
Mercy Brown's headstone, Chestnut Hill Cemetery, Exeter.
![]() Mercy Brown's headstone, Chestnut Hill Cemetery, Exeter. Quahog.org > Attractions > Grave of Mercy L. Brown Grave of Mercy L. BrownRhode Island's favorite vampire. Chestnut Hill Baptist Church Cemetery, Victory Highway, Exeter George T. Brown had a problem—members of his family kept dropping dead. George and his wife, Mary, and their five children lived on a small farm in Exeter. As was the case for many families in those days of high mortality rates, George's family seemed to have more than its share of illness. George's wife fell ill first, succumbing to consumption on December 8, 1883, at the age of 36. Mary Olive, 20, his eldest daughter, followed less than six months later on June 6, 1884.
After Mercy's death George's neighbors began insisting he do something. Local superstition suggested that perhaps one of the deceased family members was rising from the grave to consume the life of the living. George was a pragmatic man, not given to such flights of fancy, but he did have two more daughters to think about. So, if only to set the minds of his neighbors at ease, he arranged for a doctor from Wickford, named Metcalf, to accompany a small group of friends and neighbors to the cemetery on the 17th of March. They went to exhume the corpses of the Brown women. Once uncovered, the bodies of both Marys were found to be in a state of advanced decay, which was only to be expected since they had been dead almost ten years. But when the men entered the crypt to examine Mercy, they found that her corpse had shifted from its original position inside her coffin. What's more, her body was still fresh, for when the doctor cut out her heart it dripped blood. The doctor drained her organs of fluid and the men burned her heart on a nearby stone wall. (Some accounts add that either her liver or her lungs were also burned). The balance of Mercy's remains were presumably given a proper burial later in the spring. Some of the ashes were given to Edwin (who had returned from Colorado feeling better, but who had soon suffered a relapse) to drink as a sort of talismanic potion. Despite such desperate measures, Edwin died less than two months afterwards, on May 2, 1892. But after that the deaths ceased. George survived well into the twentieth century, finally dying in 1922 at the ripe old age of 80. What happened to the other two unnamed daughters is unknown at this time.
When Bram Stoker, who wrote Dracula in 1897, died, newspaper accounts of Mercy Brown's exhumation were found in his files. Mercy's tale is also mentioned in the short story "The Shunned House" by H.P. Lovecraft, who lived in Providence. Mercy Brown's Gravestone InscriptionMERCY L. Ghost lightsRumors still persist of ghostly goings-on up at Historical Cemetery #22. In 1984, a descendant of the Brown family, 51-year-old Lewis Everett Peck, told a Providence Journal reporter of a strange sight he saw in the early '60s:
Macabre theftThe lure of Exeter's vampire lore is so strong that it drove at least one person to steal the very stone from Mercy's grave. While Lewis Peck usually guards Mercy's grave on Halloween, when visitation and vandalism are expected, no one was on guard when the ninety-pound marker was taken sometime between August 8 and August 14, 1996. It was discovered missing that Wednesday afternoon by caretaker Doug Fulford. A search of the cemetery failed to turn up the stone and there were few clues. Two sets of tire tracks were found at the scene and the grass was trampled around both Mercy and George's graves. Lewis Peck himself walked over the grounds looking without luck for the stone. "It's a stinking shame," he told the Providence Journal. "When you've got to steal someone's gravestone, that's bad." Town Sergeant Richard S. Brown (no relation) offered a $50 reward for the stone, but it proved to be unneeded. The stone was recovered only a few days later, on August 19, about fifteen feet from Mercy's grave. Although no further details on how the stone returned were offered by Sergeant Brown, he did allow as how "It's under lock and key and it might not be put back until after Halloween."
Sins of the second cousin, twice removedIn addition to Mercy Brown, another almost-famous personality is buried in Chestnut Hill Cemetery. Toward the front of the graveyard you may find the stone of one Benedict Arnold. No, not Benedict Arnold the traitor, but a cousin of the same name who died in 1864. They are related through yet another Benedict, this one the first Governor of Rhode Island under the Charter of 1663. According to one of the caretakers of the cemetery, Chestnut Hill's Benedict has had to bear the brunt of a great deal of malice directed toward his infamous relation. His stone has been vandalized and knocked over several times. Eerie image
Now who would be interested in such a thing? Well, we would, actually. So yes, we bid on it, but apparently we didn't want it badly enough, because someone outbid us at the last moment. We were disappointed, but philosophical. A few days passed and we received an email from Steve. He said that the purchaser never contacted him and wouldn't respond to his messages, so he was going to list the rubbing again. He invited us to submit a new bid. We thought that seemed odd. There had only been two bidders; one was a deadbeat, the other was us. Hadn't he said he couldn't wait for the cursed thing to leave his hands? Wouldn't it follow that he might offer to sell the rubbing to us outright, thus freeing himself from its awful sway in as short a time as possible? Well, whatever. When we went to place a bid, we found Steve had placed a reserve on the item, increasing our suspicion that the possibility of financial gain was overcoming his fear. We bid what we were willing to pay, but the reserve was not met. For the next ten days we kept an eye on the item's progress. Despite a few other bids, the auction ended without a sale. Our attempts to contact Steve to find out what happened were unsuccessful. We figure he's annoyed with us for not exceeding his reserve. Too bad, because we had hoped to report back on what phenomena, if any, might attend the hanging of this artifact in Christopher's basement. Now we'll never know if the rubbing would have made his dog nervous, or if his luck would have taken a marked turn for the worse, or if a malignant presence would have touched him in his sleep, causing his hair to turn white and pitching him headlong into the abyss of madness. A Contemporary AccountPawtuxet Valley Gleaner Mr. Editor, as considerable notoriety has resulted from the exhuming of three bodies in Exeter cemetery on the 17th inst., I will give the main facts as I have received them for the benefit of such of your readers as "have not taken the papers" containing the same. To begin, we will say that our neighbor, a good and respectable citizen, George T. Brown, has been bereft of his wife and two grown-up daughters by consumption, the wife and mother about eight years ago, and the eldest daughter, Olive, two years or so later, while the other daughter, Mercy Lena, died about two months since, after nearly one year's illness from the same dread disease, and about two years ago Mr. Brown's only son Edwin A., a young married man of good habits, began to give evidence of lung trouble, which increased, until in hopes of checking and curing the same, he was induced to visit the famous Colorado Springs, where his wife followed him later on and though for a time he seemed to improve, it soon became evident that there was no real benefit derived, and this coupled with a strong desire on the part of both husband and wife to see their Rhode Island friends decided them to return east after an absence of about 18 months and are staying with Mrs. Brown's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Willet Himes. We are sorry to say that Eddie's health is not encouraging at this time. And now comes in the queer part, viz: The revival of a pagan or other superstitions regarding the feeling of the dead upon a living relative where consumption was the cause of death and so bringing the living person soon into a similar condition, etc, and to avoid this result, according to the same high authority, the "vampire" in question which is said to inhabit the heart of a dead consumptive while any blood remains in that organ, must be cremated and the ashes carefully preserved and administered in some form to the living victim, when a speedy cure may (un)reasonably be expected. I will here say that the husband and father of the deceased ones has, from the first, disclaimed any faith at all in the vampire theory but being urged, he allowed others if not wiser, counsel to prevail, and on the 17th inst., as before stated the three bodies alluded to were exhumed and then examined by Doctor Metcalf of Wickford, (under protest, as it were being an unbeliever.) The two bodies longest buried were found decayed and bloodless, while the last one who has been only about two months buried showed some blood in the heart as a matter of course, and as the doctor expected but to carry out what was a forgone conclusion the heart and lungs of the last named (M. Lena) were then and there duly cremated, but deponent saith not how the ashes were disposed of. Not many persons were present, Mr. Brown being among the absent ones. While we do not blame any one for there proceedings as they were intended without doubt to relive the anxiety of the living, still, it seems incredible that any one can attach the least importance to the subject, being so entirely incompatible with reason and conflicts also with scripture, which requires us "to give a reason for the hope that is in us," or the why and wherefore which certainly cannot be done as applied to the foregoing. Note: All errors of spelling, punctuation, and syntax are as they appeared in the Gleaner —ed. InformationCost: free Time required: allow 5 minutes, more if you've brought your Ouija board Hours: open year round, dawn to dusk This is a cemetery. Please be respectful. Finding it: from Route 95 take exit 5 to Victory Highway (Route 102) south to Route 3 south (Nooseneck Hill Road); take a right on Route 3, then an immediate left onto Route 102 (Victory Highway); the cemetery is 5.1 miles on the left; enter the cemetery and drive straight back, past a rock wall; the Brown family plot is on the left next to a cedar tree; the crypt where Mercy's body was briefly kept is to your right, at the edge of the cemetery. What’s nearbyDistances between points are actual distances, without regard to mountains or menacing dogs. Your travel distance will be longer. This article last edited August 5, 2015 © 1999–2019 Quahog.org (with the exception of elements provided by contributors, as noted). |
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