Mercy Brown Incident: Vampires or Pure Coincidence?

Author: Sebastian Garland

Vampires are undead creatures who drink a person’s blood to feed their hunger, many people believed that these creatures live among us. Acting as which they are normal people. People called anything that looked out of place, a monster. So, it would not be completely shocking to mistake a scientific accident for a monster. A common illness that was seen as an act of a vampire was tuberculosis, which mostly ended in death during the 19th century. The most common symptom was that it made you slowly lose weight, which could be related to what happens when your blood gets ‘sucks’ out of your body. Which most people think vampires cause on their victims.

A person who fell to the illness of tuberculous during the 1880s.

One of the first actions of the belief of the vampires is the Mercy Brown case. It started with the Brown family, George and Mary Brown, moving to this new town, Exeter, Rhode Island. The village thought the family was normal and did not think anything about it. Till the day Mary Brown, Mercy’s mother, fell ill with tuberculosis during the 1800s. It caused her to die, then her eldest daughter happened to have the same fate. Then the action happened again with her son, but he happened to pull the lucky stick and survived the illness. Finally, Mercy fell ill and had the same future as her sister and mother. The sudden rounds of death felt odd to the villagers, and they started to be a little more interested into the family’s personal business. 

Mercy Brown’s grave as of modern day sights. 

Mercy’s mother and sister were soon buried after their deaths, but Mercy was not due to the extreme coldness. So, the village decided to live Mercys body out and wait out till it became warmer. When the village turned their attention back to burying Mercy, they noticed something odd about her body. When the villagers opened her casket and saw she was in ‘perfect’ condition, no sights of decay and maybe even some growth within her hair as well as her fingernails. She was believed to still be alive due to the fact that she has change in a positive way and looked even better than when she died. They are though she was a vampire and was the cause of her family’s deaths. So, they decided to burn her body in order to ‘kill‘ the monster, saving her father and her brother from the same fate as the other two faced.

Mercy before she died, happy and safe.

It was later believed that Mercy was not a vampire but rather just a scientific action. That the cold from the weather caused Mercy body’s to be left in a stable state and was not able to start decaying because she was basically frozen in time. Which counteracted the effect of decaying, but the growth of the nails and hairs has yet to be proven against, but it shown that stories sometimes change which could be mean that someone just added that detail to the story to make it a little more interesting than before.

Works cited: 

Crystal Ponti. “When New Englanders Blamed Vampires for Tuberculosis” A&E Television Networks, October 25, 2019, https://www.history.com/news/vampires-tuberculosis-consumption-new-england. October 26, 2023

J.W. Ocker. “Explore the dark side of New England with these spooky sites” Boston Globe Media Partners, October 5, 2013, https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/travel/2013/10/05/explore-dark-side-new-england-with-spooky-sites/bV8m5801urtdRqf4tdQPjN/story.html

Staff Writer. “Mercy Brown, The Rhode Island Vampire Lady.” Any Mystery, December 14, 2022, https://anymystery.com/mercy-brown-the-rhode-island-vampire-lady/.

Links for Further Research:

The Mercy Brown Vampire Story, https://www.historicmysteries.com/mercy-brown/ This article written by Doug MacGowan, who writes a lot of stories about historic true crimes, goes into detail about the actions that took place before, during and after the deaths of the Brown family.

Why The Mercy Brown Case Remains One Of History’s Craziest “Vampire” Incidents, https://allthatsinteresting.com/mercy-brown-vampire This article published by all that’s interesting, a website that writes a lot of facture but interesting stories, goes into details as well as the facts that stand base on the Mercy Brown case.

The story of Mercy Brown: New England’s last vampire, https://www.thevintagenews.com/2017/01/16/the-story-of-mercy-brown-new-englands-last-vampire/ This article written by Marjia Georgevska shows a different theory on what happened after Mercy died and shows aspect that the first theory might of

Ijiraq

 By J. Richardson

The legend of Ijiraq is one of the many stories that came from Inuit culture and mythology. In Noel K. McDermott’s dissertation, titled Unikkaaqtuat: Traditional Inuit Stories, Inuit elders tell stories told to them as children about monsters like Ijiraq, Amajurjuit, and Ulikappaalit. These stories were to teach children morals and how to behave.

Ijiraq is a shape-shifting monster. It can take the shape of any beast. Most of the time it appears as a caribou from the waist up with human legs. Whatever shape it takes, it always has red, vertical eyes and a vertical mouth. Ijiraq is said to kidnap children and wipe the memories of those who encounter the monster.

 

Ijiraqu Sculpture by Rachel Young, 2019

According to Morgan Bentham, there are different interpretations of the story of Ijiraq but one thing remains the same: when people encounter him, they either go missing or forget their interactions with it. If someone does encounter the monster, they should quickly tell someone else of their interactions because their memory will soon fade away. It’s believed that Ijiraq came about when Inuit people went hunting too far north and got trapped between two worlds: the world of the living and of the dead. When in our world, it lives in a cursed forest in Freeman’s Cove, Canada. Ijiraq is believed to have been sighted here. Bentham tells the story of a hunter named Buott. Boutt was hunting in Freeman’s Cove, an area he was very familiar with. While hunting, he became very disoriented and lost his way back to his camp site. Boutt believed he encountered Ijiraq because Ijiraq is known to disorient and wipe the memory of people who come close to him.

There is not a true explanation of Ijiraq’s existence and origin. Bentham says that Ijiraq are lost Inuit hunters. Inuit people have different variations of the legend of Ijiraq. The most scientific explanation has to deal with the landscape of where Ijiraq is traditionally associated with. According to Megan Roberts of Atlas Obscura, deposits of toxic sour gas, sulphur smoke, and geothermal activity in the area might create a rising vapor that is capable of causing disorientation and hallucinations. 

Works Cited:

Bentham, Morgan. "Ijiraq." Leap into the Void with Me,  9 Apr. 2016, https://leapintothevoidwithme.wordpress.com.

McDermott, Noel K. Unikkaaqtuat: Traditional Inuit Stories. Dissertation, Queen’s University, 2015.

Roberts, Megan. Bastards of the Bestiary: Eight Mythological Creatures Too Gross, Sad, or Monstrous to Be Loved. Atlas Obscura, 4 Mar. 2014.

Young, Rachel [@blackrabbitscuplture]. Ijiraq Sculpture. 27 Sep. 2019, Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/blackrabbitsculpture/?hl=en


Links for further research:

“Unikkaaqtuat: Traditional Inuit Stories.”

https://qspace.library.queensu.ca/bitstream/handle/1974/12806/McDermot?sequence=3

Author Noel K. McDermott gives information of the Inuit people and their traditions. He also interviews Inuit people as they tell stories of their childhood and the stories they were told about Ijiraat and other beings

Ijiraq

https://warriorsofmyth.fandom.com/wiki/Ijiraq

This wiki page gives detailed information of Ijiraq including its appearance, origin, behavior, and abilities.

“Who are the Ijiraq? Shapeshifters in Inuit Mythology”

https://mythologyplanet.com/ijiraq-inuit-mythology/

This article gives details of ijiraq such appearance and abilities. Inuit culture and mythology is also discussed.