Exeter

Mercy Brown

The phantom of a nineteen-year-old girl, whose grave was violated, stalks this old family graveyard. Mercy

Brown died on January 18, 1892, but two months later her father, George Brown, dug up her grave believing

that she might be a vampire, responsible for the deaths of his wife and oldest daughter and the strange weak-

ness suffered by him and his son. Actually, they all suffered from tuberculosis, but George Brown believed a

vampire had sucked the life force from them. Brown and a group of friends, including the district medical

examiner, found evidence that Mercy had moved in her coffin. When the doctor removed her organs and

squeezed blood from her liver and heart, it was enough to convince Brown that his daughter was indeed a

vampire. To keep her from rising from the dead, he burned her heart and liver on a rock near the open grave.

Then he used the ashes as a medicine to cure himself and his son. The desperate remedy failed. Over the

years many witnesses have reported seeing a strange blue light that slowly moves through the cemetery. It

is believed to be Mercy's spirit, displaced from her violated grave.

Brown's grave is at the center of the small cemetery.

West Greenwich

Nellie L. Vaughn

A vampire is thought to be buried in West Greenwich in Rhode Island's Historical Cemetery #2. The grave belongs to Nellie L. Vaughn. She
died on May 31st, 1889 at the age of 19. When she died is not the reason that she is thought to be a vampire, but the inscription on her grave
does. It read, "I am waiting and watching for you." Some think that this myth of Nellie Vaughn being a vampire is because it is near Mercy
Brown's grave, which is also in Exeter Rhode Island, but was thought to be a vampire that came back killing most of her family. Nellie Vaughn
most likely died from tuberculosis like Mercy Brown, but no one really knows, But this does not explain the strange inscription on her grave,
and that nothing will grow on or near her grave, and that numerous witnesses have seen her ghost. Many people have seen a 19-year-old girl
sitting, or just barely floating above her grave in Victorian style dress, stroking her hair looking very agitated.

One of the more interesting experiences of the ghost of Nellie Vaughn was by a woman named Marlene, and her husband in 1993. She was
doing gravestone rubbings because she loved a lot of the stones at the Historical Cemetery number 2, and she brought her husband to teach
him how to do them. She was doing a stone, when her husband came over to her quite upset, and said that they were leaving. Her husband
said that he had heard a disembodied female voice whisper, "I am perfectly pleasant" and then and unseen entity scratched his face. (He also
had several red marks to prove it.) He vowed to never to return to the cemetery again. Many witnesses have claimed to hear a disembodied
voice coming from the vicinity of the grave saying, "I am perfectly pleasant." Marlene later returned to the cemetery a few times, which turned
out to be uneventful.

One time when Marlene returned to the cemetery, she met a young attractive woman, with modern attire on, who introduced herself as a
member of a local historical society. The woman walked Marlene around the cemetery telling her the meanings of the different pictures seen
on the gravestones. When they reached Nellie Vaughn's grave, Marlene asked her what the historian thought about the myth that Nellie was a
vampire. The historian became agitated and defensive and said, "Nellie was never a vampire. Nellie was never a vampire." The historian kept
repeating this phrase staring at Marlene, and Marlene grew uncomfortable so she left the cemetery quickly thinking that this woman was
crazy. A few seconds later she turned around to see if the woman was following her, and the historian had disappeared. The cemetery was
deserted, no one to be seen.

Some people think that the phrase on the gravestone means, "I am waiting and watching for you to join me in Heaven," and has just been
misinterpreted which started rumors. Because of repeated vandalisms, the headstone was taken and propped up against the stone wall near
the entrance of the cemetery, but was eventually removed by town officials. The grave site has been completely sealed over by cement, which
people have been chipping away thinking that there is the body of a vampire inside.

Bibliography: Hauck, Dennis. Haunted Places: Ghost abodes, sacred sites, UFO landings, and other supernatural locations. New York:
Penguin Book, 1994.

Rhode Island