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The Mystery of the Vampire Child, Mercy Brown

 

 
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Mercy  Brown was young girl who died from tuberculosis in New England, 1892. She was exhumed along with her mother and sister who has also died from the disease in 1892 when her father was told a sinister spirit may be at work on his family. When Mary’s body was brought to light it did not show any signs of decomposition, despite being buried for two months. Her skin was well preserved, her hair and nails had grown and she even had liquid blood; even more weirdly her body was said to have moved positions in the grave.  While science has tried to explain it, no theories have succeeded completely – perhaps Mercy was, as suggested at the time, a vampire child, sucking the life out of her family?

 
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HOTEL OF HORRORS: THE MURDER CASTLE

 

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The man known as H.H. Holmes killed at least nine people, confessed to as many as 30 murders, and may have been responsible for up to 200, according to some estimates. Yet it wasn’t just the number of victims that earned Holmes his place in serial killer history—it was the way the deeds were done.

Born Herman Webster Mudgett, H.H. Holmes was already a consummate con man, grifter, and bigamist prior to his arrival in Chicago in 1886. He changed his name to Henry Howard Holmes to skirt punishment from his previous scams—one particularly ghoulish scheme had Holmes stealing cadavers from the University of Michigan’s Department of Medicine and Surgery, mutilating them, then claiming the Modies were victims of accidents to collect insurance money.

 
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H.H.Holmes_castle.jpg


 


Shortly after his arrival in Chicago, Holmes found employment as a pharmacist and began work on what would become his “Murder Castle.” Christened the World’s Fair Hotel, it was three stories tall and a full block long. The site was ostensibly designed as a lodging space for visitors of the Chicago World’s Fair, also known as the World’s Columbian Exposition, set to take place in Chicago in 1893.


But the sprawling structure held a darker purpose; one that only Holmes truly understood.


During its construction, Holmes constantly replaced workers, claiming that their work was insufficient. In actuality, he switched out laborers to ensure that no one caught on to his master plan. The strange hotel was filled with stairways that led to nowhere, doors that opened onto brick walls. Other doors were outfitted with perplexing locks that would seal a person inside.


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Bedrooms were soundproofed or equipped with gas lines controlled from the other side of the wall. One room was sealed up by brick and could only be entered through a trapdoor in the ceiling. Doors were rigged with alarms that tracked the movement of guests. A room on the second floor was known by Holmes as the “secret hanging chamber” and served just the purpose one might imagine.

In was into this labyrinth that Holmes lured his victims. He would asphyxiate them, hang them, even seal them up in vault-like chambers to let them die of starvation or thirst. Their Modies were placed in a dummy elevator or dropped down a secret metal chute that led to the basement.

 

Downstairs, Holmes would then dissect his victims’ Modies, using his connections with the medical community to sell their bones and organs. Giant furnaces, lime pits, and acid baths were installed in the lower level and used to dispose of remains.

 
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When the World’s Fair ended, Holmes left Chicago and his Murder Castle behind, engaging in another insurance scheme that led to the murder of an associate named Benjamin Pitezel (pictured above) and his three children. Holmes was arrested in Boston in 1894, at which point authorities traced back his trail to Chicago and entered the Murder Castle.

There they found his maze of torture chambers, secret chutes, and subterranean dissection facilities. Given Holmes’ methods, authorities found no complete human remains. They did, however, discover a mound of human and animal bones that included the bones of a child between six and eight years of age. A pile of bloody women’s clothes was found alongside a dissection table covered in dried blood; a gold chain and a woman’s shoe was found in a large stove on the third floor.

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Police were able to positively connect H.H. Holmes to nine murders. The suspect confessed to many more, though some of the people he named later turned out to be alive.


Tried for the murder of Pitezel and found guilty, Holmes was hanged on May 7, 1896. His neck didn’t snap when the trap was sprung, and it took 20 minutes for him to be pronounced dead. Though he didn’t seem to fear the gallows, he asked for his coffin to be encased in cement and buried 10 feet deep so that his body might avoid dissection.


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n 1914, Pat Quinlan, the former caretaker of Holmes’ World’s Fair Hotel, committed suicide by ingesting strychnine. His body was found along with a note that read, “I couldn’t sleep.” Quinlan had been questioned by the police in the course of their investigation, but was never charged. His first-hand knowledge of the Murder Castle and the horrors that happened within its walls followed him to his grave.

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Police were able to positively connect H.H. Holmes to nine murders. The suspect confessed to many more, though some of the people he named later turned out to be alive.

Tried for the murder of Pitezel and found guilty, Holmes was hanged on May 7, 1896. His neck didn’t snap when the trap was sprung, and it took 20 minutes for him to be pronounced dead. Though he didn’t seem to fear the gallows, he asked for his coffin to be encased in cement and buried 10 feet deep so that his body might avoid dissection.

H.H.Holmes_ChicagoHistoryMuseum.jpg
n 1914, Pat Quinlan, the former caretaker of Holmes’ World’s Fair Hotel, committed suicide by ingesting strychnine. His body was found along with a note that read, “I couldn’t sleep.” Quinlan had been questioned by the police in the course of their investigation, but was never charged. His first-hand knowledge of the Murder Castle and the horrors that happened within its walls followed him to his grave.

 

As for the Murder Castle itself, much of it was destroyed by a mysterious fire in 1895. Two men were reportedly seen fleeing the structure shortly before burst into flames. Some believe these two were destroying evidence, while others believe the people who set the blaze were Chicagoans who wished to stop the site from becoming a morbid tourist attraction. Portions of the structure remained in use until 1938, when it was torn down completely. A post office currently occupies the plot.

Holmes’ history as a con man and liar makes it nearly impossible to verify the total number of victims he may have killed. Many people came to Chicago during the World’s Fair and never returned home, and some estimates have placed the number of Holmes’ potential victims as high as 200. Holmes himself has famously been quoted as saying, “I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing.”

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