The most unique aspect of this ghost story is that the scares have existed for almost 125 years, and the biggest panic took place all the way back in 1892. The tale began with the Brown family of Exeter, Rhode Island, which suffered numerous losses due to tuberculosis. The first to die was the mother, Mary, then the eldest daughter, Mary Olive, followed by another daughter, Mercy. The son, Edwin, got sick shortly afterward as well. Since there were so many deaths in a single family (and a whole lot of medical misinformation at the time), the town was thrown into a state of hysteria, believing one of the dead members was a vampire. The bodies of the deceased Browns were then exhumed and found to be decomposing at the expected rate – except for that of Mercy, whose body was still in a relatively unchanged condition. Mercy’s heart was removed and her body was burned, with some ashes mixed with water and given to the ill Edwin to drink in an attempt to save his life via wacky superstition. Not only did he die two months later, but the ghost of the desecrated Mercy has haunted the Chestnut Hill cemetery ever since. Countless visitors have reported hearing crying and seeing odd lights around Mercy’s grave, and many have felt a presence nearby, in addition to a host of other unexplainable phenomena. The cemetery is open to the public from dawn to dusk, but that doesn’t mean we’d recommend visiting the young girl’s grave, knocking on it three times, and asking, “Mercy L. Brown, are you a vampire?”
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