an american vampire ( the brown vampire)

Dear readers

there are strange chapters in american history that are not told in textbooks or are local stories. these tales are strange, creepy and somestimes funyy but always a trip to the DFTE county here is one such tale the vampire of Exeter


During the 1800s, consumption, or pulmonary tuberculosis, was credited with one out of four deaths. Consumption could kill you slowly over many years, or the disease could come quickly and end your life in a matter of weeks. The effects were devastating on families and communities. Dr. Bell explained that some of the symptoms of consumption are the gradual loss of strength and skin tone. The victim becomes pale, stops eating, and literally wastes away. At night, the condition worsens because the patient is lying on their back, and fluid and blood may collect in the lungs. During later stages, one might wake up to find blood on one's face, neck, and nightclothes, breathing is laborious, and the body is starved for oxygen.

Dr. Bell feels there is a direct connection between vampire cases and consumption. He said, "The way you look personally is the way vampires have always been portrayed in folklore -- like walking corpses, which is what you are, at least in the later stages of consumption. Skin and bones, fingernails are long and curved, you look like the vampire from Nosferatu."

Consumption took its first victim within the Brown family in December of 1883 when Mercy's mother, Mary Brown, died of the disease. Seven months later, the Browns' eldest daughter, Mary Olive, also died of consumption. The Browns' only son, Edwin, came down with consumption a few years after Mary Olive's death and was sent to live in the arid climate of Colorado to try and stop the disease. Late in 1891, Edwin returned home to Exeter because the disease was progressing -- he essentially came home to die. Mercy's battle with consumption was considerably shorter than her brother's. Mercy had the "galloping" variety of consumption -- her battle with the disease lasted only a few months. Mercy was laid to rest in Chestnut Hill Cemetery behind the Baptist church on Victory Highway.

After Mercy's funeral, her brother Edwin's condition worsened rapidly, and their father, George Brown, grew more frantic. Mr. Brown had lost his wife and two of his daughters, and now he was about to lose his only son. Science and medicine had no answers for George Brown, but folklore did. For centuries prior to Mercy Brown there have been vampires. The practice of slaying these "walking dead" began in Europe -- some of the ways people dealt with vampires was to exhume the body of the suspect, drive a stake through the heart, rearrange the skeletal remains, remove vital organs, or cremate the entire corpse. All of these rituals involve desecrating the mortal remains. The practice happened with enough regularity that the general population felt it could cure, or at the very least help, whatever evil was overwhelming them.

So much death had plagued the Brown family that poor George Brown probably felt he was cursed in some way. It wouldn't take too many chats with those empathizing with George's plight to come up with a radical idea to stop the death. Maybe the Brown family was under vampire attacks from beyond the grave. Was Mercy Brown the vampire, or was it Mercy's mother or sister? George Brown was willing to dig up the body of his recently deceased daughter, remove her heart, burn it, and feed the ashes to his son because he felt he had no other choice. but sadly it had no effect and edward died. but the detahs stop and Mercy supposly attacks stop and the family return to peace. The story of Exeter becamne so infamous someone stole her grave and supposly her ghost is sighted in the graveyard wandering unable to rest but thankfully not drinking the blood of hapless victems.

atricle from http://www.ghostvillage.com/legends/2003/legends20_06142003.shtml

findings

what had happen? had Mercy Brown became a undead ghoul feasting on her family or had George Brown turn to folklore after medical science had failed him and he burned the corpose in a feeble, half-insane attempt to save his son. had the town felled victem to a vampire panic like the salem witch trials who knows? but the story of Mercy Brown american vampire is another tale not found in a textbook but one told in DFTE

weird news

And in February, at Ohio's Mansfield Correctional Institution, two death-row inmates nearly succeeded in an elaborate escape attempt that the security supervisor, Maj. John Morrison, had been warned about a month earlier but apparently had ignored (as one of the inmates had been promoted to a trusted position two days before the escape). [Columbus Dispatch, 3-1-05]

More Ironies: (1) A large portion of the materials on plagiarism on the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh's Writing Center Web site was revealed in February to have been taken verbatim from Purdue University's Web page on plagiarism. (2) And a February report from the White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB), grading federal departments and agencies on five administrative performance criteria, concluded that the second-worst-performing agency was OMB. [University of Wisconsin Oshkosh Advance-Titan, 2-16-05] [Washington Post, 2-8-05]

In March, accused U.S. fugitive securities-swindler Frederick Gilliland, living on the lam in Canada, was tricked into coming back across the border, just for a free meal. A vengeful private investigator offered to buy Gilliland lunch at Brewster's in Point Roberts, Wash., and then alerted authorities, who intercepted the super-hungry Gilliland as he approached the restaurant. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 3-15-05]

news from www.newsoftheweird.com


love and peace,

Alex Stallwitz