With no other hope to save his family, and urged by friends and neighbors who feared the spreading affliction, Brown turned to a folk remedy. Under the direction of the medical examiner from Wickford, Dr. Harold Metcalf, the bodies of Mary Eliza, Mary Olive and Mercy Lena were uncovered in search of the "vampire" or evil spirit that inhabited one of the corpses and was draining the life from the living family members. The mother and eldest daughter were nothing but skeletons, but Mercy, who had been dead for only two months, had liquid blood in her heart, which those in attendance interpreted as "fresh" blood. Despite Dr. Metcalf's assurances that the condition of Mercy's corpse was unremarkable, attendants at the scene burned her heart to ashes on a nearby rock. To complete the cure, Edwin was said to have drunk the ashes in water shortly thereafter. But he must have been too far gone, for he died two months later.

Text © Dr. Michael Bell