Mercy Brown's Grave, Exeter: Rhode Island's Real Vampire Story

Behind the small white Chestnut Hill Baptist Church on Ten Rod Road in Exeter lies a modest granite headstone held in place by an iron strap. It belongs to Mercy Lena Brown, who died of tuberculosis in January 1892, and whose body was dug up two months later by neighbors convinced she was feeding on her family from beyond the grave.

Her story is not a legend in the usual sense. It was reported at the time by the Providence Journal, it is documented by doctors and folklorists, and it may have helped inspire Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The legends came later. This guide tells what happened, what people say still happens, and how to visit.

The history of Mercy Brown

George Thomas Brown was a farmer in Exeter, a quiet town in southern Rhode Island, in the 1880s. In December 1883 his wife, Mary Eliza, died of consumption, as tuberculosis was then called. Six months later their eldest daughter, Mary Olive, died of it too, aged 20. By 1891 two more of the children were sick: Mercy Lena and her brother Edwin.

Mercy died in January 1892, aged 19. The ground was frozen, so, as was common in winter, her body was kept in a stone crypt in the cemetery until it could be buried. Edwin was still dying. Neighbors and relatives believed that when a family was struck again and again by consumption, one of the dead might be draining the living, and they pressed George Brown to let them check.

On March 17, 1892, a group of men, the local doctor Harold Metcalf and a Providence Journal reporter went to the cemetery. George Brown gave permission, the paper said, to satisfy the neighbors, and was not present. Mary Eliza and Mary Olive were found decayed, as expected. Mercy, after about two months in a cold crypt, was not. Dr. Metcalf saw nothing unusual, but the men found blood in her heart and liver, which they took as proof.

They cut out her heart and liver and burned them. The ashes were mixed with water into a tonic and given to Edwin to drink. He died less than two months later. Mercy’s remains were buried in the churchyard, where she lies beside Edwin and their father. George Brown, one of the few in his family who never caught the disease, lived until 1922.

The case made newspapers far beyond Rhode Island. Scholars have suggested Bram Stoker knew of it, since newspaper accounts of the Brown case were reportedly in his files, and that Mercy may have helped shape Lucy Westenra in Dracula, published in 1897. H. P. Lovecraft mentions the case in his story The Shunned House. Rhode Island folklorist Michael Bell, who spent decades documenting New England’s ‘vampire’ exhumations and found about 80 of them, calls the region’s vampires ‘germs with fangs’: a desperate folk response to a disease nobody understood.

The legends of Mercy Brown

A voice in the cemetery

The most common story is that Mercy murmurs among the graves, and visitors bring recorders hoping to catch her voice. One often-repeated claim is that a visitor recorded her asking to be left to rest in peace. There is no way to check these recordings, and they are best taken as part of the grave’s modern folklore.

A blue light and the scent of roses

Rhode Island Monthly notes reports of a glowing blue orb at Chestnut Hill Cemetery. Smithsonian Magazine adds that Mercy is said to haunt a nearby bridge as the smell of roses, and that she is rumored to visit people who are dying to tell them that death is not so bad.

A figure in a torn gown

Older ghost lists describe a young woman in a dirty, ripped dress near the family plot. Like the other stories, it has no record behind it, but it is told often enough that many visitors come at dusk hoping to see her. Please do not stay after dark.

The quilt and other tales

Smithsonian also mentions a legend about Mercy’s quilt, made in a pattern called the Wandering Foot, which was said to doom anyone who slept under it to wander away from their family. Yankee Magazine’s readers add that grass will not grow on the front of her grave, a claim that is easy to make at a heavily visited spot.

Where to look

• The Brown family plot: under an evergreen, about halfway down the central path on the left, where Mercy lies between her father and Edwin.
• Mercy's headstone: held to a post by an iron strap after past thefts, often covered in coins and small offerings.
• The stone crypt: a small triangular building across the cemetery, where bodies were kept in winter.
• The church: the white 1838 Chestnut Hill Baptist Church, whose steeple rises over the field.

Visiting Mercy Brown's grave

Chestnut Hill Cemetery is behind the Chestnut Hill Baptist Church on Ten Rod Road (Route 102) in Exeter, a couple of miles from Interstate 95. Drive in through the single entrance; the Brown plot is on the left just past the church, near a tree, and the old crypt is on the right, visible from the grave. There is no fee and no visitor center.

This is still a working cemetery belonging to an active church, and local people are protective of it. Visitors leave pennies, garlic, painted rocks, flowers and even plastic vampire teeth, and some have scratched names into the stone, which is why it is now strapped down. Please visit in daylight, keep voices low, stay on the paths and take nothing away. Police are known to patrol around Halloween.

Combine your visit with other Rhode Island ‘vampire’ sites: Atlas Obscura mentions Sarah Tillinghast, another case, buried in Exeter, and Yankee Magazine tells of Nellie Vaughn’s grave in West Greenwich. For a haunted night in the area, the General Stanton Inn in Charlestown is about 20 minutes south, and Haunted Rooms runs ghost hunts there.

• Visiting Churchyard cemetery; visit respectfully in daylight
• Ghost hunting No investigations; local police patrol around Halloween

Tips for your visit

• Go in daylight and treat the cemetery as a place of mourning, not an attraction.
• Look for the iron strap on Mercy’s stone and the small crypt across the field.
• Read Michael Bell’s Food for the Dead for the full story of New England’s vampire panic.
• Pair it with a ghost hunt at the General Stanton Inn in Charlestown, about 20 minutes away.

More haunted places nearby

• The General Stanton Inn, Charlestown: a haunted colonial inn where we run ghost hunts
• Nathanael Greene Homestead, Coventry: a Revolutionary general’s haunted house, about 15 miles north
• The Conjuring House, Burrillville: Rhode Island’s most famous haunted house
• Haunted places in Rhode Island

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the official website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as staff, visitors and investigators tell them, and we say where records contradict a story.

• Wikipedia: Mercy Brown vampire incident
• Smithsonian Magazine: The great New England vampire panic
• Yankee Magazine: When Rhode Island was the vampire capital of America
• GBH News: Salem witches, sure. What about the New England vampire panic? (2018)
• Wikipedia: Baptist Church in Exeter
• Atlas Obscura: Grave of Mercy Brown
• Rhode Island Monthly: 16 real-life haunted places in Rhode Island (2024)