Public Health Haunts

Brown alumnus and Providence Superintendent of Health at the time, Dr. Edwin M. Snow, documented the outbreak and his reports contributed to the revolution in public health that took place during the 19^th century. To help make safe, clean drinking water more accessible to Providence residents, in 1874 Anna E. Richmond donated $600 to the city to build the fountain.

Its curved inscription reads “Come Hither Every One That Thirsteth.”

Legend claims that all those who drink from it are bound to always return to Providence. But we don’t consider the legend a curse, for who would not want to return to our historic city?

Mercy Brown: Rhode Island’s Most Famous Vampire

The next stop on the tour: Dexter House at 187 Benefit Street, Providence’s first municipal public health lab and morgue.

Here, Brittany Mandeville, writing academic support specialist at the School of Public Health, explained the story of Mercy Brown, Rhode Island’s most famous vampire.

The Brown family had suffered a series of devastating losses to tuberculosis. The disease caused people to waste away, becoming increasingly thin, weak and pale. At the time, doctors had few effective treatments, and families often felt powerless as they watched their loved ones pass on.

After Mercy Brown died from the disease, her brother, Edwin, also became ill. The family sent him to Denver, where mountain air was thought to be beneficial. But Edwin’s health continued to deteriorate.

As more members of the Brown family became sick, fear and superstition began to take hold. Some came to believe that Mercy was returning from the grave to drain the life of the living.

Mercy died in January 1892, when the ground was too frozen for a conventional burial, Mandeville explained. So her body was kept in a crypt until March.

When her remains were examined, they appeared unusually well preserved. To some, this was evidence that Mercy was somehow responsible for her brother’s declining health.

The family exhumed her body and her heart was removed, burned and mixed into a tonic that Edwin was made to consume. The hope was that this ritual would stop the illness from spreading. It did not, Mandeville said, and Edwin died of tuberculosis shortly afterward.

University Hall: Brown’s Most Haunted Building

As Brown’s oldest building, University Hall has experienced more unexpected transformations than any other building on campus, said Will Goedel, associate professor of epidemiology and director of the doctoral program in epidemiology.

Over the years, it has served purposes far removed from education, including as a military barracks during the American Revolution and World War I. 

During the Civil War, the building was converted into a hospital to care for wounded soldiers.

These episodes have given rise to stories of paranormal activity, Goedel said. And people who work at University Hall have reported hearing unexplained noises in the evenings. Some have described seeing what appear to be soldiers in old military uniforms, while others claim to have seen faces in the windows on the second and third floors.

Why might a building like this have a reputation for being haunted? Consider the conditions under which wounded soldiers were treated during the nineteenth century.

Many of the advances in antiseptic techniques and surgical hygiene that we take for granted today emerged from the terrible conditions of wartime medicine, Goedel explained. During the Civil War, soldiers often underwent amputations with little or no effective anesthesia. Medical instruments and surgical environments were not consistently kept clean by modern standards and the risk of infection and death was high.

“If you believe that ghosts linger because of unfinished business or sudden, traumatic deaths,” Goedel said, “it is not difficult to see why a place with this history might inspire such stories.”