Chestnut Hill Cemetery (Mercy Brown)

Chestnut Hill Cemetery in Exeter is the burial place of Mercy Lena Brown, a 19-year-old who died of tuberculosis in January 1892. In the belief that a dead family member was draining the life of the living, a belief widespread in rural New England at the time, her brother Edwin was ill and relatives exhumed the bodies of Mercy, her mother and her sister that March; her heart was burned and its ashes given to Edwin as medicine, and he died soon after. The case was widely reported and is now the best-known New England vampire panic, and visitors leave flowers and report seeing strange blue lights in the cemetery. The real story is of a grieving family and a deadly disease, and the grave is treated with respect.