Vampires and the Ocean State

Massachusetts is known for the Salem Witch Trials, but Rhode Island is known for...vampires.

Yessir.

Vampires.

Rhode Island isn't just the part of Newport where Gilded Age mansions were built by wealthy vacationers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I could make a similar comparison to Oregon, which is not limited to Portland. The Ocean State does have in its history amusement parks, farming and textile mills around which smaller mill villages grew.

Like many places until antibiotics, Rhode Island also had something else: tuberculosis.

From the 18th century until 1892, tuberculosis, which was often called "consumption", could wipe out entire families. But a superstition arose around these deaths when dying people began to report dreams of relatives who had died of tuberculosis. Things such as sitting on their chests (tuberculosis is a respiratory disease), and possibly sucking the blood (the life) out of them.

The superstition led to the exhumations of these relatives, whose bodies would then be what we would today call "mutilated". But, this was done in a very specific way. It was a way that would enable forensic anthropologists to identify remains that had been believed to have belonged to a vampire.

Food for the Dead: On the Trail of New England Vampires by Michael E. Bell

Understand that while much more had become known about tuberculosis by 1892, this was still a world where small farming communities that were rural and isolated did not often receive word of advances in anything very quickly. Like any other small, rural community, this little Rhode Island community did not let go of superstition and long standing beliefs easily.

When we look at this in the context of the time period, it becomes easier to understand why a group of villagers urged patriarch George Brown to allow an exhumation of Mercy's remains in order to check for vampirism. In addition, they wanted him to allow the exhumations of both his wife and his daughter, Mary Olive. Brown finally consented, but by all accounts, he did not attend the exhumations of half his family.

I watched Bill Maher last week, so I won't say "trigger warning". So I will say this: it might get a bit graphic in this part.

The bodies of Mary and Mary Olive Brown were basically skeletonized, consistent with having been deceased for a decade. But Mercy's body was still intact, her blood still in her body. Except to the casual observer, her hair and fingernails appeared to have grown a bit. Then there was that bit of blood...

These things seemed to convince the group of people who had exhumed Mercy that they were proof of Mercy having become a vampire. So, Mercy's heart was cut from her body, burned on a large rock in the cemetery, and its ashes mixed into a drink for Edwin.

Edwin Brown died two months later.

As I understand it, the original mortician who buried Mercy heavily objected to the exhumation. He also tried to explain postmortem change. Hair and nails might appear to be growing after death, but they are not. The skin, even in the cold, begins to dessicate (dry out). The hair shafts and cuticles of the nails pull back a bit, revealing more of the hair and nails.

Fluids, including blood (which also decomposes), often expel from the orifices of the body in a process referred to as "postmortem purge". Bodies can turn in the coffin or casket as well, looking as Mercy did, like they turned on their sides in their sleep.

Two of Mercy Brown's sisters would die of tuberculosis in the few years following her death. There would be tuberculosis deaths in the Brown family, the last being a niece of Mercy who died in the 1940's. But Mercy herself is known to this day as the last of the New England Vampires.

Vampires in Exeter? The Gruesome Tale of Mercy L. and Edwin A. Brown

From Exeter, Rhode Island to Exeter, England: Bram Stoker's Dracula

When Bram Stoker died in 1912, found in his office were several newspaper articles about Mercy Brown. It is believed this event partially inspired Stoker's most famous work, Dracula.

Stories of Mercy Brown's ghost haunting her grave and the cemetery it's in have surfaced over the generations. In part, this story also partially inspired The Legend of Diadamia. And vampire fiction is one of the most popular genres in literary history.

Some series books are well known, such as Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse (True Blood) series and the Twilight series. But others might not be so well known.

Jennifer Geoghan also traces her ancestors back to Rhode Island. She maintains a blog called Wells Family Genealogy, in which she shares her research into her ancestors who lived in a tiny mill village in Hopkinton, Rhode Island called Ashaway.

This is the same mill village The Legend of Diadamia is mainly set within. Rhode Island has a unique system of place names I don't think I've seen anywhere else. Hopkinton is a town in Washington County (locals usually refer to it as "South County"), and within Hopkinton are smaller villages. And within those villages are even smaller villages. That's about the only way I can think of to explain this.

Falling For the Purity of Blood

The Purity of Blood Series

Jennifer Geoghan has also written a fiction series about a vampire family in Ashaway, Rhode Island. Like the Mayfair Witches, the series uses an actual house which belonged to Geoghan's direct ancestors, Randall Wells and his wife, Lois Maxson Wells.

For several years, Geoghan has also maintained a blog documenting her research into her family tree, with her focus being her ancestors in Ashaway. You can see her blog here:

Wells Family Genealogy

The name of the Purity of Blood series is now the Fallen series, and each book has had a change of title. To find out more, you can click each book, and it will take you to that specific book on Amazon.

The Fallen Series

I Am Providence: Rhode Island and Horror Fiction

Many fans of classic horror fiction will no doubt have heard of author H.P. Lovecraft, whose headstone epitaph actually does read, "I am Providence". Providence, Rhode Island, that is.

And of course, even more of you will recognize the name Edgar Allan Poe.

I plan to go a bit more in depth into Poe's Rhode Island connections, hopefully soon. There is one connection of his to Rhode Island that is pretty well known, which was a woman named Sarah Helen Whitman. The two were briefly engaged, and she is said to have inspired some of Poe's work.