32):
Brown family possession, a fewyears later their brother, edwin
, got sick too and tried to getbetter in Colorado Springs as a
climate change was oftenconsidered a good remedy.
Sadly, that never worked.
Edwin returned home.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Mercy, or Lena as some called her, didn't become
obviously ill until a decadeafter her mother and sister died
.
By then, she had what wascalled galloping consumption,
which just means that it had hithard and fast and she was gone
quickly, so quickly in fact.
She beat her brother to thegrave.
This was where their neighborsgot involved, fearing that their
own health was at risk as wellas being concerned for Edwin.
(09:10):
They went to the children'sfather, george, with an
alternative take on the matter.
Perhaps the family had fallenprey to a force of nature that
was from the old country?
Perhaps one of the three brownwomen wasn't fully dead and was
slowly sucking the life out ofthe rest of the family?
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Their big idea was that they should exhume the
bodies, see which one had freshblood in its heart.
George Brown consented to theexhumations and examinations of
his family by a doctor, butrefused to be there to see the
atrocity that was going to bevisited on them.
What they found was that themother and older sister were
just bones, but Mercy, who hadonly been dead for a few months
(09:48):
during wintertime, was stillpretty well preserved.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
The doctor that George had insisted on attending
performed a graveside autopsyand found that the heart had
clotted in decomposed blood.
He also emphasized that herlungs and this is a quote showed
diffused tuberculosis germs.
End quote.
That didn't stop the villagersfrom taking her heart and her
liver, burning them on a nearbyrock and feeding the ashes to
(10:14):
Edwin.
He died less than two monthslater.
What's even crazier than thisis that there were reporters
there to witness this seeminglypagan ritual.
They took the story and ran,turning it into an international
real-life Penny Dreadful.
It's no wonder that Edwin died.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Right.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
You fed him already, not to mention part of a corpse
Right, but a corpse that wasinfected with tuberculosis.
Of course he's going to die.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Right, but that seemed like a totally logical
thing for them to do.
In their minds, that was goingto be the cure-all.
And what's even crazier to meis like they never bothered to
acknowledge the fact that all ofthese crazy remedies didn't fix
anything.
Nobody ever survived.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Yep, yet they kept ever survived.
Yep, yet they kept trying them.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Yes, over and over again.
Fortunately the person'salready dead, but still Ew.
The story went from newspaperto newspaper, then to an
anthropologist journal, and thenthe foreign press got involved.
One such paper in Londoninsisted that and this is a
quote Yankee vampires was anAmerican problem and certainly
(11:28):
not a product of the Britishfolk tradition, ignoring
entirely that a good number ofpeople in that area could trace
their family lines all the wayback to England.
Funny enough, a 1896 New Yorkworld clipping fell into the
hands of a London stage managersome of you might know as Bram
Stoker.
His theater company was touringthe US that year and by the
(11:49):
next year he was publishing hisnovel titled Dracula.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
A lot of parallels can be drawn between his
character, lucy, not just inname but in her plot, when
compared to Mercy Brown's storyA very loved young woman who
becomes suddenly and terriblypale and gaunt with difficulty
breathing until she seeminglydies.
Then she is later exhumed by adoctor, found to be a vampire
sucking the life out of people,and her heart is destroyed.
(12:13):
The name part that I mentionedbefore.
Sometimes she was called Lena,pretty close to Lucy.
Of course that's allspeculation and conjecture from
Abigail Tucker's SmithsonianMagazine article, but it also
makes for a good theory.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
And, as my grandpa used to say, don't ruin a good
story with facts.
But, as we said, this evidencethat suggests that these vampire
scares went on for decades,bordering on almost 100 years.
And while Mercy Brown's talebecame legendary and
world-renowned, there were otherbodies that experienced similar
and different treatment.
There's a town in Vermont wherepeople from surrounding
(12:50):
villages came to witness a heartburning in a blacksmith's forge
, and there are cases where itwas believed that all that
needed to be done was to simplyflip the person over and nail
the coffin shut again.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Flip them over.
How Like front to back.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Yeah, so that way their back was facing the top of
the coffin.
Yeah, just roll them over.
How like front to back?
Yeah, so that way their backwas facing the top of the the
coffin.
Yeah, just roll them over,that'll fix it stick a stick of
flour between their buttcheeks.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
Oh, it was, uh, a million ways to die in the west.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
That's what it was oh my gosh, I haven't seen that in
like forever I was trying tothink like, where did I see that
from?
Speaker 3 (13:32):
that's what it was.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
It was uh star wars, uh liam neeson oh yeah, I was
never going to get to thatconclusion when you said star
wars I.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
I always go to the old ones, oh, yeah, like because
he played Shirley Theron'shusband in that movie and she
knocked him out Somehow.
I don't remember how, but sheknocked him out and he fell over
with his butt sticking up, andso she pulled his pants down and
stuck a little dandelion flowerin it and left.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
I'm done with you, goodbye.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Yeah, it was pretty funny.
That's what I thought of.
There's something wrong with me.
If you're getting some SalemWitch Trial vibes from this,
well, you're not alone.
The thing about Exeter thatsets them apart is that they
don't promote this dark time intheir town's history.
(14:29):
In fact, they really don'tappreciate any attention about
the matter at all.
They say that the legend shouldbe left alone, especially after
two teenagers were killed ontheir pilgrimage to visit
Mercy's gravestone, which hasalso been stolen several times,
to the point where there is nowa metal strap to keep it from
being removed again.
She lies in between her brotherand her father.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
While this story seems sad and, don't get me
wrong, it is.
It is good to know that GeorgeBrown did not believe in the
myth, according to theProvidence Journal, but, as we
said before, he was the one whoinsisted on having a doctor do
the autopsy.
He did this, the journal says,to satisfy the neighbors.
Another newspaper added on tothat by claiming that it was
(15:12):
because they were and this is aquote worrying the life out of
him.
End quote.
Of course, we can't say whetherit was right or wrong on his
part to let them have their way,but the fact was that his
family was dead and he still hadto live alongside the other
people there.
What's left of Mercy is a quilt, possibly made from scraps from
her mother and sister's dresses.
(15:33):
Her family takes very good careof it and brings it out to
remember her once a year.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Isn't it?
Speaker 3 (15:39):
sweet, and on that note we must conclude this
chapter in history, A chapterthat reminds us of the power of
folklore, superstition and thelengths people will go to in
order to protect themselves andtheir loved ones.
Thank you for joining us onthis eerie exploration of the
New England Vampire Panic.
If you have any historicalquestions or topics you would
like us to explore in futureepisodes, please do not hesitate
(16:01):
to reach out.
Thank you for joining us, andif you enjoyed this episode,
please subscribe and leave us areview.
We'll be back with more storiesfrom the past.
Until then, keep exploring.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Thanks for listening to Smarticus Tells History.
If you enjoyed this episode,don't forget to rate and review
and make sure to subscribe andbe sure to follow the show at
facebookcom.
Slash Smarticus Tells Historyor just click the link in the
show description.
Thanks again for listening.
See you next time.
Welcome to Smartacus.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Tells.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
History.
Alright, enough with the echoand fanfare.
You're here for history, right,and not that boring crap you
learned in high school.
This stuff's actuallyinteresting, like things you've
never heard about the Civil War,cleopatra, automobiles,
monopoly, the Black Plague andmore Fascinating stories,
interesting topics and somedownright weird facts from the
(00:28):
past.
It's a new twist on somestories you may know and an
interesting look at some thingsyou may have never heard.
So grab a beer, kick back andenjoy.
Here's your host, smarticus.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Hello history enthusiasts, welcome back to
another episode of SmarticusTells History.
I am, of course, your host,smarticus.
Another episode of SmarticusTells History.
I am, of course, your host,smarticus, accompanied by my
co-host, phoenix.
Hello, today we will beembarking on a chilling journey
into the past, a time when fear,superstition and the unknown
disease collided to create theNew England Vampire Panic.
(01:02):
Let's discuss consumption, andI'm not talking about
tuberculosis.
You'll get that joke later.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Okay, well, our food is not actually a food, it's a
drink.
Can you hear the tinkling ofglass and ice?
Speaker 3 (01:19):
It's a drink.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Can you guess what it is?
It's a bloody mary, which isprobably really tacky
considering what we're gonna betalking about, but oh well,
that's a kick.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
I now remember why I don't drink Bloody Mary.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Oh yeah, why's that?
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Because they're freaking disgusting.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
You're the one that put soy sauce in it.
Hey, I followed the recipe.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
The recipe told me to put a little bit of soy sauce
in it, so that's what I did.
Okay, I'm going to come overhere and drink my apple juice.
I'm a big boy now.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Is it real apple juice or is it your crone?
Speaker 3 (02:07):
No, it's apple juice.
It's apple juice and cranberryjuice.
I mixed them.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
That's pretty yummy.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
It is.
It's pretty tasty yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Nice, okay, well so, yeah, we're having bloody Marys,
although Barticus thinksthey're pretty disgusting.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
He's very against it.
Not a fan.
I endured for you guys.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
That's right, the sacrifices we make.
So, moving right along, I'mgoing to need you to picture
this in your head Ruralbackwoods of New England during
the tail end of the 1700s andinto the mid-1800s.
The landscape is dominated bysmall, tight-knit communities
(02:56):
trying to scratch out a livingSounds really quaint, until you
learn that there is a terriblemonster roaming around at night,
slowly sucking the life out ofpeople For a family or friend.
It doesn't discriminate.
In those tiny towns, long ago,it was believed to be the dearly
departed, inflictingconsumption on others from their
graves.
Newspapers would call themvampires.
(03:17):
But what exactly was it, andhow did this superstition grip
the imaginations of those livingin this era?
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Sounds scary until you look back on it with the
lens of modern medical science.
What was believed to be undead,draining life from those still
alive, has since been revealedto be tuberculosis or, as they
called it, consumption.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Funny how two things can be true at the same time.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Yeah, yeah, isn't it?
But the question still has tobe asked how did the people of
these little towns come to thinkthat the wasting disease was
some kind of vampiric creature?
There's a lot of theories aboutthat from historians and
folklorists.
One from the latter group,michael Bell, asked that same
question, especially since itwas usually family members who
(04:01):
were accusing their deceasedloved ones of slowly killing
other family members andneighbors, which, I mean, is
kind of true.
I mean, yeah, retroactively,yeah, yeah, but they weren't
running around, you know, with astraw, yeah, with a straw.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Creeping in through the window at night and going
thanks, I'll be back tomorrow Toanswer.
It's important to remember that, even though Robert Koch
identified the tuberculosisbacterium in 1882, that
information didn't reach mostrural towns until long after the
panic.
Even then, there wasn't a drugtreatment available until the
(04:43):
1940s.
That aside, it's important tonote that around that area
during the 1700s were a lot ofSlavic and German immigrants.
Naturally, what they broughtwith them were superstitions
from the old country, such asghouls and vampires.
These Slavic influences didn'tdiminish over the centuries
because immigrants never stoppedcoming.
Even during the RevolutionaryWar, Hessian mercenaries came
(05:04):
over and then decided to stay.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Bell believes that all the new waves of immigrants
believing in these superstitionsis why these beliefs of the
life-sucking creatures from thegraves stayed so long in New
England.
Beliefs of the life-suckingcreatures from the graves stayed
so long in New England.
Another folklorist, paul Barber, has actually examined and
found ways that the mythactually makes practical sense
to an extent.
To the unschooled, he asserts abloated corpse would look like
(05:26):
it had just eaten.
A corpse after being stakedscreams when the building.
Bacterial gas of naturallydecaying body escapes.
The newly made whole.
Ew yeah whole Ew yeah, ew.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Ew, it's gross, but still a really good point.
But if you know anything aboutpeople during that time, the
first thing that should come toyour mind is that they were
puritanically minded.
So how did they get to thepoint where they were willing to
exhume their loved ones anddesecrate their bodies?
That's right, folks, anddesecrate their bodies?
That's right folks.
New England had people all overthe woods cutting up bodies,
pulling out hearts and livers,burning them and then making a
(06:00):
drink out of the ashes to giveto those believed to be victims
of the undead.
Maybe it would be better thanyour drink.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
I mean I'd try it.
Just once, maybe twice, justonce, To quote the Smithsonian
Magazine article about the sametopic.
Contrary to their puritanicalreputation, rural New Englanders
in the 1800s were a fairlyheathen lot.
Apparently, only 10% of thepopulation belonged to a church.
Rhode Island, for instance, wasoriginally founded as a haven
(06:33):
for the religiously opposed, soin the place of organized
religion, what they had weresuperstitions.
We're talking about magicalsprings that could heal dead
bodies that bled when theirmurderer was present, burying
shoes by the fireplace toprevent the devil from shimmying
down the chimney like SantaClaus Right.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
They had some wild ideas back then.
Which brings us back to theexhumations.
In these rural areas,especially during the late 1800s
after the Civil War, young menwere not wanting to come home if
they ever could, which meantthat the populations were
dwindling to just the old andinfirm, marinating in their old
ways and beliefs.
An exhumation, even ifgrudgingly done, would have been
(07:12):
viewed by everyone involved asa sign of doing everything that
could be done to stop the.
And that brings us to one ofthe most famous ones, mercy Lena
Brown of Exeter, rhode Island.
This girl's story is crazy.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Painting a new picture.
Exeter, rhode Island, duringthe latter end of the 19th
century, after the Civil War,was mostly a farming community
with soil that was partlyfertile.
The population was down due tothe war, young men taking the
new railroad out west in searchof better opportunities.
In 1892, there were 961 peoplewhere there had been 2,500 just
(07:50):
70 years before.
Waves of tuberculosis wererushing into the area for
decades.
That's pretty crazy.
It dropped by over half, rightyeah.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
And especially considering how slow things were
back in the day, like duringthis time, just 70 years was all
it took.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
Right yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
The Brown family lived on the eastern side of
town in a small homestead of 30to 40 acres.
In 1882, the family was hit bythe disease.
Mercy's mother, mary Eliza, wasthe first to succumb to it.
Next was her sister, mary Olive, the following year.
She was quite a beloveddressmaker and member of the
community.
According to the obituaryarticle that is still in the
(08:32):
Brown family possession, a fewyears later their brother, edwin
, got sick too and tried to getbetter in Colorado Springs as a
climate change was oftenconsidered a good remedy.
Sadly, that never worked.
Edwin returned home.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Mercy, or Lena as some called her, didn't become
obviously ill until a decadeafter her mother and sister died
.
By then, she had what wascalled galloping consumption,
which just means that it had hithard and fast and she was gone
quickly, so quickly in fact.
She beat her brother to thegrave.
This was where their neighborsgot involved, fearing that their
own health was at risk as wellas being concerned for Edwin.
(09:10):
They went to the children'sfather, george, with an
alternative take on the matter.
Perhaps the family had fallenprey to a force of nature that
was from the old country?
Perhaps one of the three brownwomen wasn't fully dead and was
slowly sucking the life out ofthe rest of the family?
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Their big idea was that they should exhume the
bodies, see which one had freshblood in its heart.
George Brown consented to theexhumations and examinations of
his family by a doctor, butrefused to be there to see the
atrocity that was going to bevisited on them.
What they found was that themother and older sister were
just bones, but Mercy, who hadonly been dead for a few months
(09:48):
during wintertime, was stillpretty well preserved.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
The doctor that George had insisted on attending
performed a graveside autopsyand found that the heart had
clotted in decomposed blood.
He also emphasized that herlungs and this is a quote showed
diffused tuberculosis germs.
End quote.
That didn't stop the villagersfrom taking her heart and her
liver, burning them on a nearbyrock and feeding the ashes to
(10:14):
Edwin.
He died less than two monthslater.
What's even crazier than thisis that there were reporters
there to witness this seeminglypagan ritual.
They took the story and ran,turning it into an international
real-life Penny Dreadful.
It's no wonder that Edwin died.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Right.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
You fed him already, not to mention part of a corpse
Right, but a corpse that wasinfected with tuberculosis.
Of course he's going to die.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Right, but that seemed like a totally logical
thing for them to do.
In their minds, that was goingto be the cure-all.
And what's even crazier to meis like they never bothered to
acknowledge the fact that all ofthese crazy remedies didn't fix
anything.
Nobody ever survived.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Yep, yet they kept ever survived.
Yep, yet they kept trying them.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Yes, over and over again.
Fortunately the person'salready dead, but still Ew.
The story went from newspaperto newspaper, then to an
anthropologist journal, and thenthe foreign press got involved.
One such paper in Londoninsisted that and this is a
quote Yankee vampires was anAmerican problem and certainly
(11:28):
not a product of the Britishfolk tradition, ignoring
entirely that a good number ofpeople in that area could trace
their family lines all the wayback to England.
Funny enough, a 1896 New Yorkworld clipping fell into the
hands of a London stage managersome of you might know as Bram
Stoker.
His theater company was touringthe US that year and by the
(11:49):
next year he was publishing hisnovel titled Dracula.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
A lot of parallels can be drawn between his
character, lucy, not just inname but in her plot, when
compared to Mercy Brown's storyA very loved young woman who
becomes suddenly and terriblypale and gaunt with difficulty
breathing until she seeminglydies.
Then she is later exhumed by adoctor, found to be a vampire
sucking the life out of people,and her heart is destroyed.
(12:13):
The name part that I mentionedbefore.
Sometimes she was called Lena,pretty close to Lucy.
Of course that's allspeculation and conjecture from
Abigail Tucker's SmithsonianMagazine article, but it also
makes for a good theory.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
And, as my grandpa used to say, don't ruin a good
story with facts.
But, as we said, this evidencethat suggests that these vampire
scares went on for decades,bordering on almost 100 years.
And while Mercy Brown's talebecame legendary and
world-renowned, there were otherbodies that experienced similar
and different treatment.
There's a town in Vermont wherepeople from surrounding
(12:50):
villages came to witness a heartburning in a blacksmith's forge
, and there are cases where itwas believed that all that
needed to be done was to simplyflip the person over and nail
the coffin shut again.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Flip them over.
How Like front to back.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Yeah, so that way their back was facing the top of
the coffin.
Yeah, just roll them over.
How like front to back?
Yeah, so that way their backwas facing the top of the the
coffin.
Yeah, just roll them over,that'll fix it stick a stick of
flour between their buttcheeks.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
Oh, it was, uh, a million ways to die in the west.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
That's what it was oh my gosh, I haven't seen that in
like forever I was trying tothink like, where did I see that
from?
Speaker 3 (13:32):
that's what it was.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
It was uh star wars, uh liam neeson oh yeah, I was
never going to get to thatconclusion when you said star
wars I.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
I always go to the old ones, oh, yeah, like because
he played Shirley Theron'shusband in that movie and she
knocked him out Somehow.
I don't remember how, but sheknocked him out and he fell over
with his butt sticking up, andso she pulled his pants down and
stuck a little dandelion flowerin it and left.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
I'm done with you, goodbye.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Yeah, it was pretty funny.
That's what I thought of.
There's something wrong with me.
If you're getting some SalemWitch Trial vibes from this,
well, you're not alone.
The thing about Exeter thatsets them apart is that they
don't promote this dark time intheir town's history.
(14:29):
In fact, they really don'tappreciate any attention about
the matter at all.
They say that the legend shouldbe left alone, especially after
two teenagers were killed ontheir pilgrimage to visit
Mercy's gravestone, which hasalso been stolen several times,
to the point where there is nowa metal strap to keep it from
being removed again.
She lies in between her brotherand her father.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
While this story seems sad and, don't get me
wrong, it is.
It is good to know that GeorgeBrown did not believe in the
myth, according to theProvidence Journal, but, as we
said before, he was the one whoinsisted on having a doctor do
the autopsy.
He did this, the journal says,to satisfy the neighbors.
Another newspaper added on tothat by claiming that it was
(15:12):
because they were and this is aquote worrying the life out of
him.
End quote.
Of course, we can't say whetherit was right or wrong on his
part to let them have their way,but the fact was that his
family was dead and he still hadto live alongside the other
people there.
What's left of Mercy is a quilt, possibly made from scraps from
her mother and sister's dresses.
(15:33):
Her family takes very good careof it and brings it out to
remember her once a year.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Isn't it?
Speaker 3 (15:39):
sweet, and on that note we must conclude this
chapter in history, A chapterthat reminds us of the power of
folklore, superstition and thelengths people will go to in
order to protect themselves andtheir loved ones.
Thank you for joining us onthis eerie exploration of the
New England Vampire Panic.
If you have any historicalquestions or topics you would
like us to explore in futureepisodes, please do not hesitate
(16:01):
to reach out.
Thank you for joining us, andif you enjoyed this episode,
please subscribe and leave us areview.
We'll be back with more storiesfrom the past.
Until then, keep exploring.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Thanks for listening to Smarticus Tells History.
If you enjoyed this episode,don't forget to rate and review
and make sure to subscribe andbe sure to follow the show at
facebookcom.
Slash Smarticus Tells Historyor just click the link in the
show description.
Thanks again for listening.
See you next time.
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