Halloween may be over, but that doesn’t mean that ghastly facts regarding American history can be forgotten just as quickly.

I discovered a series on Netflix called “Mysteries at the Monument” that details interesting facts regarding historical monuments all over the country. Some of them are scandalous, odd and others are more… well, bloodstained.

The first episode of this series opened with a story like no other, focusing on a gravestone of a young woman named Mercy Brown placed in The Baptist Church in Exeter. In the late 19th century, the Brown family from Exeter, R.I., was plagued with “consumption,” or what we now know as tuberculosis. The mother, Mary Brown, passed away from the disease in 1883 shortly followed by the eldest daughter, Mary Olive. The series of events slowly began to churn when the second daughter, Mercy, became deathly ill with tuberculosis as well. She perished in 1892 at the age of 19.

While the multiple deaths from the Brown family were tragic enough, the only son and last remaining child, Edwin, fell ill from the perilous sickness months after Mercy’s passing. The string of illnesses didn’t bring sympathy from concerned friends and neighbors, however. It brought suspicion and contempt. How come this particular family was plagued by such a confusing and elusive disease? Have they been targeted in some sort of unholy fashion?

We all know where this was going… that’s right, vampires. Concerned citizens of Exeter were convinced that a vampire was behind these string of deaths, sucking the life form from otherwise healthy people and wreaking havoc from beyond the grave. Not only that, but the supposed vampire was a diseased member of the family as well.

Grief-stricken and backed into a corner, the father, George Brown, allowed the bodies of his wife and two daughters to be exhumed. Villagers and the local doctor exhumed all of the bodies, and found nothing wrong with Mary Brown and Mary Olive’s bodies. They had decomposed as expected, and looked exactly like old forgotten corpses.

Mercy’s casket was kept above ground in a crypt. Villagers were shocked to find that upon opening her casket, her body was turned over on its side. When they turned her back forward, they were horrified to see that Mercy still looked young and beautiful. Her body hadn’t decomposed despite being in the crypt for months. The local doctor examined her body and found blood in her heart. This was the final nail in the coffin, and the villagers took action.

Under the influence of paranoia and ancient folklore, they cut out her heart and mixed it with water. It was a macabre concoction that Mercy’s brother Edwin consumed in order to be “cured,” as it was believed drinking a vampire’s heart would erase all negative energy. It didn’t, of course, and Edwin died shortly afterwards. The rest of Mercy’s heart was burned in a fire, and what was left of her body was laid back to rest.

The story of Mercy Brown spread like wildfire throughout the United States and even Europe. Mercy inspired many ghoulish and fantastic literary works. Newspaper clippings of the incident in Exeter were found in a folder kept by Bram Stoker, who wrote Dracula. In the novel, the Transylvanian vampire is shown stalking a young and beautiful Lucy Westenra, who slowly begins to suffer from sleepwalking and dementia. This is arguably a blatant homage to Mercy Brown and the symptoms of tuberculosis that the townspeople of Exeter associated with dark happenings.

Looking back, we all know now that tuberculosis is highly contagious. While we do not have issues with tuberculosis anymore in the modern era due to vaccinations, people of the late 19th and early 20th century were not as lucky. It has also been concluded that the reason Mercy’s body was still fresh and otherwise “healthy” was because the temperature was freezing during the months her body was kept in the crypt. She was essentially frozen in time, and her body had yet to decompose.

I could imagine an event this crazy happening in the 16th century, but I struggle to wrap my mind around the fact that this witchcraft mentality existed less than three decades before the Roaring ’20s.

This confusing and intriguing part of history may often be swept under the rug because it is the perfect example of paranoia, but it is bizarre events like these that keep people wanting more. Mysteries at the Monument did an awesome job at that, and I am looking forward to watching more episodes in the future.