Teaser: Was Mercy Brown a Vampire?

Koji 0:34
Hello and welcome to The Unofficial Official Story. My name is Koji, and I am the expert in quotes, of course.

Dwayne 0:42
Yes and I'm Dwayne, the funny cynic.

Jennifer 0:45
And I'm Jennifer the curious one. In each episode we're going to take a look at the paranormal, conspiracies, unexplained phenomena, cryptids, and even true crime.

Dwayne 0:54
...And by the end we’ll tell you what really happened.

Koji 0:58
This season, we'll be covering a diverse range of topics from Bigfoot, 9/11, Roswell...

Jennifer 1:04
...disembodied feet. The connection between the CIA, Contras, crack, and gangs, and even fun topics like did Babe Ruth really call his shot?

Dwayne 1:14
So please please please please, how many times I gotta say, please, I'm begging you, subscribe to The Unofficial Official Story, wherever you normally get your podcasts from.

Jennifer 1:23
We'll be launching in a week with our first episode, but before we do, here's a preview of our show.

Koji 1:29
We will be taking a look at the 19th century American vampire scare. Today, the day this teaser is being released March 17, is the anniversary of when Mercy Brown’s body was exhumed because people in her family, the crazy people, and her community, also crazy, worried she might be, drumroll, a vampire.

Dwayne 1:52
It takes a village to decide someone's a vampire. Also in 1892 in Exeter, Rhode Island, George Brown's wife, oldest daughter, and then his youngest daughter, Mercy Brown, all died from what we now know was tuberculosis.

Koji 2:05
That’s a lot of people dying.

Dwayne 2:07
Yeah, they didn't know what was, what it was, but it was just, just your market brand, just a garden variety, tuberculosis. Some context though, back then, when there were multiple deaths in a family and it was, it was sometimes seen as a sign that the undead relatives were preying upon the family.

Koji 2:23
Or it could just be that they were all infecting each other, right?

Dwayne 2:26
Right, they didn't think they knew how infection worked.

Koji 2:29
Yes, actually I think the doctors, learning about washing their hands wasn't for like another... Well, actually it was happening already by this time, so what's their excuse.

Dwayne 2:36
Right, it’s just weird like we have two options here, we can wash our hands or dig up a body.

Jennifer 2:44
And obviously, like in the spirit of our show digging up a body is way more fun. So George became worried about his son Edwin's diminishing health and decided to dig up Mercy in the hopes of saving his last remaining child.

Koji 2:57
Because of course that’s what he would do.

Dwayne 2:58

Makes total sense. Yeah, totally.

Koji 2:59
That’s what I would do.

Jennifer 3:00
Oh my gosh, I mean, well maybe he's onto something right.  So when he dug up Mercy's body, it showed very little sign of decomposition though.

Koji 3:11
And I should mention, this was in the middle of winter, and she wasn't buried underground because you couldn't dig underground. So, I mean it makes sense because it's frozen.

Dwayne 3:17
Seek and you shall find. But yeah, go ahead.

Jennifer 3:20
Wow, that means bodies are preserved for quite some time, hmm, in there, and apparently she still had blood in her heart. I don’t know...

Koji 3:27
Which is not uncommon, I don’t think.

Jennifer 3:29
So freaky. Anyway so, according to George and the village. These are both huge signs that she had been psychically feeding on Edwin from the grave.

Koji 3:41
Psychically, not the same as going in and biting the neck, like in a Dracula movie this is a different kind of...

Dwayne 3:47
It was like a WiFi blood, kind of thing.

Koji 3:50
Exactly. It's the 5G so I guess it's like the 1G right.

Jennifer 3:54
There you go, yes some 5G 1G Wi Fi vampire stuff going on. 1G back in 1890s right. So George, then burned the heart and liver and fed it to his son, which is--I couldn't believe that part it’s so gross.

Dwayne 4:12
Which is really cruel because everyone knows that Edwin hated liver.

Koji 4:14
Yeah, well actually they made a smoothie of it so it's like, it's the original Jamba Juice. So when you drink Jamba from the future, this is what you’re drinking.

Jennifer 4:28
You guys, this is so like, oh my gosh, I, I don't even know...I wonder if Edwin was willingly accepting this concoction or was he forcing it down and mad at his dad.

Koji 4:38
I think he knew about it, I'm pretty sure he knew about it. But I don't know for sure, I mean, we'd have to ask Edwin.

Jennifer 4:43
But unfortunately, even with all that it didn't work and Edwin died anyway two months later.

Koji 4:50
So Dwayne. What do you think really happened, was Mercy Brown really a vampire feeding on Edwin?

Dwayne 4:56
Okay, so it's a little out there my theory. First of all, I want to say I'm not addressing the vampire thing, because that was just sort of a group of people with a weird theory that doesn't track, or it tracked for them, then, because they didn't know any better. But I do want to address the whole her body not decomposing situation. And so, I know she was buried on a family plot. So my thought is, someone really sort of like, took a shine to her when she was alive...someone fancied her as they would say in the 1800s. Okay. And they fancied her and then she passed away, but they couldn't let that fancying of her go if I'm saying that correctly. And whoever this person was, initially, I thought it could have been a groundskeeper, but she was buried in a family plot, so it might have been a young suitor. A young guy who was trying to court young Mercy. But whoever it was, be a suitor or someone who, maybe their lawn guy who took care of their lawn, someone, someone dug her, and unfortunately she passed away. They couldn't live with that result they weren't okay with that result. So they extended her, not her life, but her, they preserved her body. They maybe knew about formaldehyde before anyone else did. They knew about the cold, and they kind of kept her alive and sort of had this love affair that they weren't able to have when she was alive.

Koji

Can you just say it.

Dwayne

Well they didn't keep her alive, they kept...okay. What I'm saying is this person, sort of did a necrophilia kind of thing, they, they hooked up with Mercy, okay.

Jennifer 6:32
After she was dead.

Dwayne 6:34
After she was dead, but to be fair to them it was their plan to do it when she was alive, just, she died before they could, you know, close the deal.

Koji 6:41
How do you sort of do a necrophilia thing? I mean, do you either do it or you don’t. I mean I have no experience in it, I’m just thinking there's like a...it’s like virginity right, you can’t...

Unknown 6:52
I think you’re right, I think you're right. I think they did it, I think. Who knows, I mean, I think they did. If they were found out they would say they didn't. They would lie and say, you know, we just went to second base, so, I just went to second base. But I think this person loved her enough to go all the way. She was 19, probably a looker for the time. And I think that explains the decomposition. Now this person couldn't come forward and say, Oh, hey guys, she's not a vampire. I just been, me and her have been dating. They couldn't say that so they just sort of let the vampire thing run. And so there's one person in Exeter, Rhode Island who in 1892 he knew what time it was.

Jennifer 7:32
I wonder how soon after he did the deed, pretty quickly, day of, that week.

Dwayne 7:38
Yeah I’m thinking fairly, fairly soon, yeah.

Koji 7:40
I mean you only get one chance you might as well do it quick.

Dwayne 7:43
And they didn't have, they're not checking for fingerprints back then or DNA, which creates another visual I don't want to get into. But I just think that this guy, I’m thinking it was a guy, just not too many hotties in Exeter in 1892.

Koji7:58
Do you think he said Mercy, really loud. I want to hook up with a girl, or a woman, excuse me with a name Mercy, just so I could say, mercy.

Jennifer 8:08

Oh Mercy.

Koji 8:09
I think so. And then when they took her, when they unfortunately took her heart out, and you know… He still was kind of religious so he wanted to her to go to heaven so at that point he said, Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy.

Koji 8:25
Jennifer, what do you think happened.

Jennifer 8:28
What I think happened is, first of all, George Brown never really liked Mercy Brown in the first place because they couldn't really afford a fifth child. And they were already kind of poor, they were a farming family, and on top of it all, she wasn't that into farming. So, you know, when she was a little kid, he was trying to teach her how to till the soil and milk the cows, and she just wasn't into it. She seemed like she wanted to be a writer or a painter or something that was totally blasphemous at the time.

Koji 8:57
God no writers that sounds terrible. Don’t be a writer. That's like my number one piece of advice for my son.

Jennifer 9:05
I admire writers I love you guys. So yeah, George Brown felt the same way as you. So because of that he didn't have a great relationship with Mercy Brown and so when she was dead of course he was happy about that. But then, when Edwin was sick and couldn't be saved, he wanted to further desecrate the memory of Mercy, and so that's why he dug her up, cut out her heart and liver and fed it to his son. Because that would be the most, that felt like to him, the best way to preserve his son's life.

Koji 9:43
It’s almost like two F-you’s right. One is like F-you to the dead daughter, right, and then the second one was, well, I guess there's no two F-you’s...

Dwayne 9:52
If I could save Edwin and feed him Mercy’s heart. It's like a win win at that point.

Jennifer 9:57
Right yeah because that's really bad, is to not only dig up the body, but to actually take out body parts and then...or they burned these body parts and then fed them to his other kid, which is really…

Koji 10:10

Jamba Juice.

Dwayne 10:11
In your scenario I just picture like a priest or a doctor or someone who was maybe a little more learned than the other people and telling and saying to George, George this, I don't think this is gonna work. And just him going let’s get her heart out anyway, let's go for it.

Jennifer 10:28

Oh man.

Koji 10:29

Well I think personally I think you guys are both wrong. I think she was actually a vampire. You know the bigger issue though is that George messed up. He just took too long, he wasn't willing to go the distance and do what was, what he needed to do, which was dig up his family, and kill them. Right, so I think that that was the mistake. But he was motivated, not because he was trying to save Edwin, but he was really just bitter. That's what I think, he was just bitter that none of these vampires, these psychic vampires were coming after him. His dead wife, his dead children, Mercy, They weren't coming after him to suck his blood, he wasn't getting sick with tuberculosis.

Dwayne 11:09
Right so like they didn't want to bring him with them for this ride and after life.

Koji 11:15
Yeah and it's like a clueless dude who, who doesn't realize everyone his family hates him. Until this moment, until… And so he really wanted to save Edwin in spite the rest of the vampire clan.

Dwayne 11:25
Right.

Koji 11:26
That's what it was all about. It wasn't to save Edwin, it wasn't because he cared for Edwin or he hated Mercy or anything like that. It was really just, he was bitter, you know, and when we've talked before you mentioned it's the reverse Twilight, right. Twilight’s about--

Dwayne 11:43
--If the vampire loves you so much that they don't want to convert you. They don't want you to have eternal life because it's just not the way to go. They don't want to take away your humanity, and what do you call them when someone can die your, your mortality. But I like your scenario because you're saying if they loved you, they would make you a vampire, or they would kill you.

Jennifer 12:01
So was Edwin going to be a vampire?

Koji 12:03
Yeah no Edwin was going to be a vampire. That's why he was sick. That's why he was dying.

Jennifer 12:07
Okay right, okay to join, okay, and so...

Koji 12:08
And George was like, what the hell. He just wanted to, he wanted to become a vampire. It was just, it's a real heartfelt story in my opinion, really. I feel bad for George, even, you know 100, 200 years later. It just feels like, he could have been a vampire, a psychic vampire. And incidentally, there is a case for psychic vampires right. There are emotional vampires that exist who happen to always come when you're, you know when you're, when… Like they always come in to cause drama everywhere they go. Like I have this ex girlfriend that every time I was happy, she would just suck that energy out of me and make me feel miserable and I like hated my life. Or those same people will have friends, who come to me at like two o'clock in the morning and be like crying and I'm trying to help her or him. And then like, they don't call me for like months because they don’t care about...

Dwayne 12:54
And your neck would hurt.

Koji 13:02

And then I got tuberculosis which is a really good sign.

Jennifer 13:03

Oh my gosh, yeah.

Dwayne 13:04
Yeah I have people who, unbeknownst to them because I don't know if they mean to do it, but they tend to call me when I'm being productive, when I'm in the middle of something. And I have other people who their timing, they have no idea what I'm doing, but people who just call me when I'm in a chill vibe when I'm, when it's okay to talk. And then other people, it's just like clockwork, they, they only call me when I'm doing something. And I don't blame them because they, they couldn't know but then sometimes I think do they know on a subconscious level, do they know?

Koji 13:32
No they are psychic vampires, they totally know it's all intentional. So whoever they are, you’re psychic vampires, I'm sorry.

Jennifer 13:38
Yeah, their energy’s a real thing. Energy is something that is exchanged you know it surpasses walls, so there's something to it, you know. And I believe there's been studies about this too right.

Koji 13:49
Yeah there are actually, yeah this is a real thing. I mean we've been joking a lot but this is like, emotional vampires are real. They do, they do suck people's energy, and they keep people dry. They get people like dried from all their, all this tension and...

Dwayne 14:00
Is it because they don't want to see you prosper, or maybe they don't want to see you leave them maybe.

Koji 14:04
I don't think it's about that, I think it's more just they feed off that, that energy of causing drama or sucking the energy out of you. You know, because a lot of times it's, it's that person who, you know, you give so much you give so much, and then they don't give anything back to you. So it's just like there taking and taking and taking.

Jennifer 14:20
Yeah they thrive on, on energy and power and stuff...something.

Koji 14:27
Or it’s that person in the office who just causes like little things that happen everywhere, and just kind of changes the atmosphere.

Dwayne 14:32
Drama.

Koji14:32
And kind of feeds off that energy of like, kind of, the people being angry at each other kind of. There's tension that kind of blows up and they're kind of in the middle of it, but not really because they're not actively causing it, but they are underneath everything. So, what do you guys think. Which story do we like best.

Jennifer 14:50
So it's either that George wants to be part of the vampire world and wants energy, wants to be an energy sucker too.

Dwayne 14:59
Right in which case we are saying she was a vampire. That's, that's one version, yes.

Jennifer 15:03
Okay, another version is mine, was that Mercy was the hated child. And so, George Brown wanted to desecrate her body.

Koji 15:14
Yeah, and Dwayne's was that there's some necrophilia going on. Or not some there’s just straight necrophilia going on.

Jennifer 15:20
Yeah we need to just get to the, did it happen or it didn’t. It did, it’s just so taboo...

Dwayne 15:24
They were necking but it wasn't that kind of necking.

Koji 15:31
So many great vampire jokes. Okay Dwayne, which one do you like best, which one.

Dwayne 15:37
You know what’s weird and it's so it's so crazy Koji, like, I would never go with just straight down the middle that she actually just was a vampire. But that's the one I like. And I'm okay with the George, I mean because that works, even if George didn't believe it. But I'm okay with that too, with George kind of being feeling he was left out of the party. You're going to take Edwin, no one's gonna come for me, and she actually was a vampire. Because here we are 120 years later, 130 years later, 129 years later...

Koji 16:09
That was good math.

Dwayne 16:10
Yeah 129 years later and there's still many things we don't understand. So we don't understand everything, they didn't understand at that point. You know there's still things that we still don't understand, so I'm okay with, with that theory. That, that maybe she really was a vampire, so I like that one.

Koji 16:26
Jennifer?

Jennifer 16:27
I think I like that one too because I want to believe that there are vampires and as we discussed, there is a type of vampire. So, and, according to this story there was no bite marks and teeth, going in necks and stuff so I like to think of this as, yeah, Koji’s story is my fav because I want to believe it.

Dwayne 16:45
Absolutely and you know, without getting too personal, I've known people who've died. In my family, there's a situation, I won't go into complete details but there's a place in a house, in front of a house, and two people have died there in the exact same fashion. And like 30 years apart, you know what I mean. Which is kind of crazy and I don't know if that makes the first person a vampire but I just, I do think there's some, energy wise, there’s just something weird happening there, you know what I mean.

Koji 17:14
Maybe somebody needs to dig up a body and check it out and take out the heart and liver and take it to Jamba Juice.

Dwayne 17:23
I do like liver but I don't like human burnt liver that's very old. But I like regular liver yeah I’ll eat regular liver.

Koji 17:34
So personally I mean I, I love necrophilia, I mean that sounds terrible.

Jennifer 17:39
That theory you mean.

Unknown 17:41
I love like when I, when I listen to true crime or when I watch true crime stuff whenever the serial killer hooks up with the dead bodies...that makes that whole thing way more interesting. Like Jeffrey Dahmer is not as interesting if he's not having sex with...

Dwayne 17:53
That's true, that's true. It's horrible, but then it just takes, it takes his, his crazy, whatever he's got going on to another level.

Koji 18:01
Exactly yeah so it makes it more interesting. But with that said, I think emotional vampires are really interesting and I do think that it's a tragic love story about George and his family and I'm going to go with that one too. So, to me, that is the official story.

Dwayne 18:18

Word.

Jennifer 18:19
Yay. Well what do you guys all think. Chime in and comment, send in a message, let us know what you think.

Dwayne 18:28
Tune in on March 25 for our first episode where we'll answer the question: Did Eisenhower really meet with a group of tall Nordic looking aliens?

Koji

I don't know we'll see, we'll see. Bye guys.

Dwayne

We’ll see, yes. Bye guys.

Jennifer
Bye.

Koji

Thank you. Sayonara.