Mercy Brown

holiday — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 04:52:50 +0000

Mercy Brown was a suspected vampire, famous for having her heart cut out of her corpse. Hers is perhaps one of the most famous cases of exhumation of a vampire, especially for being so recent. Mercy Lena Brown was born and died in Exeter, Rhode Island. In 1892, a little over a hundred years ago. Just months after Mercy had died, her corpse was dug up and her heart was cut out and burned.
Mercy Brown’s vampire case was still in a time when vampires were believed to exist in the traditional sense; as more demonic corpses who were blamed for everything from crop failures to plagues. Mercy Brown had been sick with tuberculosis, a condition which often was connected with vampire attacks. Mercy’s mother, Mary Brown, had died of tuberculosis a decade earlier. The eldest daughter, Mary Olive, also died from tuberculosis years before. When the only son of the Brown family, Edwin, became sick with tuberculosis, he as sent away to Colorado in hopes that his health would improve.
Mercy died of tuberculosis in January of 1892. She was 19 years old. When Edwin returned to Exeter from Colorado, his condition worsened. It was believed that one of the family members who had died was responsible for the disease. Edwin’s condition was worsening rapidly, and the father, George Brown, was desperate to keep his son alive. If one of the other dead children was a vampire, and they were causing Edwin’s illness, it would be a matter of digging her up and exhuming her to cure Edwin.
George Brown had Mercy’s body dug up in March of 1892. Mercy’s body had been “unnaturally preserved” according to eyewitness accounts. An article about the exhumation was printed in the Providence Journal that year. Some accounts say she had turned over in her grave. Some even claim there was blood on her mouth.
Then they cut open her chest cavity and found her heart with “fresh blood.” Mercy was deemed to be a vampire, responsible for the cases of tuberculosis across the village, not just for her brother, Edwin. They cut out her heart and burned it on a nearby rock.
Edwin consumed the ashes of her heart, in the belief that, by consuming the vampire’s heart, he would get well. Edwin died two months later. The story in the Providence Journal at the time even referred to the practice with shock at its “barbarism in such modern times.” So, no, it wasn’t too common in villages in the 1880s and 1890s to be digging up corpses and cutting out hearts of “vampires.”

Vampires in Literature

veritas — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 09:30:06 +0000

In fiction of course, the epidemy of vampire literature, would be Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”. There were sexual undertones, of course, relaying vampirism to be a sort of sexually transmitted disease. Its themes of blood, death, and sex made it’s way to Victorian Europe, rattled because of the spread of tuberculosis and syphilis. But the vampire was first introduced to Western literature, by Lord Byron, in his poem The Giaour. Though, his manservant, John Polidori, wrote the first vampire story, Lord Ruthven, which was partly based on Byron himself. No doubt for his certain promiscuous behaviour with women, which was a characterization of the romantic perspective of vampirism. The story was written during a “ghost story competition” in which Lord Byron was said to have encouraged his friend Percy Shelley’s wife, Mary Shelley, to write a ghost story. Apparently, she did.

Vampires have dominated American fiction through many popular modern authors, namely Anne Rice, Charlaine Harris, Valerie Hardin, Margaret L. Carter, Stephen King, amongst many others. Anne Rice is famous for her widely popular Vampire Chronicles, and various other novels written under other pseudonyms. She portrays the romantic vampire, both breaking boundaries of old vampire legends, and regenerating and rebuilding the old to complete a new breed of vampire. The beautiful deadly killers that have captivated audiences globally.

Charlaine Harris has written various mystery and horror novels, but is now a rising star of vampire fiction, with her debut vampire novel Dead Until Dark, featuring a humourous female heroine. Her refreshingly original style is highly entertaining, and published globally. Valerie Hardin, well known on the web for her six books of Gothic poetry, and novella Crimson Kisses, and will soon be collaborating with other authors to produce young adult novels. Margaret L. Carter is widely known for her paperback paranormal romances, among them, Tall, Dark, and Deadly. Stephen King’s most popular vampire novels, Salem’s Lot, and The Night Flier, still terrorize the world.

Vampires » tuberculosis

Mercy Brown

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Vampires in Literature

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