- [Narrator] Ghosts, spirits and vampires, Rhode Island has had them all.

From the elusive specters of Benefit Street to America's most infamous folklore vampire, join us as we uncover the legends and facts behind Rhode Island's undead.

(creepy music) (lights buzzing) Why would most of us avoid walking through a cemetery at night, even if it were the shortest way home?

Could it be that we're afraid of the dead?

Afraid of ghosts?

Could it be that, instinctively, we fear the dead want to snatch life from the living?

Possibly, for its only natural to fear what we don't understand.

After all, what are ghosts?

- Ghosts are deceased people or deceased animals and they're basically trapped in between worlds.

Some of them actually don't even know they're dead.

Not all the ghosts are good, and many of them are not Casper, and as a matter of fact, probably none of them are like Casper.

- [Narrator] So then, what are ghosts like?

We'll begin with one kind that many people would even welcome.

- The one-time ghost shows up usually to a parent, a mother, as they die, perhaps on some foreign battlefield or at sea many thousands of miles away, wants to say goodbye to his mother.

They won't be seen again.

They just appear at their death.

They smile at the foot of the bed, and they're gone.

You have the replaying trauma of the ghost that has had some ghastly thing happen to him, perhaps involving its death.

This ghost does not look at you.

He doesn't converse.

He is replaying his trauma, and that is a very common type of ghost.

- A lot of the spirits, it appears that they don't even know what's going on in our present day world.

On the other hand, there are spirits that will actually look at you and interact with you.

Sometimes ghosts are actually solid looking, possibly as solid as you or I, and you may not know it, but you could be in a crowd of ghosts.

- [Narrator] There are also times when ghosts aren't visible at all, times when they manifest as sounds, emotions or smells.

- If you get one of these, the ones that smell so terribly, I fear these may be spirits hanging around.

They haven't gone on.

They want energy out of you.

And I have had sparks fly off my face in front of one of these terrible apparitions.

They're trying to manifest.

They're pulling energy out of you, so they can live again.

(creepy music) - [Narrator] We begin our ghost legends at one of Newport's most haunted locations, Belcourt Castle.

(creepy music) For besides its rich history and magnificent antiques, its rooms are filled with more than its fair share of ghosts.

- I woke up, sort of in the middle of the night, and I saw a man standing beside our bed, holding onto the canopy bed post.

At first I thought it was Donald, up out of bed, but when I moved my hand over in the bed, he was still there.

"Donnie, Don?

There's somebody standing beside the bed."

And his calm reply was, "Go to sleep."

(creepy music) Now I'm beginning to get very frightened, remembering that we live in a castle filled with the Tinney family collection of priceless antiques and we were going to be robbed and the man must have had a gun or a knife, but it was dark.

I couldn't see.

Then he turned around very slowly and walked about six feet past the foot of the bed right out through the wall.

I thought I had gone insane.

I was only 19 years old.

It was a shame.

The next experience that happened to me happened maybe four or five years later with Donald in the Grand Hall downstairs.

We were waiting for Mr. and Mrs. Tinney to come down the grand stair to join us and we were going to Providence at seven o'clock in the morning.

Then Donnie and I saw Mr. Tinney, at least we thought it was him, walk from the foyer in towards the ladies' room.

We continued our conversation, and it seemed like a long time that he was in there, doing what we didn't know.

And then Mrs. Tinney's aunt, Nellie Fuller, who also lived with us and was one of the original purchasers of Belcourt, came to the landing of the stair and called down to us impatiently.

"Donnie, Harle, they're waiting for you out in the car.

They've been out there for 15 minutes."

Donnie says calmly, "No, Aunt Nellie, Dad's in the ladies room.

Mom's in the car."

She said, "No, they're both in the car."

Well, Donnie and I looked at each other and he said, "Well, who's that in the ladies room then?"

He went to the ladies room.

I went to the car quickly and brought mom and dad back and Donnie was coming out of the ladies room with a puzzled look on his face.

There wasn't anybody in there.

Well, we started to search Belcourt and then Mr. Tinney said, "Did you hear anything?"

But we didn't hear anything.

Well, the ladies room door creaks.

No one could open it without noticing the sound.

So, without searching Belcourt completely, we left Aunt Nellie, who was almost 80 years old, all alone in the house with what we had labeled at that time the Monk.

- The ghost of the monk follows the statue of the monk.

If you put the statue up here, that's where the monk will show up in the room that it's in.

Someone once told me they saw the monk manifest when I was giving a talk about the monk.

They said "He was in back of you.

I saw him.

He was listening intently.

He seemed quite amused about what you were saying."

(laughs) - When I was doing research for my book "Haunted Newport," I was interviewing Harle Tinney, one of the owners, about the monk, and I was using my tape recorder, and it was very interesting what happened during that interview.

Every time I started talking about the monk, the tape recorder stopped.

Now, I have to tell you that I had new batteries, a new tape, and it shouldn't have stopped.

It was a fairly new recorder as well.

When we started talking about other topics, it started again.

So, you be the judge.

I think the monk had something to do with it.

- [Narrator] Seeing a ghost is frightening enough.

Now imagine encountering one that goes out of its way to scare you.

- One night at the end of March, probably eight years ago, seven years ago, I had forgotten something in the kitchen and needed to go over into the main house to get whatever it was, salt or sugar, I don't remember.

And on my way over, when I got to the grand stair, I noticed that the stained glass lights were on in the ballroom.

So I said, "Well, while I'm over here, I'll just walk into the ballroom and I'll turn out the lights," which I did without any effort.

As I was coming back in the pitch black, I heard the most ungodly scream that I had heard in my entire life, stopped dead in my tracks, it scared the living daylights out of me.

Then I got hold of myself and I said, "Oh, the residents on the third floor are playing a joke on me, but I would've heard somebody up there.

That's funny."

So I said, "Oh well."

And I went, started back into the apartment or on my mission to get the sugar again and I turned around and the stained glass lights were back on again and I said, "That's impossible.

I turned them out."

And I said, "Boy, this guy's really working with me.

He's got some electronic device that's turning the lights on and off."

So I said, "Well, I'm gonna turn them out."

So I walked back, and on the way back, the second scream was worse than the first one, but I got my brave thoughts on and I said, "I'm gonna turn out the lights anyway."

And I went in and I turned out the lights again and came back the third time in the pitch black, and the third scream was even more terrifying.

And I said, "That's not funny."

And I ran all the way into the house and turned, got to the telephone and called the third floor.

And when I called them, it wasn't them.

They weren't up there scaring me.

I knew that.

I brought Donald over with the dogs and we couldn't drag those dogs into the mansion.

They stopped right at the door to the staircase.

Donald then made the observation, since he's a sensitive, "Harle, not to worry, it's just the ghost."

(creepy music) We didn't know about the ghost, but Virginia will tell you.

- I first noticed the effect of the suit of armor when I came in one evening to shut the lights out at the end of the day.

And I heard this horrendous screech.

It started as a feral kind of growl, a snarl, and then it emanated from the head of this suit of ours 'cause I located the source of the sound right away and then it shrieked.

And I was just stopped dead my tracks in horror of what I had heard and what this was.

All in all, I've probably heard this five or six times.

If it's going to growl, it's most apt to do it in the month of March and usually in the presence of one or more teenage girls, which is interesting.

That's when it likes to growl.

However, failing teenage girls, it was exercising on me.

I note also that, before it does this, it raises the right arm like this.

And I've watched that.

When I see this arm go up, I know it's going to screech, and there's no agency that would put that into any kind of mechanization.

So, it does that on its own.

Whoever was in that suit of armor, when they were attacked, because there's a huge hole in the back of the helmet, it has been repaired.

But when we got the suit, it had this hole in the back of the head of the armor.

So, who was ever in there at the time of when they were struck, probably by a battle ax, obviously died in there.

And he's angry, understandably.

(creepy music) - [Narrator] A salt chair refers to a medieval throne, used by a lord of a manor or a king.

Usually, it was the only chair in the manor or castle that had a back.

Belcourt acquired two such chairs.

And whenever people go near them, strange things happen.

(tense music) - This is the French Gothic ballroom, and in this room, we have two chairs that are salt chairs.

One is English, the other's French, but both have energy in them that many people can tangibly feel.

What I will not do is tell you what they're going to feel.

Let that be the experience of the person who was invited to become acquainted with these chairs.

But we've had some dramatic things happen when people get near these chairs.

We have roped them off now, because we don't want accidents.

Both of them are capable of throwing someone across the room.

They have tremendous energy left in them.

We don't know who left it there, but it's there to be touched and felt.

Watch what you get when you go to antique stores.

You may bring home a ghost instead of a chair.

(creepy music) - [Narrator] There are many legends, but few people will ever know the true horror that befell the Princess Augusta.

- [Christopher] The Princess Augusta was a brigantine, a big, three masted, tall ship and she left from Rotterdam in Holland around 1732, 1733, on her way to America.

- [Narrator] Her passengers were Palatines going to settle in Philadelphia in hope of a better life, a life many of them would never know.

- On route, there were a lot of different tragedies that befell the Princess Augusta.

Probably the worst thing that happened is that the water supply turned out to be contaminated and a lot of people on board the ship got very, very sick and started to die.

- [Narrator] One of the people who died early on was reportedly the Captain, George Long.

Under the command of the first mate, Andrew Brook, the ship got seriously lost.

- By the time they should have made landfall, they were actually heading for Philadelphia.

They were nowhere near in sight of land and the weather had gotten progressively worse as winter was coming on and the ship was starting to be racked by storms that were coming in.

A lot more people on the ship had died by now, and the crew was really on the point of mutiny.

Some people say that Andrew Brook and his crew were really nothing more than pirates and that they stole the passengers' money.

They stole the passengers' food.

Some say that they rationed food to the passengers at exorbitant prices to extort money from them.

All we really know for certain is that the conditions on the ship had gotten very, very bad by the time, one night, probably in late December, somebody in the crow's nest finally spotted a light somewhere off in the darkness.

- [Narrator] They assumed that the light was a signal fire.

Sure enough, as the ship steered towards it, they began to see land.

- Well, as the light came a little bit closer to the ship and they were speeding straight for it, there was a sudden terrible, tearing, wrenching sound and the ship was rocked as it dragged itself across submerged boulders just beneath the surface of the water.

And they realized that the signal fire wasn't out on the edge of the shore but very far inland on this island that they had come aground on and it was none other than Block Island.

- [Narrator] As the ship began to flood, some of the passengers tried to swim ashore.

Others clung to the deck, terrified, and many drowned.

- But pretty soon, there were lanterns and torches coming down from the hillside of the island as the people of Block Island appeared to be coming to help rescue the ship.

Well, it turns out that the people coming to the ship weren't rescuers at all.

They were wreckers.

These were people who made their living off of salvage from wrecked ships.

And it's possible, many people have said, that they even lit the signal fire on shore intentionally to lure the ship onto the rocks.

- [Narrator] Once the wreckers had stripped the ship of everything that was of value, they retreated back into the hills.

- Well, eventually, others from Block Island, from the village of New Shoreham came and helped the survivors and got them to their homes.

And a few people from the Princess Augusta tragedy did end up making it finally to Philadelphia.

Many more died.

A few even may have actually lived out the remainder of their days on Block Island.

- [Narrator] Before the Princess Augusta was set free from the rocks that had wrecked her, she was lit on fire and burned.

- Nobody's entirely sure whether this was done by the wreckers before they fled the ship, or possibly the people from New Shoreham who came to rescue the survivors may have burned the ship in order that it not become a navigation hazard, but as the ship burned, it dragged itself back out into the water and eventually sank into the waters off of Block Island.

- [Narrator] The first time anyone saw the specter of the Princess Augusta was allegedly about two years later.

- [Christopher] At first, nobody thought anything unusual when they saw a brigantine under full sail coming straight from the tip of the island.

But the closer it came, the more they thought that it was gonna crash on the island because it was coming at top speed and there just didn't seem to be anybody controlling the boat.

And just before it struck the island, it burst into flames and disappeared into the water.

Well, that very same night, a terrible storm rose and buffeted Block Island with wind and rain, and eventually, three ships in the harbor at Block Island were supposed to have been sent to the bottom of the ocean.

- [Narrator] About a year later, another ship was seen cruising at high speeds before bursting into flames and disappearing beneath the water.

- People began to wonder if the Palatine ship, the Princess Augusta, had somehow come back for revenge on the people who had sent it to its doom all those years ago.

Almost every year since then, the specter of the Princess Augusta has returned, and every time the Princess Augusta is seen, a killing storm comes right behind it.

(slow music) - [Narrator] In the mid-1800s, John Greenleaf Whittier immortalized the legend of the Princess Augusta with his poem, The Palatine.

- And it closes with the lines, "But still on many of moonless night from Kingston Head to Montauk light, the specter kindles and burns in sight.

Now low and dim, now clear and higher leaps up the terrible ghost of fire, then slowly sinking, the flames expire.

But wise sound skippers, though skies be fine, reef their sails when they see the sign of the flaming wreck of the Palatine."

I don't think there's any fitting close to the story, but the Palatine is still seen to this day.

And most sound sailors do, in fact, know that if you see that burning ship out in the water, that you race for sure as quickly as possible or you'll be driven to the bottom of the sea.

(menacing music) - [Narrator] The Inn at Shadow Lawn was built in the mid-1800s as a luxurious summer home.

It's original owner was a wealthy New York businessman named Hamilton Hoppin.

Since then, the inn has changed many hands, but some of its former residents, though they've died, seem reluctant to move on.

- They do stick to themselves, but they also have a tendency to kind of be a little precocious.

They have a tendency to open and close doors or move things where you had put something and you find that it's not there.

It's somewhere else, and you know darn well that you put that object there.

But it's a very comfortable feeling in the house.

It's, again, it's never anything spooky or evil or anything like that.

We've never had anything like that.

- [Narrator] The first spirit the current owners encountered was that of a Narragansett Indian.

- One evening, my mother was basically going to bed and she had gone to sleep and had woken up suddenly and there was an Indian with full war paint, tomahawk in hand, at the foot of her bed, basically just looking at her.

She closed her eyes, opened them up again, and basically he just vanished.

- [Narrator] What could have brought the spirit of a Narragansett Indian into a 19th century colonial home?

Randy Fabricant may have found the answer.

- [Randy] The house, from what I was told, is built on what was an Indian path, literally right through the center of the house, down to what used to be an estuary.

- [Narrator] Presumably, the spirit was walking along a path that existed during its lifetime.

Another incident at the inn involved a portrait of the original owner's brother.

- [Randy] In my search for the history of the house, we came across a painting of Thomas Hoppin, which is Hamilton Hoppin's, one of his brothers.

We had the photograph or the painting delivered, and when we did, we put it in the ballroom for storage for a little while.

And the next morning, all the clocks in the house had gone back an hour.

So, I can't explain that one.

- [Narrator] But it seems that wasn't all the Hoppins had in store.

- Someone had asked me a question about the original owner, Hamilton Hoppin, and why his portrait was never found, why no one knew what he looked like.

I just made a flippant remark and I said, "Well, maybe it's because he was just real ugly."

And at that moment, my earring in my left ear fell to the floor.

Now, there were a group of us watching this happen and we all sort of laughed because it was funny and it was very coincidental and we all felt that Hamilton had something to do with this.

He was terribly offended that I would even think that he was an ugly man.

So, I felt that I better make amends real quickly.

And so, I said, "I'm sorry, Hamilton."

I said, "Probably you were just so good looking, so handsome that you just didn't wanna broadcast it.

That's probably why there are no pictures that exist of you."

And at that moment, the earring from my right ear fell to the floor.

- [Narrator] On another occasion, a group of people witnessed a dramatic scene unfold in the dining room.

- We actually witnessed the spirits of Hamilton Hoppin, the first owner, and his younger brother, Thomas.

And they were having a conversation.

Thomas was talking about how Hamilton shouldn't mingle with the help, and it just kept going back and forth and back and forth as if we were not there.

What was interesting that preceding it, there were dogs barking in the background right when this was starting to happen, of course, and we had candles lit and the flame started to flicker and then a glass from the dining table started to move.

And then it was at that point that we witnessed the spirits of Hamilton and Thomas Hoppin.

(slow music) - [Narrator] Ghosts are often linked to a traumatic or a violent event, such as an accident or a murder.

These spirits seem unable to rest until they've taken care of unfinished business, usually involving their death.

The next two cases are examples of such ghosts.

- [Randy] We have a spectral car that goes up Miantonomi Avenue once a year and pulls into the driveway and disappears into the front of the house.

- [Narrator] The story behind this apparition involves a doctor and his young bride who were watching the house in between owners.

- The doctor, which basically his practice was nefarious in and of itself, was also cheating openly on his wife.

He would philander all throughout the town, and his wife would see this.

And what happened was he had purchased one of the first horseless carriage or automobiles back then, the early 1900s.

- [Narrator] While driving home one day, the doctor was shot to death in his car.

- His wife was brought up on charges, let go, eventually.

From what I'm to understand from the family members that the trial was as big as Lizzy Borden's trial in the area.

And but to this day, no one knows who basically killed him.

And once a year, there's that horseless carriage that comes up the street and pulls into the driveway and vanishes.

So, I guess he's still trying to get home at this point in some way.

(creepy music) - [Narrator] Another traumatic and untimely death took place in Portsmouth during the late 1600s.

This incident involved an elderly woman, Rebecca Cornell, who was found burned to death in her home.

- It was obviously an accident, or at least, so it was said when she was buried.

Not too long after her burial, however, one of her brothers, his name was John Briggs, rode into Newport from Portsmouth where they were living and told the magistrates here that Rebecca had been murdered.

As evidence, he claimed that the ghost of Rebecca had come to him at night and that she had entered his room glowing with light like the dawn and revealed herself to him and said, "See how I am burned over my body."

And then showed him that she had a wound in her chest and that wound clearly was actually what had killed her.

- [Narrator] As strange as Briggs' story sounded, the magistrate decided to investigate.

- The constables and magistrates came out to Portsmouth.

They dug up Mrs. Cornell's body, and when they looked more closely, they found that, beneath the scarring and the charring of the fire, there was in fact a terrible wound in her chest.

- [Narrator] Thomas Cornell, Rebecca's own son, became the prime suspect in the investigation.

- The magistrates went to his house and allegedly found a piece of Mrs. Cornell's spinning wheel actually broken off, a jagged piece, and felt that that was almost certainly the murder weapon.

When Thomas Cornell came to trial, not only was the murder weapon apparently there in evidence, but people said that Mrs. Cornell was in fear for her life.

She was supporting her son who didn't have a job and was something of a drunkard.

And she had been planning to move away to Pennsylvania.

It's possible that he went upstairs to confront her.

Maybe he was in an argument with her, possibly drunk at the time, and somehow picked up a piece of her broken spinning wheel or maybe even snapped it off and struck her down with it.

Well, realizing what he'd done, he must have decided to burn her body in order to cover up the evidence of what he'd done.

And I guess, since she tended to sit in her rocking chair in front of the fire, it seemed like a perfectly logical way to go.

And of course, ultimately, nobody suspected until this strange story came out where John Briggs came and told about the mysterious vision that he'd had.

- [Narrator] On the strength of that vision, Thomas Cornell was brought to trial and ultimately convicted for the murder of his mother.

- He was hung right in the town square in front of the old Colony House here in downtown Newport.

Probably the only murder trial in all of American history where a ghost provided the damning testimony.

(creepy music) - [Narrator] Providence's Benefit Street bears a strong resemblance to its colonial past, but it may be more than just gas lamps and neoclassic mansions that its history has left behind.

For, in the dark shadows and in the still hours of the morning, witnesses have encountered its elusive ghosts.

Charles Robinson offers a possible explanation why these spirits refuse to leave Benefit Street.

- I think they're staying back 'cause they're more comfortable in an area that looks like what it did when they were living there in life, as compared to an area that, say, is totally developed and wouldn't resemble what it looked like in their time.

- [Narrator] A few years ago, a college professor allegedly saw a phantom 18th century carriage moving along Benefit Street in the early hours of the morning.

- He was immediately struck by the fact that the horses, as their hooves hit the street, made no sound.

It was just entirely silent.

He said it was like watching an old black and white movie or somehow the past in some time warp phenomenon that we don't understand had gotten superimposed on the present.

The professor watched it draw up to this house and then vanish.

- [Narrator] Numerous witnesses have encountered another apparition on Benefit Street.

This one bears a strong resemblance to the master of morbid literature, Edgar Allen Poe.

And why would Poe's spirit be haunting a street in Providence?

Perhaps it's because he lectured at the Providence Athenaeum or maybe it's because he was involved with Sarah Helen Whitman who lived on Benefit Street.

- Usually, there have been both visual manifestations in the form of an apparition that has actually been seen and also auditory manifestations in the form of footsteps that have been heard to be rushing towards Sarah Helen Whitman's house and then stopping on her doorstep.

The witnesses to whom I've spoken have described seeing this entity dimly lit in the gas light.

So they've approached for a closer look.

At which point, the entity has in many cases vanished.

Although a few of the witnesses have described getting close enough to discern the facial features, which they say do resemble Poe's.

- [Narrator] Another witness describes seeing a man dressed in old shabby clothes lying on the steps of the Athenaeum.

- And this was a daylight sighting and he thought this was just a homeless person.

And so, he approached, and he woke the man in an attempt to render some kind of assistance if that was needed.

The man was roused and looked up at the person who had woken him and made a very strange comment to the effect that, "Well, I was dreaming of the conqueror worm.

Thank you for waking me.

That was such a frightening dream."

And that was such a bizarre comment, the man began to back off thinking this person was a lunatic and he did back off and then walked away.

As he was walking away, he glanced back a couple of times over his shoulder and this figure slowly dissipated and then vanished.

- [Narrator] Although a bizarre comment, research revealed that Poe used the term conqueror worm in his prosaic work.

He wrote a poem that reads, "And the angels, all pallid and wan, uprising, unveiling, affirm that the play is the tragedy, 'Man,' and its hero, the conqueror worm."

- I think critics interpret it as a symbol of death.

And Poe was obviously obsessed with death.

And the conqueror worm kind of resembles the worms that, you know, are gonna eat us all, gobble us all up when we die and are buried.

(religious instrumental music) - I think I liked it better when I was naive and I didn't know that there were ghosts.

When you think about you're not alone, you know, then you start to feel self-conscious, and I don't like that feeling, and I don't think very many people do, but it isn't, it is also nice to know that there is something after this and it's nice to know that your loved ones, when they cross over, so to speak, that they could be here, you know, watching over you.

(creepy music) - [Narrator] Today, Rhode Island is known as the Ocean State, but it wasn't always so.

For a dark period in its history, it gained infamy as America's vampire capital.

- New England, in the 17 and 1800s, there was a terrible tuberculosis epidemic going on.

In those days, they called it consumption.

And the reason is because just the way the disease seemed to consume a person.

- [Narrator] During the 17th and 18th century, the medical profession didn't understand it.

- A family would go to take the sick people to the doctor.

The doctor would say, "Well, open all the windows and let the evil vapors out."

Another doctor might say, "Well, close all the windows to keep the evil out."

Yeah, they didn't really know.

They were grasping at straws, and in the end, they would have to say, if they were honest, that "There's really nothing I can do.

It's in the hands of God."

- [Narrator] Struggling to find some control over the epidemic, families and communities, especially those in rural areas turned to folk medical practices.

- People in the community seemed to understand that, once somebody's family had died from the disease, it wouldn't stop there.

It would go on to the next family and the next family.

And so, what you might think was an individual problem or the problem of one family was really looked at as a community problem by those who lived at that time.

And so, they would put pressure on the head of a household to do something to stop it before it got out of hand.

- [Narrator] So, what exactly did the head of the household do?

- [Michael] That ritual involved going to the cemetery and exhuming the bodies of the people in the family that had died from the disease and determining which one was different.

- [Narrator] They believed the one that was different had become a vampire.

(tense music) One of the most mythical vampire legends in Rhode Island took place over 200 years ago.

It began in 1799 when a farmer called Stukeley Tillinghast awoke from a terrifying dream.

- In his dream, he was standing out on that hillside looking over at his orchards, and the trees were beautiful and dappled with autumn color, but a wind came up and a terrible storm crossed the valley, and as it happened, the trees began to wither and decay.

And by the time the storm had passed, fully half of the trees in Stukeley's orchard had been destroyed.

- [Narrator] But when Stukeley visited his orchards the next morning, not a single tree had been touched.

- He knew that dreams had meaning, but he didn't really understand what this one was about and he worried about it.

He asked people about it, people who might be able to interpret dreams, and he couldn't figure out, no one could tell me what it meant.

- [Narrator] That year, harvest season turned out to be one of the most prosperous ever.

Stukeley stopped fearing his dream, and soon, he forgot all about it.

A few weeks later, Sarah, the eldest of Stukeley's 14 children fell ill. - Well, they knew that it wasn't just a cold at this time and they brought in a doctor, and sure enough, the doctor said that she had consumption, that terrible disease that they thought was caused by an evil spirit of some kind.

Soon, she was coughing up blood, and within probably just a few months, Sarah died.

Well, the family was devastated, of course, but it was the hard winter to get through and soon they got on with their lives.

- [Narrator] Not long after Sarah's death, one of the younger boys in the family began to show signs of the same illness.

- But he had a strange complaint.

He said to his mother that, each night as he lay in bed, that Sarah would return to him, that he'd see her come into the room and she'd sit by the side of his bed and sometimes she'd place her hand on his chest or sit on a part of his body and he'd feel this terrible, constricting weight, like the very life was being crushed from him.

- [Narrator] Soon, the boy died, and they buried him next to Sarah.

As the weeks went by, it was clear that the Tillinghast family's luck was not about to change.

One by one, the children fell ill, and before each died, they complained of nightly visits from Sarah.

- By the time the seventh child was ill and seeing Sarah, then Stukeley's wife started complaining that Sarah was coming back to her room, he decided that something had to be done, and he got together with people in the family and the community and they decided they had to go out to the cemetery and exhume the bodies of the dead children.

- The most recently buried was just showing the first signs of decay, but as the next coffin came out of the ground, the decay was more pronounced and so on and so on, until finally, they pulled Sarah's coffin out of the ground.

As they pulled apart the shroud, Sarah's body wasn't a skeleton.

It wasn't a withered corpse, it was perfect.

- [Michael] Her eyes were wide open, staring.

She had bright blue eyes.

Her skin was fresh looking.

Her complexion was beautiful.

And she was as beautiful as ever.

- [Christopher] Stukeley knew that she had become a vampire and that she was feeding on the very lifeblood of her brothers and sisters.

And so, he did the only thing that he knew how to do.

He took a hunting knife that he had brought with him, and he used it to cut Sarah's heart out of her chest.

And he carried it to a nearby spot where he prepared some sticks and some tinder, and he lit a fire, and he burned Sarah's heart until there was nothing left but ashes.

- [Narrator] Stukeley returned home hoping he had destroyed the evil preying on his family.

But when his seventh child died soon afterwards, he feared that the nightmare would never end.

- But none of the other children got sick.

And as the weeks went by, the weeks turned into months, and the months turned into a year, and the remaining children of the family stayed healthy.

And the one thing that Stukeley finally realized when he looked back on it is that, with the last boy's death, he had lost seven of his 14 children.

And so, that dream that he had had so long ago had finally come to pass.

As he had lost half of his orchard, he had lost precisely half of his children.

- [Narrator] Almost a century after Sarah's death, 19 year old Mercy Brown was to become America's most infamous folklore vampire.

- She's often called the last vampire because, when her case occurred in 1892, that was a comparatively modern era of history.

You had the Statue of Liberty already up in New York Harbor.

Coca-Cola was on the market.

I mean, this wasn't the dark ages.

And the idea that Americans believed in vampires at that time was a pretty extraordinary notion.

- I first heard the story from a descendant of the Brown family who had heard it from people who were actually eyewitnesses during this event.

Mercy's mother and her older sister had died several years before she died.

Then her brother, her only brother, Edwin had become ill. - [Narrator] The townsfolk of Exeter suspected that a vampire was preying on the Brown family.

But Mercy's father, George Brown, refused to believe it.

- The townsfolk became more and more nervous because they were certain that, if the vampire killed off all of the Brown family, then it would come and it would start to prey on the surrounding townsfolk.

And so, they finally convinced George to go ahead with the traditional remedy, which was to exhume the body of the suspected vampire and to remove or burn the heart.

Well, George was still pretty dubious about the whole idea, and in order to make it a little bit more official and less superstitious, he decided to hire a doctor, the state medical examiner, Harold Metcalf, to go out to the cemetery and exhume the bodies of the women who had already died.

- [Michael] The mother and the older daughter were skeletons, basically, according to newspaper accounts by eyewitnesses.

- Mercy had only died in January, and the time they were exhuming her was March.

Her body was being kept in a storage crypt on the site of the cemetery because the ground was still frozen and they couldn't bury her right away.

So, they opened up the crypt and they pulled out Mercy's coffin.

And when they lifted the lid on the coffin, what they found is that Mercy's body was remarkably well preserved.

- [Narrator] The townsfolk witnessing the procedure immediately thought this was evidence that Mercy was a vampire.

- Dr. Metcalf cut open Mercy's chest and removed her heart.

And even Dr. Metcalf reported it was fairly unusual that there appeared to be liquid blood in Mercy's heart.

And the townsfolk felt that that was certain proof that Mercy was the vampire and ordered that Mercy's heart be burned to ashes.

- [Narrator] At this time, Mercy's older brother, Edwin, was battling the last stages of consumption and was doing very badly.

- [Christopher] As a remedy for him, they decided to mix the ashes of Mercy's heart into either water or some kind of a medication and give it to Edwin, kind of an idea of the hair of the dog that bit you, that by taking in a part of the offending vampire, that somehow he would be made immune.

- Edwin unfortunately died in May, a couple of months later, but according to the family story, no one else died.

In fact, George Brown lived for another 30-some years, so.

- [Christopher] In the interim, between the time that Mercy was, Mercy's heart was removed and Edwin died, Dr. Metcalf had leaked the story or somebody had gotten wind of it.

And it ended up being a front page story in the Providence Journal Bulletin, which to this day is our major state paper.

- [Narrator] The journal ran two stories back to back.

The first read, "Exhumed the Bodies.

Testing a Horrible Superstition in the Town of Exeter," and they followed it up with, "The Vampire Theory, That search for the Spectral Ghoul in the Exeter graves."

- As a result of the newspaper articles, a scandal erupted among a lot of the educated people throughout Rhode Island who felt that this was barbaric and they couldn't believe that the uneducated country folk were still doing such terrible superstitious things.

And the scandal was so significant that it probably embarrassed people who still believed in the existence of vampires to such a strong degree that, as far as anyone knows, Mercy Brown represents the very last American vampire.

- [Narrator] But Mercy's legend does not end here.

It's likely that she went on to influence one of the most famous vampire stories of all time.

- About four years after the first appearance of the stories in the Province Journal Bulletin about Mercy Brown and the vampires of New England, the story resurfaced again in the New York World, and the headline was, "Vampires in New England.

Strange Superstition of Long Ago."

And it went on to detail pretty graphically the entire phenomena of vampire belief throughout New England.

- [Narrator] That story fell into the hands of Bram Stoker, the author of the classic horror novel "Dracula."

- [Christopher] In his research papers for the novel "Dracula," it's the only newspaper clipping.

And so, it's clear that he did know about the vampires in New England and that he probably had some familiarity with the Mercy Brown case.

- [Narrator] One of the central figures in "Dracula" is 19 year old Lucy Westenra.

Like Mercy, Lucy suffers from a terrible wasting illness that finally sends her to the family crypt.

- The family's very devastated, but eventually, they come to fear that Lucy has become a vampire when they start hearing reports of a strange fever that's passing through the town.

And so, in order to prove their theory, they hire a very well known doctor, in this case, Dr. Van Helsing, to come in, go out to the cemetery with them late one night, open up the crypt and open Lucy's coffin and see if Lucy is indeed a vampire.

And of course, she is.

In the classic European tradition, they drive a stake through Lucy's heart.

But the story is almost Mercy's to a T, and it was printed only four years after Mercy's story was front page news.

There's one little extra hint that he threw in in the book as far as I'm concerned, which is that the heroes of the novel "Dracula" are Jonathan and Mina Harker.

And they live in a tiny little English town called Exeter, which is the namesake of the town where Mercy Brown lived.

(creepy music) - [Narrator] The legend of Nellie Vaughn is about as complex as they get.

Some say she was a vampire, some strongly deny it, and others claim to have encountered her ghost.

- Actually, the earliest reference to Nellie Vaughn being a vampire appears in newspaper accounts from the early 1970s.

So, doing the research to see if these stories had any basis in fact, really I've come to to the conclusion that Nellie probably wasn't considered a vampire in her day.

- [Narrator] Nellie Vaughn died in 1889 of pneumonia.

She was buried on the family farm, but a year later, her parents were given permission to move her body to the cemetery at the Plain Meeting House Church.

- It wasn't an unusual practice.

I mean, it's possible stories could have gotten started when she was exhumed, but it's, I don't think it's likely.

The story that Nellie is a vampire, some people say's based on confusing her with Mercy Brown, who was exhumed in 1892 in Exeter, which is two towns away from West Greenwich.

And the story, according to the people in West Greenwich, is that a high school teacher in another town, of the town of Coventry, told the story of Mercy Brown, but omitted some of the details, maybe didn't remember them or maybe didn't want students to go out to the cemeteries and go legend tripping and vandalize or whatever.

- [Narrator] As legend goes, the students went searching for the vampire's grave site and stumbled upon Nellie's by accident.

She was the same age as Mercy and had died only two years before her.

- And I think what really clinched the belief that this was the right person, this was the vampire, was the inscription that was chiseled into the bottom of her stone.

And that is, "I am waiting and watching for you."

Now, I can just imagine students out there at night with flashlights looking for the stone and they see a young woman age 19 who died around the same time, and then the light goes down to the bottom of the stone and they see, "I am waiting and watching for you."

And they're, ah, they gasp.

This must be the one.

- [Narrator] In actual fact, the inscription "I am waiting and watching for you" was not uncommon during that time.

- If you look at it in the light of a young person that's died too soon, what they're saying is, "Oh, I'm waiting and watching for the day when we'll all be together again in heaven."

But if you're thinking vampire, it takes on a whole different meaning and cast.

They've never been able to find the principal people involved in creating that legend, that is, the teacher who told the story or the students who first went out there and found her tombstone.

It makes sense that she's mistaken for Mercy Brown, but I can't prove it.

- [Narrator] Another legend about Nellie developed within the last 10 years or so.

This time, she's not a vampire but a ghost.

- According to this story, people have gone out to the cemetery and looked around and when they get to Nellie Vaughn's stone, or where it used to be, it's not there anymore.

Some people say they hear a voice saying, "I am perfectly pleasant."

- I am perfectly pleasant, which could kind of translate, I'm really not a vampire, I'm pleasant, I'm a good person.

You know, trying to dispel that notion of vampirism that has remained so long attached to her gravestone.

- [Narrator] A number of witnesses have reported seeing a girl sitting cross-legged at Nellie's grave.

In one instance, she seemed to be hovering a few inches above the ground and then she vanished.

- This one woman had a series of really strange and interesting encounters with Nellie.

She went to the cemetery to do gravestone rubbings, and she eventually got to Nellie's grave.

And every time she attempted to do a gravestone rubbing of Nellie's gravestone, the paper would come out completely wet when she was finished, even though the gravestone was entirely dry.

She believes Nellie Vaughn was trying to keep her from, you know, making a rubbing of, you know, again, this inscription, "I am waiting and watching for you" that has brought her, you know, made her so infamous over the years.

She returned to the cemetery.

She was more intrigued than frightened, and at one point, she met a young woman in the cemetery.

And this young woman was seemingly very modern in appearance and manifestation.

And the woman in question began to talk about the, to this young woman, about the legends surrounding Nellie Vaughn's grave.

And as she did so, this woman she met suddenly became very defensive and began to repeat over and over again, "Nellie was not a vampire, Nellie was not a vampire."

And so, the woman started thinking, this woman's, this younger woman's a little wacko.

I'm gonna get outta here.

And so, she left the cemetery and looked back and this woman had completely vanished.

And in retrospect, she believes that she encountered the apparition of Nellie Vaughn, who had assumed a modern appearance so as not to immediately scare off this witness, but instead, again, she seemed to be trying to deflect these rumors that she was a vampire.

- [Narrator] Unfortunately, the legends surrounding Nellie have led people to vandalize her grave.

- Natalie's tombstone has been broken.

And you know, chips were taken off, perhaps as mementos, and it was finally knocked over and broken in pieces.

There's really not much point in going out to the cemetery.

There's nothing there.

And so, maybe we should all just let Nellie Vaughn rest in peace and leave her alone.

- [Narrator] The end of the 19th century saw the end of vampire practices in Rhode Island, as far as we know.

By then, conventional medicine had a much better understanding of consumption and the practice of embalming was becoming more widespread, even in rural areas.

- When a person is embalmed, the blood is removed and replaced with different kinds of chemicals.

Right away, you've kind of disarmed the corpse as vampire since there's no blood.

- [Narrator] Even though science and logic have undermined vampire beliefs and practices today, it doesn't make it any less frightening for those people who lived through it.

- To say that it wasn't a Count Dracula that came out of the grave and sucked their blood doesn't really diminish the horror that they felt, that people were dying from unexplainable reasons and they believed that something evil was inhabiting the bodies of their relatives.

(creepy music) - [Narrator] Some stories of the supernatural reveal their truth with time.

Others remain shrouded in mystery, forever challenging our innermost fears and beliefs.

Perhaps one day we will all know for sure if the dead are really as dead as they seem.

(creepy music) (menacing music) - [Narrator] Thank you for watching the 20th anniversary presentation of "Ghost and Vampire Legends of Rhode Island."

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