In 1892, in the sleepy town of Exeter, Rhode Island, a teenage girl named Mercy Brown died of tuberculosis. Two months later, her body was pulled from its crypt, her heart cut out and burned, and the ashes fed to her dying brother as a medical treatment. Why? Because the townspeople believed she was a vampire.
In this episode, we dig deep into one of the strangest, most tragically hilarious moments in American medical history: the Mercy Brown vampire panic. It’s a true story of grief, fear, community hysteria, and just the tiniest bit of 19th-century grave-robbing ritual cannibalism.
You’ll meet the Browns: a family ravaged by tuberculosis, known back then as “consumption”. You’ll attend the now-legendary Exeter town hall meeting, where a group of very confident but very underqualified citizens voted to desecrate Mercy’s body based on local folklore, zero science, and one woman’s dream. We’re talking backwoods epidemiology, complete with shovels, torches, and a clay bowl full of teen heart ashes.
But the story doesn’t end there. Because Mercy Brown didn’t just die, she became a symbol. A cautionary tale. And maybe even the inspiration for Dracula. This episode explores how magical thinking, medical ignorance, and the irresistible pull of a good monster story shaped not just one New England town, but a whole national tradition of getting history spectacularly wrong.
So if you like your true stories with a side of social critique, a dash of cryptid energy, and a whole lot of “Are you kidding me?”, this one’s for you.
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