Myisha Nawar
Dracula needs no introduction, but we’ll give him one anyway: Bram Stoker’s vampire, a Transylvanian count who turns into a bat, sleeps in coffins, and drinks the blood of the living, is the quintessential horror villain. And in true undead style, he holds up well—he’s as creepy today as he was when Stoker invented him in 1897.
1. Dracula may have been inspired by a nightmare! And that too, one cause from the consumption of bad seafood!
2. Stoker started writing Dracula right after Jack the ripper. Two years after Jack the ripper terrorized the streets of London, to be exact.
3. Dracula might be based on Stocker’s horrible boss. Stoker was Irving’s business manager, press agent, and secretary. Like the Hollywood assistant of today, his job started early and ended late, with a lot of ego boosting in between. Some critics have suggested that the charismatic Irving was the basis for Dracula.
4. Lucy’s death was based on real exhumation! In Dracula, vampire Lucy is killed by her suitor when he opens her coffin and stakes her in the heart. Stoker may have borrowed this from the experience of his neighbor, poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti (who, incidentally, was the nephew of John Polidori). When Rossetti’s wife Elizabeth Siddal died in 1862, Rossetti put a journal of love poems in her coffin, winding it romantically in her red hair. Then in 1869, he changed his mind and the coffin was raised in the middle of the night so he could retrieve the book. BLOOD CURLING, RIGHT?