Episode 2.36 // Mercy Brown & The New England Vampire Panic

The cultural fear of vampires stretches back centuries throughout Europe, but in the continental U.S. it took seed from another fear entirely: tuberculosis. The New England Vampire Panic of the 19th-century was a reaction to a deadly disease so mysterious it needed a scapegoat. Enter: the Brown family of Exeter, Rhode Island –specifically a young daughter whose body civilians would use to justify a monster of their own making.

SOURCES:

• Fact Sheets | General | Tuberculosis: General Information | TB | CDC.

• TB in America: 1895-1954. PBS.org

• The Great New England Vampire Panic | History| Smithsonian Magazine

• Have Mercy... Rhode Island Historical Society

• Tuberculosis in Europe and North America, 1800-1922 | Contagion - CURIOSity Digital Collections

• Why The Mercy Brown Case Remains One Of History's Craziest “Vampire” Incidents

• When Rhode Island Was "The Vampire Capital of America" - New England Today

• https://www.etymonline.com/word/vampire

• Why the Vampire Myth Won’t Die - The New York Times

• Evidence for New England Vampire Belief - Paul S. Sledzik and Nicholas Bellantoni (1994)

• The Great New England Vampire Panic | History| Smithsonian Magazine

• Vampires and Death in New England, 1784 to 1892 - Bell - 2006 - Wiley Online Library

• The Last American Vampire - History.com

• Exhumed the Bodies. The Providence Journal, March 19, 1892

• The Last American Vampire - HISTORY

• Jewett City Vampires – Griswold, Connecticut - Atlas Obscura

• Meet the Real-Life Vampires of New England and Abroad | History| Smithsonian Magazine/

TRANSCRIPT:

Mercy Brown

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