Perhaps not surprisingly, he died shortly thereafter.Īlthough modern science has silenced the vampire fears of the past, people who call themselves vampires do exist. They cut out her heart, burned it, then fed the ashes to her sick brother. When Mercy’s body was exhumed and didn’t display severe decay (not surprising, since her body was placed in an above-ground vault during a New England winter), the townspeople accused her of being a vampire and making her family sick from her icy grave. It was common at that time to blame several deaths in one family on the “undead.” The bodies of each dead family member were often exhumed and searched for signs of vampirism. She lived in Exeter, Rhode Island and was the daughter of George Brown, a farmer.Īfter George lost many family members, including Mercy, in the late 1800s to tuberculosis, his community used Mercy as a scapegoat to explain their deaths. Unlike Count Dracula, however, Mercy was a real person. Mercy Brown may rival Count Dracula as the most notorious vampire.
Other accounts describe the decapitation and burning of the corpses of suspected vampires well into the nineteenth century. In some cases, a stake was thrust through the corpse’s heart to make sure they stayed dead. When a suspected vampire died, their bodies were often disinterred to search for signs of vampirism. Other diseases blamed for promoting the vampire myth include rabies or goiter. Some symptoms of porphyria can be temporarily relieved by ingesting blood. Many researchers have pointed to porphyria, a blood disorder that can cause severe blisters on skin that’s exposed to sunlight, as a disease that may have been linked to the vampire legend.
It wasn’t uncommon for anyone with an unfamiliar physical or emotional illness to be labeled a vampire. The disease often left behind bleeding mouth lesions on its victims, which to the uneducated was a sure sign of vampirism. Vampire superstition thrived in the Middle Ages, especially as the plague decimated entire towns.
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