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The Mercy Brown Vampire Incident in Rhode Island

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When the whole Brown family succumbed to tuberculosis, the townsfolk in New England started to become suspicious. They believed that one of the dead, 19 year old Mercy Brown was behind it all as an undead in the middle of the vampire mass hysteria that seemed to plague the East Coast. 

After a tuberculosis breakout in New England in the late 1800s, there was a mass hysteria growing among the people living there. The cause for tuberculosis was unknown at the time, and in some cases, people thought it was because of supernatural causes. Although the term vampire was not widely used then, this would spread and later be known as the New England Vampire Panic.

Read More: Check out all ghost stories from USA

One of the most famous “real-life” vampires from this period was Mercy Brown, a young woman from 1800s Rhode Island who had died of tuberculosis and was believed to be preying on other members of her family as a vampire. 

Following was one of the most well documented cases of exhumation of a corpse to perform rituals and banish the alleged undead manifestation that seemed to have taken hold of her. Contrary to popular belief about being puritanical, the rural New Englanders in the 1800s were not overly religious and 10 percent belonged to church in these parts. They were however superstitious. Many years later, they found her newspaper articles in the belongings of Bram Stoker, who wrote Dracula.

Exeter: The countryside of Rhode Island were plagued with a belief that consumption was caused by the undead, and the locals went through plenty of exhumations of their dearly beloved and used them for rituals trying to cure themselves. // Source: Flickr

History of Mercy Brown: The Last Vampire in America

Mercy Lena Brown lived together with her family in Exeter, Rhode Island, a place populated by Europeans since the mid 1700s. After years of civil war, the number of people living there had dwindled to a few thousand. By some, this was known as Vampire Capital of America. 

The Brown family lived on a small farm in a place with barely fertile soil and were her parents and her four other siblings. People used to call her Lena when she was alive, but has been immortalized as Mercy Brown. Over the years, sickness took the lives of many as an epidemic of tuberculosis swept through the northeastern states. Her 36 year old mother, Mary Eliza was the first to die from consumption as tuberculosis was known back then on December 8, 1883. 

Mercy Brown: A historical portrait of Mercy Brown, the young woman at the center of the New England Vampire Panic.

So did the eldest daughter, Mary Olive, six months later on June 6, 1884 when she was 20 years old. She was working as a dressmaker before she got sick. She started having terrible dreams about her life being drawn out of her. 

Two weeks before she died, she joined the church. When she died the whole village came out and sang her favorite hymn, One Sweetly Solemn Thought. Mercy was only a child then and knew little that she would be blamed for her family’s misfortune.

Chestnut Hill Baptist Church: The historic church in Exeter, Rhode Island, near the site of the Mercy Brown vampire legend. //Source: Swampyank/Wiki

After the initial deaths, it seemed like the sickness had passed through their home, but then it came back and struck her 24 year old brother, Edwin. He was seen as a strong and healthy man working as a store clerk, so it was a shock to everyone when he fell ill, becoming sickly and frail. To help, he went to Colorado Springs in hope to be cured by the mineral waters there. 

The Death and Exhumation of Mercy Brown

In 1891 the daughters Marcy got the TB disease as well. She might have had the “galloping” kind that had been inside her for years before it broke out. And when it did, it took her quickly as the doctors told her father that there was nothing to do. 

Before her death, Mercy had worked on a quilt of fabric scraps. The pattern she used is sometimes called the Wandering Foot in Rhode Island and rare. According to superstition it is said that those who sleep under it, will be lost to her family and doomed to wander forever. 

On January 18, 1892, only 19 years old she succumbed to her illness and died. As the ground was frozen, she was put inside a crypt as they had to wait for it to thaw in the spring to bury her. The feelings toward the Brown daughters had shifted, and the whole village never showed up to sing her hymns. They thought something was strange, and that something unnatural was happening. Could it be that little Lena was actually an undead?

Consumption: Before it had a scientific explanation, TB was a horrifying, slow-moving plague. Victims grew pale and thin, their cheeks sunken, eyes glassy. They coughed blood. It was contagious, of course, though no one knew why or how. When one family member died, others often followed. And so the imagination of rural folk—grounded in a stew of folklore, fear, and grim necessity—did what it does best: It reached for reasons. They began to believe that the dead were not staying dead.

The time in Colorado seemed to work for a while for Edwin and he got better. But when he returned when he heard about his sister’s passing, it was like a switch, and he got worse. It is said that he screamed out “she was here,” and “she wants me to come with her,” when he was dreaming. 

People started to talk about the undead, and that there had to be a supernatural cause for all the deaths in the Brown family. Stories about Mercy having been seen walking in the cemetery and through fields started to circulate. 

The last left alive was their father, George Brown and Edwin. George started to get desperate as his only son was withering away as he had already seen his wife and oldest daughter do. He decided to dig up members of his family to check, to appease his neighbour, and maybe, just maybe, save his son.

The Crypt: The eerie, weathered stone structure was the crypt that Mercy Brown was put inside until the ground was thawed enough to bury her. //Source: Flickr

A bunch of the villagers, the local doctor from Wickford called Dr. Harold Metcalf and a reporter from the newspapers went to Exeter’s Chestnut Hill Cemetery and dug the bodies up on March 17 in 1892. It was said that the dr. did not’ believe in the vampire stories, but tagged along to check it out, and would confirm signs of TB in her lungs. George stayed home, not wanting to see his family dug up, but desperate enough for his son to let other people do it. 

Both his wife and his eldest daughter were as expected, but Mercy, who had been buried for a couple of months, looked like she was affected by the undead. She still had blood in her heart and showed almost no sign of decomposition. They also claimed that her position had shifted since they put her down in the coffin. 

The Ritual of the Undead

As the ritual demanded, Mercy’s heart and liver were burned on a nearby rock and the ashes were mixed with a tonic. Where this ritual came from is uncertain. Did it travel from Europe through the immigrants? Was it something they had heard from the Native Americans?

This tonic made of the ashes of his sister was given to the sick Edwin to drink. It was thought to cure his illness that the undead had infested him with. Edwin died of his disease two months later on May 2 and so would two of his younger sisters as well.

The Truth Behind the Legend

After the ritual, the remains of Mercy’s body were buried in the cemetery of the Baptists Church in Exeter. What really happened when they decided to open up her grave? 

Of the decomposition it was a coffin kept in an above crypt  in the winter months in Rhode Island in the two months after her death. Her body had been kept in an almost freezer like environment and slowed the decomposition. 

The Tombstone of Mercy Brown: Gravestone of Mercy L. Brown, marking her death on January 17, 1892, at the age of 19, amidst the vampire hysteria in New England. The stone has probably been replaced over the years.

It  seems like her father didn’t even believe in the stories, he only wanted to appease his neighbors. 

What happened to the other Brown kids though is almost never mentioned. It seems like the other children Jennie Adeline Brown and Myra Frances Brown also died of consumption, although there wasn’t much talk about vampires or the undead then. 

Only Hattie May Brown seemed to have made it out alive and died at 79 in 1954. 

The Enduring Legend and Haunting

George Brown never contracted the illness and lived until 1922. By then he lived to see Calmette and Guerin discover the BCG vaccine that could have cured his family of the very non-supernatural disease they had. 

And for Mercy, her grave is still standing at the same graveyard she was dug up. During Halloween, her grave is guarded as people sometimes try to steal her headstone and vandalize her final resting place. Many rumors and legends have flourished from this cemetery, especially about the strange blue lights hovering over the family plot. She is also said to show up on a particular bridge nearby, followed by the smell of roses. She is also said to show up to the dying, telling them that death isn’t as bad as they think. 

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References:

Mercy Brown vampire incident – Wikipedia

Vampire Mercy Brown | When Rhode Island Was “The Vampire Capital of America”

Grave of Mercy L. Brown | quahog.org 

Mercy Lena Brown (1872-1892) – Find a Grave Memorial 

Have Mercy… – The Rhode Island Historical Society

Mercy Brown was 19 when she died of tuberculosis. Her town thought she was a vampire. 

The Great New England Vampire Panic 

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The Icelandic Ghost Story of The White Cap

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The story about the girl and her meeting with a ghost in the graveyard and the white cap she took from it has been retold for centuries in Iceland. 

The story about the White Cap is an Icelandic ghost story from the old times, although how old is uncertain, as it is now turned into a folktale that has gone through many retellings. It tells the story about a nameless boy and girl that took something from a ghost and had to pay dearly for it. 

The Ghost story was retold from its oral story in Icelandic Legends by Jón Arnason who traveled the country and collected the folktales and ghost stories in the 1800s inspired by the work the Grimm brothers did in Germany in the same area. 

The Ghost and its White Cap

The little boy and girl lived close to a church in a small village in Iceland. The boy was a mischievous boy and had a habit of trying to scare the girl when he had the opportunity. But the more he tried to get a scare out of the girl, the more used she got to it, and in the end, nothing faced her anymore. And everything she saw she thought was strange, she was sure it had to be one of the boy’s tricks. 

One day while they were washing clothes, the girl was sent to the churchyard by her mother. The linen they had just washed was hung up there to dry. The girl went unafraid into the graveyard and started to fill her basket with the fresh linen when she looked up and saw someone sitting on a tomb close to her. The figure was dressed in all white and she thought instinctively it had to be the boy that was up to one of his tricks, so she wasn’t afraid and figured she would call his bluff. 

The girl ran up to the figure on the tomb and pulled off its cap as she said out loud that he would not be able to frighten her this time. 

She then went home with the linen, but when she came back, the boy was the first one that greeted her when she reached her cottage. No way he could have reached home before she did and she started to fear the truth. 

This was not the only strange thing though, as when they sorted through the linen, they found the cap that she had pulled off from the figure on the tomb. The White Cap, although white was full of mold and earth. They all then understood that it had been a ghost she had encountered, and now, the whole village was paralyzed with fear. 

The Icelandic Ghost on the Tomb

The next day, the ghost was again sitting on the same tombstone like it had done the previous day, although now it was missing its White Cap. Nobody dared to approach it and had no idea as to how to rid themselves from it. Ghosts in icelandic ghost stories were often shown to act as flesh and bone that could interact with living humans, and sometimes, they were very dangerous. So they sent for help from a village close to them. 

In that village there was an old man that claimed that they had to replace the white cap that the girl had taken from the girl to avoid any bad repercussions. It had to be done with everyone watching in complete silence, and it had to be the little girl that gave the cap back. 

Icelandic Legends: The ghost story of the “White Cap” comes from Iceland and was retold by Jón Arnason in Icelandic Legends as he was travelling around collecting oral tales around the country.

So the whole village gathered in the churchyard, watching as the little girl approached the ghost sitting on the tombstone, not really moving, not really showing any sign of what the ghost really wanted. She placed the White Cap on its head and asked if it was satisfied now.

The ghost looked up and answered: “Yes, but are you now satisfied?” as it raised its hand and hit her and the little girl fell over and died. The ghost then sank into the grave he was sitting on and was not seen again. 

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Icelandic legends. Collected by Jón Arnason. Tr. … ser.2. 

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The Poltergeist of Greyfriars Kirkyard

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Tucked away in the Old Town of Edinburgh, the Greyfriars Kirkyard houses even the restless spirits of the locals. Even a poltergeist known as George Mackenzie.

Cold spots, white figures behind the graves and knocking noises from below the ground, the reports about Greyfriars Kirkyard being haunted are endless. A haunted cemetary is a must for an old town like Edinburgh and just at the end of George IV Bridge by the Museum of Scotland you will find Edinburgh’s one. At Greyfriars Kirkyard the visitors will leave wondering if it was just the wind or something more. 

The cemetery was built in 1562 by Mary Queen of Scots, also known as Bloody Mary throughout history. It is now one of the main attractions on the many haunted bus rides you can jump on in the old town. For good reason if we believe the locals. 

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Even today there is gruesome stuff going on in the Greyfriars Kirkyard. Edinburgh was a notorious place where grave robberies of bodies happened as the demand for fresh flesh for the medical schools were in high demand. Something of the past, there are not many cases of grave robbery as this today. But as recently as 2003 two teenagers were arrested for grave robbery as they cut the head from one of the corpses and used it as a glove puppet. 

Famous Graves

Many famous and notable residents of Edinburgh are buried in this place, including Hames Hutton, Robert Adam as well as perhaps the most famous local, the dog Greyfriars Bobby. 

Greyfriars Bobby: Edinburgh’s most beloved dog, Bobby is laid to rest in the cemetery.

Greyfriars Bobby was a dog so loyal to his master that he never left his side, even in death as he watched over his master’s final resting place for 14 years until he died himself and is now buried beside him in the Greyfriars Kirkyard with the queen’s permission. 

Even if they weren’t famous when they were alive, J.K Rowling made many famous today as she is said to have been inspired by the names on many of the tombstones. 

Many ghosts have been reported on this graveyard from when it was first built, however, today the Mackenzie Poltergeist is perhaps the most famed one. 

This is not the only supposed haunted graveyard we have written about. Check out these ghost stories set in cemeteries as well:

Ghost stories from cemeteries:

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Bluidy Mackenzie

In 2000 the spiritualist Colin Grant tried to lay one of the restless spirits to rest in the cemetery. A few weeks later he died of a heart attack. After his death, many attributed this death to be caused by the poltergeist of the cemetery, Bloody Mackenzie. 

Since the 19th century children believed that there was something off with this particular grave at Greyfriars Kirkyard. They used to run up to the keyhole and yell:

“Bluidy Mackenzie, come out if ye daur, Lift the Sneck and draw the bar!”

George Mackenzie was known as Bluidy (Bloody) Mackenzie when he was still living and was not remembered as a kind man. He worked as a lawyer for the King and imprisoned around 1200 protestant rebels that refused to pledge their allegiance to the catholic king. 

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The nickname comes from the horrible torture he made the prisoners he held captive in an area in Greyfriars Kirkyard known as the Covenanters Prison. It was an open area closed off by the city wall. Hundreds of people died when they went without water, food and shelter from the weather.

It is said that by 1679 there were only 48 Covenanters left alive with the rest heads on spikes along the gate.  

Although Mackenzie ran away to England and died there, he was sent back after his death. After his death he was laid to rest in a mausoleum located on the same place where so many of his victims met their unfortunate end. 

The Black Mausoleum

Apparently the activity around the mausoleum never seems to rest. Dead animals turns up around it without an obvious cause of death and mysterious fires are also often blamed on the strange activity that seems to happen around the Black Mausoleum in Greyfriars Kirkyard. 

The Black Mausoleum: The tomb of ‘bloody’ George Mackenzie in Greyfriars Churchyard from the 1840s.

The story is that a homeless man seeking shelter from the weather broke into the Mackenzie mausoleum known as the Black Mausoleum and disturbed the spirits there, making a poltergeist angry and releasing its fury. Allegedly as soon as the homeless man placed his hand on the grave the floor opened underneath him and swallowed him whole as it dropped him into a grave of plague victims.  

Another version of the story is a criminal that hid inside the mausoleum for six months. John Hayes had apparently gone mad inside the mausoleum he only left to scavenge for food occasionally. According to him, the coffins in the mausoleum moved all on their own and he could hear Mackenzie turning inside his coffin. 

It was also here the teenagers aged 15 and 17 broke in and desecrated the corpse inside. Apparently they are rumored to even have drunk wine from the skull after they cut off the head. This incident was one of the things that made the cemetery and the Black Mausoleum famous

The Poltergeist of the Cemetery

Since then, reports of scratches, bruises and burns on people that have been there as well as people collapsing for no apparent reason in the cemetery. They claim that between 300 and up to 500 guests from the 90s to 2006 felt like they were attacked by this poltergeist. 

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References

Featured Image: Harry McGregor/Source

The Most Haunted Places in Edinburgh’s Old Town – Dickins

A Guide to Haunted Edinburgh | Authentic Scotland

Haunted Edinburgh | 23 Mayfield

Meet the Mackenzie Poltergeist of Greyfriars Kirkyard – Icy Sedgwick

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The Mausoleum of Rufina Cambacérès at Recoleta Cemetery — Buried Alive

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Marble mausoleums, famous people and haunted graves with excellent architecture. The city of Buenos Aires got more to offer than tango and good food. And in the old Recoleta Cemetery there are stories that those buried there is haunting the place. One of them is the grave of Rufina Cambacérès who were buried alive.

In the wonderful cemetery of Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires, the most prominent of Argentina’s dead is laid to rest. Graves of famous people like Eva Peron, Nobel Prize winners, grandchildren of Naloleón Bonaparte and those who served as presidents have graves you can visit.

Walking through Recoleta Cemetery is an architectural wandering among the marble mausoleums with art-deco, neo-classical and neo-gothic architecture in the tombs to enjoy looking at and wondering the story of those inside.

The Recoleta Cemetery is more like a city of graves with narrow streets and cobbled ground, almost like the most quiet neighbourhood in Buenos Aires. Although the inhabitants of this city is no longer alive and the only ones roaming here are their ghosts.

Read Also: Check out all of our ghost stories around haunted cemeteries from around the world.

There are also those graves found in the Recoleta Cemetery that people got to know of the person resting there, only after the death. 

Rufina Cambacérès: The Girl who Died Twice

Buried Alive: Portrait of Rufina Cambacérès that is now buried in the Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires. Photo: Source

This is the case of Rufina Cambacérès, a girl that barely reached the age of nineteen before she tragically died, twice. Although she was a well known socialite in Buenos Aires at the turn of the 1900s when she was alive, it is her death she is remembered for today and is one of the buried in The Recoleta Cemetery. Although her burial was anything but peaceful.

Rufina Cambacérès’ family rose to the upper class of society in Buenos Aires from the money they made from cattle farming in Argentina. Her father, Eugenio Cambacérès was originally from France and a sort of famous writer in the country at the time.

Her father died of tuberculosis however when Rufina was only four, giving a precedent of premature deaths in the family, like the one Rufina herself would soon suffer from. 

A Temporary Death

In 1902 Rufina died for the first time in her life. Her death happened on her birthday no less. On her 19th birthday to be exact on May 31st. Her mother threw a party at their lavish house in Buenos Aires and they were all supposed to go to Teatro Colón to see a show or the opera.

Rufina Cambacérès retreated to her bedroom before they went out. She was getting ready in her bedroom for the night when something felt off. Perhaps she didn’t even get a chance to realize what was happening. She suddenly collapsed on the floor and was deemed to be dead for everyone around, even her doctors.

The reason of death the doctors gave was by catalepsy, a classical diagnosis that they have given those who were buried alive in history, especially the dramatic temporarily deaths from literature. This is the same death that Juliet was given temporarily by the poison, and in Edgar Allen Poe’s writing: ‘A Premature Burial’, also beginning with a false death that ends in a true death in the coffin.

Catalepsy: Is a strange disorder from from Ancient Greek meaning “seizing, grasping”. It really is a nervous condition characterized by muscular rigidity and fixity of posture regardless of external stimuli, as well as decreased sensitivity to pain. It has been today linked to epilepsy, parkinson or drug related.

Being declared dead before your time was not unheard of during those time at all and there are many examples of it throughout time. Sadly, Rufina became a part of this tragic statistic and before anyone could prove any different, she was buried, and first after her burial, she died. 

Read Also: For more ghost stories of those buried alive, check out The Buried Alive Ghosts of Château de Trécesson in the Enchanted Forest, O-shizu, Hitobashira — The Human Sacrifice of Maruoka Castle, The Mistletoe Bough – The Bride in the Chest, The Finnish Maiden of Olavinlinna Castle and The Evil Bishop Against the Maiden in Love – The Ghost of Haapsalu Castle.

Buried in Recoleta Cemetery

No less than three doctors pronounced her dead before she was put in a coffin and preparation for her birthday changed into preparing for her funeral. She was placed in her extravagant final resting place in the mausoleum already the next day in la Recoleta Cemetery. This seems extremely quick as there usually is held a wake to prevent people from being buried alive, and they really should have kept to the old customs before rushing her funeral.

Read also: The Poltergeist of Greyfriars Kirkyard or The Joelma Building and the Ghosts of the 13 Souls for more cemeteries that are supposedly haunted.

According to legend, she woke up in the coffin, dark and she was all alone far from her bedroom she was getting ready to go party. No one could hear her screams from outside the huge mausoleum that now was her prison. She tried to break free from her tomb she suddenly found herself in, trying to scratch herself out with her bare hands. The luxurious and sturdy coffin was sealed shut though and she had no chance of breaking free from it with her bear hands.

She was stuck inside as the air was slowly fading away. She must have lasted for a couple of days perhaps before eventually suffocating to death. For real this time. 

Recoleta Cemetery: a massive cemetery that houses many famous people like Eva Peron. The supposed haunted cemetery in Buenos Aires has also been hailed as the best cemetery by BBC in 2011, whatever that entails. It is known for looking almost like a little city within the city with streets and doors to the many mausoleums.

A cemetery worker allegedly noticed the lid of her casket was broken a few days later when he was around checking the many graves. The fact her grave was disturbed could also be attributed to robbers, since she was very likely to have been buried with her expensive jewelry because of her high status and riches.

But not according to those subscribing to the more macabre version, it was worse, it was the signs of her trying to escape from the coffin when she awoke from her shallow death and took one last shot at living. 

The Final Death of Rufina Cambacérès

Another legend tells that Rufina even managed to get out of the casket and ran through the cemetery at night. She managed to get to the gates, but there she died of a heart attack from the fright and had to be put back inside the coffin. 

More rumors about why she collapsed in the first place have been told throughout the years, creating more drama leading up to her collapsing. Among other things, her friend supposedly told her a secret so gruesome that it knocked her out so hard that they thought she was dead. According to her friend, the boyfriend Rufina was seeing was also together with Rufinas mother, or even worse, his own. A true scandal for a Tela Novela and would certainly send everyone into a shock. 

No matter the origin of the story and what really happened that day before going to the opera, the statue outside the mausoleum is solemn enough to create a number of haunted rumours as the statue really looks like she is trying to escape.

The Haunted Mausoleum: The mausoleum of the young girl Rufina Cambacérès, completed with a statue, representing her, with her hand on the door, her eyes looking, almost with a longing look, away from her tomb in Recoleta Cemetery.
Photo: Source: Tim Adams

Her family spared no expense on her mausoleum and Rufina Cambacérès final resting place is the only mausoleum made of marble from Milan and is decorated with beautiful ornaments. The young girl, supposed to be the young girl with one of her hands on the door, almost escaping, never able to see her 20th birthday or the exit of la Recoleta Cemetery.

According to some, the ghost of Rufina Cambacérès can still be seen roaming in the Recoleta Cemetery, still trying to get out of her shallow death.

Read Also: Another haunted cemetery with a strange Mausoleum is found in the story of Paris’ Haunted Père Lachaise Cemetery

So many legends surround the cemetery to this day like we find in Recoleta Cemetery. Among some of the ghosts supposed to haunt the place, is a cemetery worker, destined to linger in this place forever, as well as a woman in white, roaming the place. Perhaps trying to get out? 

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References

008. rufina cambacérès ◊ – AfterLife 

The Tomb of Rufina Cambacérès – Buenos Aires, Argentina 

Catalepsy

The girl who died twice and other secrets of Argentina’s La Recoleta cemetery