The Mercy Brown Vampire Incident — New England's Last Vampire Exhumation (1892)

On March 17, 1892, in the farming community of Exeter, Rhode Island, the body of 19-year-old Mercy Lena Brown was exhumed from Chestnut Hill Cemetery in a disturbing ritual that represented the last known case of the New England vampire panic. Mercy had died of tuberculosis (then called 'consumption') on January 17, following the earlier deaths of her mother and sister from the same disease. When her brother Edwin also fell ill, desperate family members and neighbors concluded that one of the deceased was feeding on the living from beyond the grave — a belief rooted in Rhode Island folk tradition transplanted from Europe. Upon exhumation, Mercy's body was found to be remarkably well-preserved (she had been buried in winter) and appeared to have fresh blood in her heart. Her heart was removed, burned on a nearby rock, and the ashes were mixed with water and fed to the ailing Edwin as a curative. He died two months later. The case received extensive newspaper coverage, with the Providence Journal calling it 'a survival of the vampire superstition.' It is widely believed that Bram Stoker, who was researching his novel 'Dracula' (published 1897), clipped the newspaper accounts of the Mercy Brown case.