(Original headline: Exeter Lore: An interview, a vampire and a living legend )
EXETER - All Hallow's Eve is a time that many people like to mock the vampire legends that have made Exeter famous.
Of the 20 historically documented vampire incidents in the New England area, Exeter has the unique distinction of three cases with the deaths of Sarah Tillinghast around 1799, Ruth Ellen Rose in 1874 and Mercy Brown in 1892, who all died from consumption (tuberculosis).
The bodies were rumored to have been exhumed and their hearts and/or livers were burned on rocks in the respective cemeteries in order to stop other family members from dying from the disease.
In many cases the afflicted victims ate the ashes.
Dr. Michael E. Bell, a folklorist and independent scholar living in the Pawtuxet section of Cranston, devoted 20 years to researching the phenomena.
The result is his book Food For the Dead: On the Trail of New England's Vampires (2001).
Bell's journey began in 1981, when he met with Everett Peck, lifelong Exeter resident and a descendant of Mercy Brown, who is now 76-years-old.
"I had been a folklorist for more than a decade and had hundreds of interviews under my belt, but no one had ever told me a vampire story based on experience," said Bell. "Everett was going to tell me about a vampire who actually existed - a kin relation, no less - not some cardboard cutout, B-movie actor, or figment of an author's imagination."
Peck, always helpful with historical articles about Exeter, declined an interview with The Standard-Times because he said he told the story in Bell's book and "enough is enough."
Four years after the publication of Food for the Dead, Bell still is asked the question "is there such a thing as a vampire?"
His answer is usually "read the book", however on this particular day, he offered this tidbit of information.
"Vampires are people that were scapegoats for things that were unknown at the time," explained Bell. "They didn't have a germ to blame so they blamed dead relatives."
Still, the curious reader may ask, why so many vampire incidents in Exeter?
"You have to have certain conditions for this to happen," explained Bell. "An epidemic that medical science can't cure (consumption) combined with the knowledge of a folk cure. There are other places like central Massachusetts - Boston through the Puritan area where you just don't find it. What you might call a magical world view."
Bell said that in Rhode Island, and especially Exeter, the people were separatists or non-denominational.
Whereas in Puritan areas, if residents didn't follow the orthodox, religious doctrine, there were consequences. At best, people were banished.
"In places like Rhode Island, people were more open to these ideas that would be considered diabolical by Puritans and Calvinists," he related. "They would consider that working with the devil. It didn't bother the people in Exeter. I think Exeter has always had a tradition of being independent thinkers. People outside would say they were all uneducated country bumpkins."
Mercy Brown, who Bell said was probably the last person exhumed as a vampire in the country, died on Jan. 17, 1892 at age 19. She was buried in Chestnut Hill Cemetery on Route 102.
But, it wasn't until a front-page article in the Providence Journal on March 19, 1892, two months later, that the Brown family made headlines.
"It was never designated as a vampire (until that time)," explained Bell.
Mercy, her mother and sister were exhumed on March 17, 1892 in a desperate attempt to save the life of Edwin, the Brown's only son, afflicted with consumption.
It was Brown's guess that Mercy was still in the family crypt waiting to buried in the ground until after the thaw at the time of the exhumation.
In December 1883, Mercy's mother, Mary Eliza, the wife of George T. Brown, a respected farmer, died of consumption. Seven months later, Mary Olive, age 20, passed away from the same disease.
Several years later, Edwin, began losing his color, strength and appetite, all signs of consumption. He was sent to Colorado in the hope that a change in environment would affect a cure.
It did not, so Edwin returned to Rhode Island. By that time, Mercy was taken ill and she died quickly thereafter.
Bell explained that an unidentified local correspondent from Rhode Island's largest newspaper wrote that "And the belief is that, so long as the heart contains blood, so long will any of the immediate family who are suffering from consumption continue to grow worse, but if the heart is burned that the patient will get better. And to make the cure certain the ashes of the heart and liver should be eaten by the person afflicted."
It was not known if Edwin ate the ashes but he died on May 2 at age 24, two months after Mercy's exhumation.
"Families had to decide 'Am I going to watch my sons and daughters die?'" related Bell. "There was also pressure from the community to do something about it. They were smart to realize it was contagious but did not understand how it spread. It's wasn't just George Brown's problem. The newspaper article makes it clear there was pressure from George Brown's family to agree to having those bodies exhumed."
Peck's account to Bell was that the story of Mercy Brown, who was allegedly turned over in the grave when it was opened, was told to children on Decoration Day, now known as Memorial Day, not on Halloween.
"It was told to warn the children not to go near the stone (where Mercy's heart was burned)," said Bell. "Over the years of repeated telling oral tradition tends to smooth things out."
Bell, who was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1943, lived in several states before his family moved to San Diego when he was 12 years old.
He said that it helped him to understand cultural differences at an early age and that to understand variation is a hallmark of folklore.
In the time since the book's publication, Bell encountered at least one more vampire incident in northern Rhode Island. And, in more than 20 years of research, he had never seen an epitaph quite like it.
The tombstone of Simon Whipple Aldrich reads, in part, "Altho' consumption's vampire grasp had seized thy mortal frame."
Bell is currently at work on a book about African American voodoo practices (the topic of his Ph.D. dissertation) and a manuscript of research that his 90-year-old father started about the disappearance of a ship in 1918 in what is now called the Bermuda triangle.
As for the legend of vampires, he did offer some word of advice.
"I would like people to put themselves in the place of these families and not be so smirk about how superstitions were," said Bell. "We're no smarter than they were. We have access to a lot more accurate knowledge about disease and what causes it and how to treat it. They were desperate. When the doctors diagnosed consumption, it was a death sentence."
