I am waiting and watching for you.
In a horror movie or suspense thriller, the above saying might have a more fearful, ominous or foreboding tone, but etched into a nineteenth-century gravestone, it means that the loved one is waiting to either reunite with family members in heaven or lying in wait for the coming of the Lord. Unfortunately, to some it was a sign that a spectral ghoul resided beneath, and so a legend was born.
Believe it or not, one of the most famous Rhode Island vampires was never disinterred, or even suspected of vampirism, although she was exhumed from the family burial lot and reinterred in the public cemetery at the corner of Plain and Liberty Hill Road on October 26, 1889, when the family sold their farm. Other than that, she remained anonymous; that is, until a group of legend-trippers stumbled upon her grave in the 1960s.
Nellie Louise Vaughn died on March 31, 1889, at the age of nineteen, presumably of pneumonia, not consumption. She was first buried in the family lot on her farm. Small, private family plots were very common in Rhode Island and, in some cases, are still in use to this day. Families who have owned the same land for centuries have their own private cemeteries where they can someday be buried with their ancestors.
The legend was born when, as the story goes, a Coventry teacher told his or her students about the vampire grave, just off Route 102 in South County, of a nineteen-year-old girl who died in the late 1800s. The teacher never gave a name or exact location. It can be assumed that this particular teacher was referring to Mercy Brown but could not remember, or did not know, the girl’s name. Either way, a group of classmates gathered together one night to find the grave of the vampire. How they came upon the historical cemetery behind the Plain Meetinghouse is another matter of mystery. Perhaps they had an atlas with the cemeteries marked and began a tour of each one, looking for telltale signs of a nosferatu, or maybe one of the legend-trippers already knew of the graveyard.
It did not take long for the seekers of the unknown to find what convinced them that their search was over. Just inside the cemetery sat Nellie’s stone with the now-famous inscription. Nellie’s age at the time of death and the date of her death closely matched the teacher’s description, and another Rhode Island vampire was born.
Since then, countless people have paid a visit to the graveyard looking for the grave site where, as legend states, no moss, lichen or grass will grow. It was also related that the grave continues to sink into the earth. There is no stone marking her plot, as it has been removed and stored away in an undisclosed location for preservation. Nellie’s grave site appears to be well tended with grass and is not sinking, as legend has proclaimed. There are a few areas in the burial yard where people claim she is buried, and all of them, for the most part, have plenty of vegetation on them. Unfortunately, the cemetery has been subject to much vandalism—so much so that there is a neighborhood watch, as well as police patrols on a regular basis.
West Greenwich Historical Cemetery #2, where the “mistaken” vampire, Nellie Vaughn, is buried.
There were also claims by certain paranormal groups that Nellie was buried alive, but no evidence to substantiate that assertion has ever been produced. Neither has there ever been any evidence that she may have been accused of vampirism during her time. Another recent aspect of the Nellie Vaughn saga involves the alleged sighting of a young woman in the graveyard and an ethereal voice emanating from nowhere saying, “I am perfectly pleasant.” In the book New England Ghost Files, Charles T. Robinson states that people have heard the words echo through the air while in the cemetery and have spotted the visage of a young woman near the grave of Nellie Vaughn.
Acclaimed author and paranormal investigator Christopher Balzano once stated that we have a tendency to immediately blame a haunting on the most famous person who lived in or passed through the area. Unfortunately, there is no indubitable evidence on the paranormal side to support that, even if there is a voice calling out to the visitors, it is actually Nellie’s. We already know she was never accused of being one of the spectral visitors blamed for sucking the life from family members in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. If anything, there is a beautiful historical cemetery and meetinghouse that should be left alone and respected. There is no need to waste your time traveling four miles up a winding road to see, well, nothing.
If you decide to visit the cemetery, please respect all rules and regulations regarding the cemetery and the historical meetinghouse.