The Scaredy Cat's Guide To This Spooky Spot In Exeter, Rhode Island

Wanna hear something scary?

I grind my teeth, have been doing it on and off since elementary.

And the other morning, as the drill (an integral part of the early am repair job being done to one of my front teeth) was whirring, I was thinking about what exactly I should say about the diy ghost tour we embarked on a while back. 

Of course, it included Chestnut Hill Cemetery in Exeter and the grave site of the infamous Mercy L. Brown, who unfortunately (more about THAT in a sec) has come to be known as "New England's last vampire.”

Did A Double Take When I Realized People Leave Trinket Tributes (Including Those Plastic Vampire Teeth) At Her Grave.

Only she wasn't.

And that's what was (is) bugging me.

Based on what I've read about what happened back in 1892, she wasn't a vampire at all.

I mean, Arthur Miller didn't write a play about it or anything, but the way things unfolded back then is definitely reminiscent of the Salem Witch histeria of 1692-1693.

Okay, in case you’re unaware, here's the real deal (the abbrevaited Cliff’s Notes version anyway) about Mercy…

After dying at 19 from TB or consumption, which had also killed her sister and her mom (and eventually would result in the demise of her brother), Mercy's body was dug up.

This happened mostly because the locals, including HER OWN FATHER, were swept up in a weird wave of vampire mania during that tuberculosis epidemic of the 1890’s.

They essentially explained away all the TB deaths by blaming them on the undead. (Are you at all surprised to hear then that during that window of time, Rhode Island came to be known in certain circles as “The Transylvania of North America?”)

This is ultimately how the taking of her heart out of her body and crushing it into a powder for her brother to eat to help him fight the TB was justified as an a-okay thing to do. (PS — He still died, tho.)

Her heart being in such good condition postmortem was interpreted as further proof of her being a vampire. (No formal training as a coroner here, but since she died during winter, and her body was believed to have been stored above ground in a crypt until the ground thawed out…the extreme cold obvs. helped to preserve her remains.)

Also, what THEY did sounds pretty vampire-ish, amirite?

So, I’m not buying into the macabre folk tales about Mercy.

That doesn't mean I'd ever visit that grave — or any for that matter — at night. (Have we learned nothing from Ryan Murphy's American Horror Story? Or The Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror episodes)

I actually read something about how her coffin is now protected by special steel bars to prevent anyone from trying to snatch the body.

Now, if that's NOT something out of a treatment for a future season of AHS, I don't know what the heck is.

Additional information regarding Mercy L. Brown (specifically RI being nicknamed “The Transylvania of North America”) courtesy of findagrave.com.

Photo Credits: Photos above of the Chestnut Hill Cemetery are all courtesy of PattyJ.com

***This post has been updated and revised from one that appeared on the blog previously.