Special Announcement: Exhumed

I'm pleased to announce that my newest book, Exhumed: Unearthing the History of the American Vampire https://www.aaronmahnke.com/exhumed, is scheduled for August 4th, and it's available for pre-order TODAY! Exhumed is a 400-page historical journey to unpack the heart of the Mercy Brown story. Think of it like a 20-episode Lore miniseries of brand new material and research, hand-crafted for lovers of strange history. Here's my publisher's fancy write-up about the book: ———————————— About Exhumed "From critically acclaimed podcaster and bestselling author Aaron Mahnke comes this engrossing and macabre exploration of the folklore and early medical practices that fueled the ghastly exhumation of Mercy Brown in 1892. With Exhumed, Mahnke presents a unique history of the intersection of folklore and science, and how pop culture, medical advancements, and pseudoscience of the time shaped the perspectives of people in 19th century America. From the death of George Washington to Mary Shelley writing Frankenstein, Mahnke leads reads on a fascinating journey through history, touching on mummification, executioners, corpse medicine, European vampire folklore, and so much more. He reveals that, as shocking as Brown's exhumation might seem to us today, it also reflected surprisingly common attitudes and beliefs about the relationship between the dead and the living, the nature of science and magic, and the fate of the human soul. It all builds to a revelatory understanding of human behavior that continues to this very day." ———————————— Learn more, see the cover, and pre-order your copy today...over at my personal website: https://www.aaronmahnke.com/exhumed

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Aaron Mahnke?

  So I have a quick story for you. 11 years ago, I was in the middle of a crisis. I had written a handful of these weird historical essays, but my reason for making them, to create a cool PDF to give to email subscribers, had started to sound like a really bad idea. Fast forward a couple of months, and I figured out what to do with them. I made a podcast. This podcast. So if you've enjoyed Lore over the last decade, that's where it all started. Me, at home, writing little historical essays about weird and creepy moments on the historical record. Obviously, things grew from there, and the fact that I'm still making the show today continues to blow my mind. I'm a lucky guy, for sure. But, back to those original essays. The very first one I wrote

• 0:46Aaron Mahnke?

  was also the one I picked for the first episode of Lore. It was the one that grabbed my attention the tightest and had me asking all sorts of questions. And if you've been with the show long enough, you know which one I'm talking about. The story of Mercy Brown. Allow me for a second to give the uninitiated among us a quick overview of her story. Mercy Brown was a teenager from a small Rhode Island farming community who died in 1892. But she was the third member of her family to die from the same illness, and her brother was also sick at the same time. So people were starting to get a bit desperate. And desperate people, as we know, tend to do some pretty weird things. In Mercy's case, that meant the townsfolk had begun to wonder

• 1:30Aaron Mahnke?

  if something more supernatural might be at work. One of the dead Browns, either Mercy, her mother, or her older sister, might be feeding on the living from their grave. And they believed evidence of this would be found if they exhumed all the bodies and checked them. So they did. And when Mercy's corpse turned out to have the signs they were looking for, they burned her heart to break the curse. Now, I have loved folklore and superstition my entire life. I revel in weird things. But this story, this real-world, true-life event, I just couldn't let it go. Partly because it's such a thrilling story on its own, right? But mostly because it got my mental gears spinning. Why?

• 2:12Aaron Mahnke?

  Why in the world would people think that this sort of action, this sort of ritual, was acceptable and would work? In the decades since I published the first episode of Lore about Mercy Brown, I have never stopped thinking about it. And as I've encountered new topics for new episodes over the years, as part of making an ongoing podcast on weird history, I've noticed some of them are actually connected. They contribute, in big ways and small, to her story. So, about two years ago, I started writing a book. I wanted to explore something that, as far as I can tell, no one has tried to piece together before. And that is, yes, Mercy's story and the events of 1892 are shocking, but why did they happen in the first place?

• 2:57Aaron Mahnke?

  What folklore, social norms, scientific beliefs, and cultural trends contributed to the actions of that small Rhode Island farming community? And that book is called Exhumed, and I am so excited to tell you that it is available for pre-orders starting today. It arrives on August 4th of this year, but every single pre-order between now and then will give Exhumed a chance to be a bestseller. And it should be, because it's wild, strange, and incredible history. It's written in a way that should be easy for anyone, even non-historians, to pick up and enjoy. And it takes a story that a lot of people think they know and unpacks it in a new way, giving it a lot more depth and texture than a simple retelling of her exhumation.

• 3:41Aaron Mahnke?

  This is a journey I want you to go on with me. Exhumed will be available in a gorgeous hardcover, as well as ebook and audiobook, narrated, of course, by me. To preorder your copy today, head over to aaronmahnke.com/exhumed, or click on the link in the description for this episode. And thank you. Thank you for letting me dig and dig for a ...decades so that I could unearth these answers, these stories and these connections. I am incredibly proud of this book and I can't wait for you to experience it for yourselves. And it goes without saying, I think you're gonna dig it. That's it for today. That's the pitch. That's the post. Go preorder Exhumed right now and stay spooky.