When members of the Brown family began to die one after another, the superstitious inhabitants of the small town blamed one of the representatives of the family. Despite the fact that the girl has been dead for several months.
At the end of the 19th century, the small American town of Exeter in Rhode Island was engulfed in madness.
In the family of a local farmer, George Brown, there was a whole series of deaths. The first to die was his wife, Mary Eliza, and two years later their eldest daughter died.
The rest of the family seemed to be in good health until his eldest son Edwin fell ill. In 1891, the guy went to Colorado Springs, hoping to improve his health in a more favorable climate. However, this did not help, and less than a year later, Edwin returned to his hometown. His sister, Mercy Lena, died soon after.
The young man's condition was rapidly deteriorating and George Brown was desperate to be unable to help his son.
It was at this point that George became serious about the old superstitions about the undead. It was believed that if several people die in one family, it means that one of the deceased relatives is a vampire, taking the life force from the rest.
On the morning of March 17, 1892, George and several local residents exhumed the bodies of every family member who died of illness.
A physician who was present found that the nine-week-old remains of Mercy Brown were remarkably well preserved, with blood found in her heart and liver.
Promotional video:
The man no longer doubted - his daughter was a vampire!
Although the doctor reassured those present that Mercy's body had survived so well since she was buried in the winter, George was not deterred.
The girl's heart and liver were removed, burned, and the ashes were mixed with water. It was believed that by drinking such a drink, a person is freed from all demonic influence.
Alas, this supernatural cocktail did not help Edwin in the least - he died less than two months later.
And what is it really?
In fact, everything turned out to be much more prosaic. Tuberculosis was responsible for all the deaths in the Brown family.
Its symptoms, such as fatigue, coughing up blood and night fever, were perceived by the uneducated people of the time as almost signs of obsession.
In addition, the doctors of the 19th century did not know how to treat this disease, so most often all their recommendations were reduced to rest, walks and good nutrition. Not surprisingly, 80% of the cases were fatal.
This practice of digging up and burning "undead" continued in a number of European countries until the beginning of the 20th century. And only when the nature of tuberculosis became more clear, people began to relate to patients without any superstitious prejudices.