Emily Chan
These days, vampires are mostly thought of as works of fiction. But back in the 1800s, the fanged creature was considered very real.
People believed that vampires were making everyone fall ill and then draining the blood from their bodies.
They didn’t know that the real cause of all the deaths was tuberculosis, which included symptoms such as fatigue, night sweats, and the coughing up of white phlegm or even blood.
In Exeter, Rhode Island, the family of a farmer named George Brown started dropping dead one by one.
His daughter, Mercy Brown, was accused of being the vampire responsible for their deaths. The first to go was George’s wife, Mary, in 1883.
Six months later, his daughter Mary Olive died at age 20. Within the next several years, Mercy was dead as well. At the time of her death, her brother Edwin was also sick.
The villagers concluded that a vampire must be behind so many deaths in the same family. In 1892, a group of men decided to dig up the Brown family’s graves to see which one of them was attacking their relatives.
It was the only way to save Edwin from succumbing to the same fate as the rest of his family. When they examined the bodies of Mary and Mary Olive, they found that they were properly decomposed.
But upon uncovering Mercy Brown, they were struck with terror. Mercy had been buried for more than two months, but her body was still well-preserved.
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