WEST GREENWICH - It is undeniably an ominous looking place.
When approaching from Plain Meetinghouse Road, the old white church with its boarded windows and peeling green trim seems almost misplaced, rising oddly from the dense woods surrounding it on all four sides.
But there it sits on its quiet corner, as it has since 1825. The cemetery behind it came later and so too, the tale herein retold.
Perhaps it is the abundance of shadowy, wooded acres or the generations of history rooted deeply within them but New England is no stranger to legends and stories of supernatural phenomena.
And while Salem, Mass. has its witches, Rhode Island's historical cemeteries lay claim to some of New England's most legendary vampires. In fact the hysteria which plagued the state during the 18th and 19th centuries earned Rhode Island the distinction of "Vampire Capital of the United States."
The last and perhaps most widely known case of alleged vampirism in Rhode Island history is that of Mercy Lena Brown, buried at the Chestnut Hill Cemetery in Exeter.
It was from her legend the story of West Greenwich's own vampire was born.
On Jan. 17, 1892 Mercy, like so many others throughout early New England history, succumbed to consumption, or pulmonary tuberculosis- a devastating and highly contagious disease widely misunderstood by rural townspeople at that time.
Two years prior on May 31, 1889 a young West Greenwich woman named Nellie L. Vaughn also died at the young age of 19, a victim of pneumonia.
Unlike Mercy, however, stories casting Nellie as a vampire did not surface until 78 years after her death.
Through the years, legend has piqued curiosity
In 1967 a Coventry High School teacher told students the tale of a young woman who, after her death in the late 1800s at the age of 19, was accused of being a vampire. The teacher divulged little more information other than to say the woman was buried in an old cemetery off Route 102.
Accepting the story as an invitation, the youths set off to find her.
The Chestnut Hill Baptist Church is located off Route 102 in Exeter. And while their teacher was undoubtedly speaking of the cemetery behind that church, of Mercy Brown's resting place, the teens found another old cemetery off 102.
It was a cemetery that sits oddly out of place, guarded by a different white church and an aging stone wall.
Stepping within that wall and onto those sacred grounds they found something else. It was a gravestone that read, "Nellie L. Vaughn; Daughter of George B. and Ellen; Died in her 19th year, May 1889." And at the bottom of her headstone was inscribed, "I am waiting and watching for you."
The youths had found their vampire.
And from that initial case of mistaken identity, sprang the legend of Nellie Vaughn, West Greenwich's vampire, on whose grave it is said grass will not grow.
And then began the sightings.
The sighting by utility workers who reportedly saw a young woman in Victorian dress, working fiercely at her dark locks, who seemed to float above the ground before simply vanishing.
In 1993 a Coventry woman and her husband doing gravestone rubbings in the historical cemetery there, #WG002, heard a woman's voice repeating, "I am perfectly pleasant. I am perfectly pleasant."
The husband said he left the cemetery, never to return, with unexplainable scratches on his face.
His wife, however, did go back several months later where she happened to encounter a young, dark-haired woman who claimed to be a member of a local historical society. When their conversation shifted to discussion of Nellie Vaughn, the young woman became agitated and started repeating, "Nellie is not a vampire."
Shaken, the Coventry woman turned to leave and when she looked back to ensure the disturbed woman was not following her, she found the cemetery empty.
Those accounts aside, there is another perhaps more chilling story relayed by one of Nellie's cousins who wished to remain anonymous.
Buried alive?
The story goes that because Nellie died of intense fever, the locals wanted her buried immediately to prevent the spread of disease. Although it was customary at the time to postpone burial in case the diagnosis of death was premature, the family obliged and Nellie was buried within a day of her passing on the Vaughn family homestead at 217 Robin Hollow Road.
A man passing by the Vaughn family plot later that night heard a woman screaming but he could not determine the origin of the cries. The next day the man returned to the cemetery with George Vaughn and the constable.
The plot was undisturbed except for the passersby footprints from the night before; footprints left in the fresh dirt covering Nellie's grave.
It was not until later, when the Vaughns sold their family homestead on Robin Hollow Road that Nellie's casket was moved to the Plain Meetinghouse cemetery.
Was Nellie Vaughn a vampire? No, probably not. Was she buried alive? That question is not so easily answered.
Perhaps the sights, sounds, and energy people claim to hear and feel within that old graveyard are those of Nellie's spirit.
An otherwise innocent spirit, restless for an entirely different reason.
