Dig Them Up! The Story of Mercy Brown and the New England Vampire Panic
“You must dig up their bodies,” they implore. “All must be exhumed.” Warily, George Brown stares at them. He refuses their requests. “I cannot desecrate the bodies of my wife and daughters.” “But you must,” the local villagers beg. Even a local doctor, Harold Metcalf of nearby Wickford, Rhode Island, is among them. “We must find out who among your wife and daughters is one of the undead.” For weeks the pressure on George Brown has been building. Not only is he forced to watch his son Edwin, aged twenty years old, wasting away from the pain and suffering of tuberculosis each day right before his very own eyes, but he also faces the fear and suspicion of every person in town. Everyday his neighbors from Exeter, Rhode Island, stop by the home of local farmer Geroge Brown and they reiterate their demand. They must dig up the bodies of his dead relatives and create an elixir from the ashes of their organs to stop the spread of the di...