4/27/2023 0 Comments Poe ipanic![]() She hadn't even been buried in the ground yet, because it was still frozen solid. Lisa Berry Drago: But Mercy Lena had only died a couple of months earlier in January. All that was left of their bodies were skeletons with a little bit of hair on the skulls. They started with Mary Eliza and Mary Olive, who have been dead for years by this point. So, when his friends and neighbors urged him to try the quote, unquote, "Old time remedy," he agreed.Īlexis Pedrick: That remedy involved digging up each of the dead family members from their graves. He knew the only diagnosis he'd get would be a death sentence, just like his wife and his daughters. He took Edwin to the doctor but he knew it wouldn't do any good. Lisa Berry Drago: George Brown was alarmed. There must be a vampire haunting his family and, if he didn't act quickly, it would get Edwin next. Friends and neighbors pleaded with him to consider the obvious. With just one remaining family member, his son, Edwin and no solutions, George T. Within a few years, the son, Edwin Brown also became ill.Īlexis Pedrick: By this point, it was clear that something was plaguing the family and, sure enough, Mercy Lena Brown eventually became ill as well and died in 1892. Just seven months later, one of her daughters, Mary Olive Brown died, too, from the same thing. In December of 1883, Mary Eliza Brown died of a mysterious illness. Brown and Mary Eliza Brown had three children, Mary Alice, Edwin, and Mercy Lena. One of them was the ill-fated Brown family. Deserted Exeter, as it was known, was home to subsistence farming families who scraped out their livings from the rocky, barely fertile soil. ![]() The Civil War had ravaged the area and the lucky young men who'd survived the war had mostly left town for better opportunities. In the late 19th century, the southern part of Rhode Island was sparsely populated. Vampires in, in Rhode Island?"Īlexis Pedrick: Exeter, Rhode Island, 1883. He knows everything and everybody." And she said, "When we go there, you've got to be sure to ask him about the vampires in his family." So, I went, "Ho! What? Wait. He's kind of the unofficial town historian. Michael Bell: One of the interns working with me said, "You know, you got to go interview this guy who is in Exeter. It was sort of an accident.Īlexis Pedrick: In 1981, he was a newly minted folklorist doing a survey of Southern Rhode Island when things took an interesting turn. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons Resource ListĬonsumptive Chic: A History of Beauty, Fashion, and Diseaseįevered Lives: Tuberculosis in American Culture since 1870įood for the Dead: On the Trail of New England's VampiresĪlexis Pedrick: Micheal Bell didn't start out as a vampire hunter. ![]() Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago ![]() But back then the main suspect was vampires. Today we know it as tuberculosis, an infectious bacterial disease that attacks the lungs and causes a hacking cough, a wasting fever, and night sweats. Often called the Great White Plague for how pale it made its victims, it was also called “consumption” because of the way it literally consumed people from the inside out, gradually making them weaker, paler, and more lifeless until they were gone. In the 19th century a mysterious illness afflicted rural New England.
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