In The Shadows of Spooky Season

Hey Friends! 

Spooky season is upon us! Leaf color has changed, weather has cooled down a bit, the smell of bonfires is in the air, and horror movies are playing more frequently on TV. It’s one of the best times of the year (if it isn’t the best). At least, in my opinion it is.
Since I’m so excited for upcoming events (picking pumpkins, celebrating my wedding anniversary, participating in Halloween fun), I decided I would make some posts about spooky themes. What better to start off with then the monster that first got my heart? The Vampire. 

Anyway, back to the actual subject of this post. I know, I know: “It’s been done before,” “Vampires are so overhyped,” “I’m sick of hearing about vampires,” and so on and so forth. I’m hoping that I can provide you with new information, or at least things you have not heard before. 
To start off with, I polled some people on social media to see if I could get responses that even I have not heard of. Let’s jump in:

Q: What comes to mind when you think of the word “vampire?” 

A: “Fangs.” 

“Buffy-verse.” 

“Traditional fantasy vampire that has been inspired by Bram Stoker…fans, no sun, aversion to holy symbols, the whole deal.”

“Pale cold bodies, lust for blood, powers like: telepathy, super hearing. You know, the normal vampiric traits.”  

Q: What are a couple of cool vampire myths you know?

A: “The first female vampire Elizabeth Bathory. She was a real life person and used her power in politics and finances to practice bathing in blood to keep her ‘young.’” 

“The original Dracula myth was based on Vlad the Impaler, and you can visit those historic buildings, and the nearby forest where all kinds of weird things supposedly happened.” 

“One cool myth with vampires or vampire-like beings is the Norse Draugr. A lot of people put them in the camp of zombies mostly due to Skyrim, but the Draugr were much more. They were intelligent, capable of communicating with the living, had magical powers with the capability of shape shifting, and would kill victims by eating their flesh or drinking their blood which are traditionally traits associated with vampires. So in a way, the Draugr is more vampire than zombie.
Another cool one is the Asanbosam. It’s an ancient African myth and I think Jamaica as well. It’s a pink skinned hairy monster with big red eyes, iron hooks for claws, and iron teeth that sit in trees waiting for hunters. Then they grab them and suck the blood out of them. It’s certainly one of the more unique creatures.” 

“I know that one of my favorite myths is that to find a vampire grave in a cemetery, they used to put a virgin dressed in white on a female horse and if the horse refused to walk over a grave, that grave was one hiding a vampire. I also know that people used to believe that the illegitimate child of two illegitimate parents was a vampire.”

Q: Do you believe vampires exist? Why or why not.

A: Most of those who answered said no to this question and for similar reasons. Modern science explains a lot of the reasons why people began believing in them like decomposition abnormalities and diseases that make one seem “vampiric.” One answer did mention that “people in Transylvania and Romania still do. They’re extremely superstitious and a large portion of the populace still believes in them so much that they won’t go out past certain times.” 

Q: Any cool vampire novels or movies people should check out?

A: “The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice and Dracula by Bram Stoker.”

“I always recommend Buffy and Angel to anyone who hasn’t seen them. I read the Sookie Stackhouse novels for a little while, though I was more for the detective fiction aspects than for the supernatural ones.” 

“My suggestions for fun vampire media are The Lost Boys, Salem’s Lot, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Fright Night which is one of my personal favorite vampire films.”

“Either the book or movie of Interview With The Vampire. I’m obsessed with them.” 

The Story of Mercy Brown

If you listen to the podcast Lore by Aaron Mahnke, you should be familiar with this story. The very first episode told the story of Mercy Brown, “New England’s Last Vampire.” Just like the pandemic of today, not much was known about Consumption (also known as Tuberculosis), how it spread, or even what caused it back in the 18th and 19th century. One of the most popular horror writers, Edgar Allan Poe, lost his mother and his wife to Tuberculosis which influenced his work. 
In 1883, George Brown, a farmer residing in Exeter, Rhode Island, lost his wife to the disease. Six months later, he lost his daughter, also named Mary, to the disease as well. If that was not enough, his only son Edwin, fought the disease for roughly two years. He packed up and left for Colorado to see if the change of location would offer him some help fighting Consumption. After a year and a half, Edwin grew homesick and with no signs of change, he returned to Rhode Island. His health continued to decline. 
However, it was George’s daughter, Mercy, who died of the same disease in January of 1882, and in March, it did not look like Edwin had much longer to live. In small knit communities, surrounded by family and friends, people talk and that’s exactly what happened in Exeter. Gossip that it was someone previously deceased that was doing this to George Brown’s family. How else could they explain 3 deaths in less than 10 years? It had to be a vampire. 
George finally agreed to allow the townsfolk to exhume the bodies of his family members to find out which one of them was causing this to happen. The wife and daughter who shared their names were found to be no threat. Properly decomposed, all that was left in the grave were their bones. 
8 weeks after Mercy had passed away, they inspected her body. There are no defining facts to whether she was immediately buried after death, or stored in a crypt until the ground could thaw enough to be buried. However, many people believe the latter, because when they examined the body, Mercy was still pretty intact and blood was still found in her veins. A doctor by the name of Harold Metcalf did not believe that there was anything wrong due to the fact she was just recently dead and that the winter weather would preserve the body longer, but the townsfolk believed otherwise.
They cut out Mercy’s heart and lungs and burned them in a fire. Then, they mixed those ashes with water and returned to Edwin making him drink it. This was not the first time the process was done in hopes to cure an ailing victim of a vampire, but it was the last. Edwin died 2 months later in May. Their attempt to save George’s son had failed. 
Mercy Brown was buried again after the event. Her body rests in Chestnut Hill Cemetery. Newspaper clippings of the story of Mercy Brown were found amongst Bram Stoker’s research for Dracula, but it is not known how much of the story influenced the book.

Want more vampire goodness? For our own “interview with the vampire,” Writing Across the Lines suggests checking out our post where we interviewed Dacre Stoker, the great-grand-nephew of Bram Stoker. You can find it here.

What are your thoughts? Anything new that you learned? Do you believe in vampires? Happy Haunting! -K.

P.S. Shout out to my 11th grade English teacher, Mrs. Quick, who helped fuel my vampire-loving and obsessed high school self by letting me not only let me write my summer reading essay on Interview With The Vampire by Anne Rice (which was not on the required book list), but also my Junior year essay (which we needed to pass to go onto senior year) on Vlad the Impaler and how he was most definitely an actual vampire. She also lent me her personal collection of vampire books on a weekend, which she only lent them out for 24 hours (never on a weekend) to anyone else…or so she said.