Tag Archives: Hammer Horror

[Vampire Month] Modus Vamp-erandi by R.A Smith

19 Thursday Mar 2015

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R.A Smith now shares with us his thoughts on Vampires, including how they relate to the infamous ‘Inverse Ninja rule’… Take it away, Russ…

R.A Smith at the Labyrinth Literary Festival

R.A Smith at the Labyrinth Literary Festival

So, vampires then.

I’ve actually been hoping to get on this little tour for some time. Which, if you’ve been reading any of my published works, you might find a little odd, as I haven’t had anything published about vampires at all. I suppose before I start, it might be an idea then, for me to let you into two or three little secrets of mine.

 

–              I am a big fan of vampires

Well, by now you’ve read my first post, and so will know that. I was big on the Hammer films, but have had the likes of The Lost Boys, Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula, the exceptional Near Dark and the wonderfully amusing John Carpenter’s Vampires to keep me going on screen. By book, I think we’re spoilt for choice.

–           My first NaNoWriMo win was a vampire story.

It is not ready for public consumption at the moment. Far from it. But there are a few ideas in there I like, some I really like. Rest assured, when I’m happy to unleash it upon the world, it will be because I’ve reached a truly happy place with the manuscript.

–  I’m afraid of vampires— though not in the way that you might think. I’m afraid of writing them. More to the point, I’m afraid of writing them badly. Here’s the thing. These bloodsuckers are such an ubiquitous part of our lives now that it’s getting harder and harder to write something truly new and cool with them. But to write them, you have to get to know them. How they work. Where and what to look for.

They hide in the shadows, they own the night. Occasionally, they change into beasts, rarer times see them shift into fog, and of late, some are even capable of becoming a golden glitter. Were it that Dracula found himself capable of such an alteration, then perhaps Van Helsing would have never stood a chance against something so devastatingly dazzling.

Where vampires haven’t changed much at all is that they live off us humans, deliberately, or by necessity. That’s not like a small squad of leeches (who, it must also be pointed out, have lent their medical qualities to us over some centuries for a small food parcel from time to time). That’s not like being caught out swimming with hungry sharks, when you might just happen to be around and they decide you’re worth a nibble. Nope—often, you’re the main course, and won’t be able to just walk the other way from the big, vicious beast roaming your backyard. These days, a vampire will appear just as one of your neighbours, leaving you unaware you’re in any danger at all until the last minute.

Perhaps the greatest change that has happened over the time has not just been the look, or the style, it’s been the attitude. Though vampires have been in mythologies worldwide in many different flavours for a long time now, the 19th century saw a massive rise in popularity by way of the Gothic novel. There, we had the likes of The Monk, Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla and of course, the original Prince of Darkness himself brought to us by Bram Stoker: Dracula. These were solitary creatures, a mighty monster in the shadows usually somewhere around a nice quiet village or an otherwise ordinary existence. They would come along and turn an idyllic, or more likely dreary, set of lives on their head, often fatally for some.

Back in the day of the gothic novel, there’d be some notice, in that a discerning villager would know where to look—or more specifically, where to never, ever go. “Oh, that castle up the top of the hill, you don’t wanna go there,” they would fruitlessly attempt to warn the latest newcomer to their residence which no outsider had previously ever visited. Naturally, said tourist couldn’t help but rush headlong into the mystery of the cursed/oppressive ruling noble, and thus be thrust into the centre of a likely perilous adventure.

Now, these tourists had a rather frequent habit of landing a few villagers in even bigger bother than normal, whilst dragging some of their own friends, family and lovers on to the vampiric silver platter (no, wait—not silver; in quite a few imaginings, silver ranges from inconvenient to terminal for vampires. Let’s just go with dinner table, shall we?), which tends to end in pitchforks and torches, possibly stake for a main course for the vampire and a bunch of villagers safe from being preyed upon by an ancient terror.

No doubt down to this frequent occurrence, vampires often moved away from the village model and went for a less conspicuous approach of just blending into a big city. With the increase in population, the advent of nightclubs and the presence of corporate head offices, it’s possible to cram in quite a few bloodsuckers these days, and often in a way that makes them much less literal, and more metaphorical. And so from the creeping horror we had back in the days of the gothic novel, and even quite often bypassing horror, we have now moved into keeping young adults entertained, as they experience the vampire in a whole new context of creepy.

Along the way as well, vampires have joined many other supernatural creatures in finding their way into urban fantasy, which is where I tend to live. Believe it or not, it turns out that some of the denizens of the night aren’t happy with their lot, even if they are vampires themselves, or half vampires, a lot of the time (don’t ask). They won’t be tourists, because this is their city, dammit, but it’s rare our (anti)hero will be at top of the vampire tree. A change in theme then, from mysterious monstrosity in the shadows to an attempt to change, or destroy, the system from within.

And in here lies one of the first great constants. Your lives are never quite going to be the same with even one vampire around.* The reasons are varied, the choices are few. And like it or not, they’re fascinating creatures, sometimes in an involuntary sense. The thing is, human beings are rather accustomed, in nature’s hierarchy, to being at the apex of the food chain. We have technology on our side, even in what we believe to be the most primitive of civilisations by our thinking. We can make fire, store water, manipulate air and mine the earth. We have hundreds of languages and many methods to ease communication. And we can replicate just about anything else Mother Nature is likely to throw at us in one method or other. And if we can’t, you can bet your car keys that someone is working on it as we speak.

I guess what I’m saying to you is this: if your boss *really* doesn’t do mornings, someone accidentally splashes you with quite a lot of water just to check if you do anything other than curse them (another poor choice of words) or a club or pub you rock up to has a suspiciously high quantity of mirrors, there is a chance of vampiric activity in your very town! But don’t worry—they’ll keep to themselves. If you do decide to check into some local history though, do tell me. I’d be keen to know if you turn up anything I might need to know about…

 

*There is a Law of Diminishing Vampires, which leads me to consider they may have more in common with ninjas than they let on. One alone is usually some master type and tough as nails, but if they turn up in a mob, a team of suitably experienced and determined (not to mention appropriately armed) mortals should be able to handle themselves as their relative strength is frequently diluted.

R.A. Smith

Russell is a displaced Londoner, now living in Manchester, and is writing in the hope of funding his car addiction. He lives with his girlfriend, two kittens, a small army of bears and two larger armies of miniatures.

An avid gamer, he is happy mashing buttons on a Playstation pad but happier mashing his mates in a field at weekends or slaying demons with dice, a pencil and paper.

He has held an eclectic collection of jobs, including editing a student magazine, several stints as a Tudor soldier and a mission in Moscow. He still does hold a Masters in Creative Writing, which he took to force himself to finish at least one novel. The plan worked better than expected.

Feel free to stop by on Twitter: @RASmithPSL or the blog site projectshadowlondon.wordpress.com. There’s also the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Mister.R.A.Smith.

[Vampire Month] Jen Ponce interview

03 Tuesday Mar 2015

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Today we meet the first of this year’s Vampire Month authors – Jen Ponce. I first met Jen through the Dragon’s Rocketship Facebook group and am welcoming the chance to learn more about her here. You can find out more about her on http://jenniferponce.com/about-jen-ponce/

1. What is the earliest memory you have of writing? What did you write about?
I wrote a lot, but the first thing I remember writing and getting an audience response from (which was epic, by the way) was a play I wrote and then performed with my Animal puppet. I was ten. I remember futzing over that little script for days, wanting it to be perfect. My older sisters (both in college), my brother-in-law, my nephew, and my mom were in the audience. I squatted behind the couch and let Animal do the talking. I remember it was a play about the Fourth of July, but I can’t remember much else about it except that my audience all laughed when they were supposed to laugh. That moment made me a writer.

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2. When did you decide to become a professional writer? Why did you take this step?
The moment I decided to become a professional writer was the moment I decided I was going to sit down and finish a novel. I’d written several with friends, but I’d never finished an entire book myself and I burned to do that. I set myself a goal and dangled tantalizing bait at the end: the DVD set of A & E’s Pride and Prejudice. I knew I’d never be happy with myself if I didn’t hold a book in my hands with my name on it. I knew that I wanted to be a professional writer ever since that moment I made my family laugh with something I wrote.
3. What would you consider to be your greatest strength as a writer? What about your greatest weakness? How do you overcome this weakness?
I think my greatest strength would be the ability to build suspense and my characters. I write by feel: does this chapter feel like it ends on a high note? Does this sentence feel scary? It’s kind of a weird thing but I think I’ve read so many books that the pace and rhythm of novel structure has settled into my muscle memory.

My greatest weakness would be settling into the story long enough to show what’s going on. I sometimes have a tendency to set the pace, to drive toward the end, that I forget some people like to know what the setting looks like, what the characters look like, etc. … I’ve been working on slowing down my prose long enough to settle readers firmly into the place of the book, into the physical body of the character. It helps to have writer friends with those strengths, who can point out places where my setting is thin so I can fix it. I’ve found that being more detailed is fun, though I’m still a “go go go” kind of writer.

4. Tell us about the place where you live. Have you ever derived any inspiration from your home or from anywhere you have visited?
I live in the Panhandle of Nebraska, which is a very homogeneous culture. Whenever I go places, I’m so grateful for diversity it’s silly. Nebraska is a beautiful place and it’s home to people with a great capacity for independence and self-sufficiency.
One place that I visited that inspired the creepy setting of one of my books, Bug Queen, was a coffer dam in Cisco, TX. It used to be the hub of all things social and fun: a gigantic pool, a small zoo, a skating rink. It was an extremely busy place … until there was no more money to keep it running. When my friend and fellow writer Kathy took me there long ago, it was a silent and eerie place. The pool water was covered with green and the remnants of one of the ladders for the diving board still jutted from the murky depths. It was the perfect spot for my alien fungus to drive its victims, to store them, and to let the fungus wriggling inside them grow.

5. Which book, if any, would you consider to be your greatest influence and inspiration?
That would be hard to say. I read and write in several genres. Stephen King’s It is probably one of my favorite books of all time, if I had to pick one. I am still awed by its complexity and the way he wove in the past and the present, all those characters, all those stories, into a novel that still sucks me in when I start reading it, even after many read throughs, even after all this time.

BazaarFrontCoverSkull6. What drove you to write about Vampires?
The Hammer Brothers films started me loving vampires. Those films gave me delicious nightmares when I was a kid, (and if you know me at all, you know I love nightmares—that’s where a lot of my stories come from.) The thing I always wished for was the vampire to live and was disappointed time and again that the vampire would get staked and the world would turn back to normal. Who wants normal? Love At First Bite gave me a good ending—the vampire gets the girl and they fly off into the sunset. Yay! And then the Vampire Lestat came along. If I wasn’t hooked already, I would have been. Anne Rice opened up a wider world view for me and made me hunt for more books about vampires. Some were hits and some were misses, but it was all story fodder.

7. What do you think is the attraction for Vampire fiction? Why is it such a popular topic?
For me, vampires are the promise of something magical. This world is so mundane that we humans are always inventing things to make it more fantastical. (Think Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy.) Why do we have these things? Why did our ancestors believe in jorogumo, fairies, daemons? Partially because there were gaps in our scientific knowledge, sure, but also because it makes life easier to think that just around the corner there could be a leprechaun we could catch to win some gold, or a genie to grant us wishes. I’ve always wanted to become a vampire and gain immortality—think of all the books I’d have time to read! Vampires give us magic and they give us sex and they give us darkness. There are things we don’t want to experience in real life that we enjoy reading about. We don’t want to murder (most of us, I hope) but we settle ourselves into the skin of a vampire main character and murder people. We relish the blood, the violence, the power, and then we go back to our fairly safe, mundane lives. Vampire fiction gives us an outlet, it’s a waking dream. Then we close the book and become human once more.

8. In a fight between all the greatest Vampires of fiction, who do you think would come out on top?
I’m liking Leo Pellissier, from Faith Hunter’s Jane Yellowrock series. I considered Lestat, but he does a lot of navel gazing and pondering the numinous, and I considered Akasha, but of course, Lestat does defeat her, so probably Leo. “Go Leo!”

9. What about in some other contest such as sexiness or dress sense? Who would win that one?

Eric Northman from the Sookie Stackhouse series would win sexy male. (Sorry Leo and Lestat, you’re cute too.) Ivy from the Rachel Morgan series would win sexy female. I crushed on her hard the whole time I read those books. Kisten too, but my heart is still sad over him.

10. How well do you think one of your characters would fare against the winner(s) of the above?
Lady Catherine would win against Leo. She is evil and sadistic and worse, it takes a specific person’s blood to even kill her. She’d have Leo’s head off and he’d be deader than a doornail in minutes. I don’t think anyone in their right mind would think she was sexy though. Evil has a way of shining through and hers is a very base kind of evil.Blood Curse 2.0 Front Only

11. Tell us the basic premise behind your latest novel.
Blood Drunk is the sequel to Blood Curse (featuring the evil Lady Catherine.) It’s the story of Claudia, a vampire focused on revenge against Patrick Montgomery, one of three brothers who figured out how to use vampire blood to lengthen their lives without turning. She thinks him responsible for the horrors she experienced at the hands of the Marquis de Chaval. (I based him on the notorious Marquis de Sade. I figured I should get something out of the horrors I experienced reading his books. Eep.)
Before Patrick became a vampire hunter, he was a pirate, and he was the one responsible for Claudia’s husband’s death. But of course, all is not as it seems, and as the story unfolds, the truth comes to light.
The main characters of Blood Curse, Lorelei and Issala, return in this book, as do Patrick’s brothers and Lorelei’s insane twin, Morganna, who seems to be following in Lady Catherine’s dainty footsteps. I’m planning two more books, each one focusing on a different set of characters and their individual stories against the backdrop of a larger, more complicated story line. Blood Curse sat for a short while at #1 on Amazon in the lesbian horror category and it consistently sits in the top 100. Since the next book’s focus is not on Lorelei and Issala, it’ll be interesting to see how it fares.

Bio for author Jen Ponce

I’m a voracious reader and growing up, I constantly looked for heroic female characters. To my disappointment, so many of the women in the genre fiction I was reading were doormats, weak-willed, boring, incapable, or even downright dumb. That’s why my fiction features strong women. Women who are heroic, women who don’t fall in love and forget who they are, women who fight for what they believe in. If you are looking for character-rich stories that drive you relentlessly toward the big finish, then you just might like my books. Keep in mind I’m a big fan of blood and horror too. Do you like to be scared while you watch a kick ass woman save the day? My books might be just the thing to keep you up all night long.

 I’m a writer, a mother of three boys, a cat herder and zombie apocalypse aficionado. I also love vampires, so if you meet one, send ’em my way, okay? I would appreciate it.

If you’re interested in my Kick Ass Woman’s Manifesto, please visit my website here: http://jenniferponce.com/kick-ass-womans-manifesto/ and follow my blog if you like what you see.

Happy reading!

Find Jen on Facebook and Twitter

 

  

 

[Vampire Month] Vampire Killing Kits – Real or Fake? by Jonathan Ferguson

20 Thursday Mar 2014

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In today’s guest post, Jonathan Ferguson of the Royal Armouries in Leeds discusses the authenticity of the Vampire Killing kits.

 
In 2007 I wrote a blog post pretty much scoffing at the very idea of a ‘vampire killing kit’. During 2012, I published the definitive article on the subject in Fortean Times (#288), was interviewed for US TV about them, and found myself sitting at the back of an auction house in Yorkshire, actually bidding on one for the Royal Armouries collection. Why the change of heart? It’s not because I’ve gone from sceptic to believer. Let me explain. VKK-2
If you’ve never come across one, vampire killing kits are what they sound like; boxed sets of tools for self-defence against the undead. One thing we know for sure is that they are not rare. So far, I have documented the existence of 100 kits that either purport, or appear to be, real. What do we mean by ‘real’? Well, ‘real’ can be a tricky concept, but most would probably suggest that it means ‘old’. Some might also say that it would include genuine purpose, as in kits created to actually slay vampires. As all evidence points to an American or western European origin some time in the twentieth century, it’s unlikely that they were made by, or for, believers in vampires. The vampire is a Slavic monster, and belief in it was roundly scoffed at by the English-speaking world as soon as stories from the east began to emerge in the 18th century. We also know from folklore that vampires were killed with improvised weapons like gravedigger’s spades, not expensive specialist tools like this, and that historical ‘slayers’ don’t really fit the profile of the professional, pseudoscientific vampire hunter created by Bram Stoker.

The most common claim, often made by auction houses, is that they are period novelties, something to buy a friend before a trip to eastern Europe. This is certainly plausible, but even this is lacking in evidence. I have yet to come across any advertisement, letter, diary, or other connection to any known retailer or purchaser, though I live in hope! The only physical evidence we do have are the kits themselves, and it is remarkably easy to take an antique box, refurbish it with antique innards, and fill it with antique objects. Only invasive scientific techniques could begin to tell you how old the result really was. As each kit is different, for every kit ‘debunked’ there would be dozens of others to which the same conclusion couldn’t be applied.
To overcome this difficulty, I did two things. Firstly, I selected the most high-profile subset of kits and the first to be spotted ‘in the wild’; those supposedly made by ‘Professor Blomberg’. These kits come with a label and a more-or-less standard set of contents. Whilst the gunmaker mentioned on the label did exist, the good Professor was a fabrication. In itself, this didn’t point to a later date; these could easily be DSC01380Victorian or Edwardian novelties as suggested by those in the antiques industry.

The second weapon in my toolbag to assess the likely date of this group of kits was vampire lore. Whenever they were produced, the design of the kits would have been informed by the type of vampire and vampire hunter current when they were made. To sell to any customer, they would have to have recognition factor, to include tools known to the public. For this reason, I embraced fiction as well as folklore. I assessed each component, from stake to silver bullet, and determined when it first appeared in print or film. The most useful features proved to be the pistol, and the cross-marked silver bullets. Whilst firearms were recorded in folklore as a viable weapon against vampires, it was little known in fiction until the Hammer movies of the 1970s. Meanwhile, the earliest written reference to silver bullets against vampires was somewhat earlier, in 1928 (Montagu Summers), but no-one was talking about marking them with a cross until 1965 (an issue of ‘Penthouse’!).
This agreed with the historical and scientific evidence. The Mercer Museum in the U.S. had their kit tested and determined it to be no later than 1945. A London man, Michael de Winter, claimed online to have created the first kit in 1972 as a way to draw people to his antiques stall; I contacted him by post to confirm his story, though of course he may not have been the first. Finally, I researched the first written reference to a VKK1vampire kit, which turned out to be a militaria catalogue from 1986. This version of the kit was small, with all the usual ‘ingredients’, but the pistol was clearly the main feature. The kits seem to have become more elaborate in their casing over time. All of the dates I could come up with were late 20th century. I discovered that even some of the auction houses were selling kits as pieces of modern art, or reserving judgement on their antiquity, yet they were still selling for thousands of dollars.

So are vampire killing kits real? That depends. No doubt some have been created and many more sold in order to deceive, but if there are indeed no ‘real’ vampire kits, then it is not technically possible to fake them. After seven years of exhaustive research, I still can’t tell you that there’s no such thing as vampire killing kits. There are various ‘non-Blomberg’ kits that could easily be older. I do suspect that all of them are late twentieth century in origin, but I think they are important artefacts regardless. At the Armouries, our kit, however old it proves to be, lets us represent and talk about the hidden history of self-defence weapons that we could not otherwise, and has been a big hit with visitors. The kits reflect the real weapons used to ‘slay’ vampires as much as they do the fictional versions that we have all now grown up with. The only physical evidence that we have for supernatural creatures like vampires are the ‘deviant burials’ of people that may have been seen as revenants of some kind, and the stones or rusty pieces of iron that were used to stop them coming back. This fascinates us, but fails to meet our fictional expectations of what a vampire-slaying weapon should look like, and so we as a culture have addressed this shortcoming.  I think kit creator Michael de Winter was right when he told me in 2011 that he was ‘not making a fake, merely inventing an item’. Inspired by our own folklore; the classic horror movies of the 60s and 70s, we have invented artefacts of our beloved monster, the vampire. That has to be worth preserving.
IMG_6068Jonathan Ferguson is Curator of Firearms at the Royal Armouries in Leeds. His research interests include their use, effect, and depiction in popular culture. His sceptical interest in the paranormal is more of a hobby, stemming from the gift of a Ladybird version of ‘Dracula’ at a young age. However, he is especially enthusiastic when the two things overlap! He has made several television and radio appearances, including National Geographic’s ‘How Sherlock Changed the World’, and BBC Radio 4’s ‘The Lifecycle of a Bullet’.

The Royal Armouries holds in trust for the public one of the finest collections of arms and armour in the world, from exquisite pieces of the gunmaker’s art, to the most functional military weapons, and from the medieval period to the present day.

Find the Royal Armouries on Facebook and Twitter:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Royal-Armouries/215812575369
https://twitter.com/royal_Armouries

 

[Vampire Month] Introduction

01 Friday Mar 2013

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So, another year, another Vampire month. Last year’s offerings were epic and I think this year’s will take that level of epicness and redefine it. And, as everyone knows, one way to make something epic is to have Christopher Lee involved in it somewhere. So, here is a photo of him to create the illusion that he is involved.Vampire

The Vampire has been a presence in literature for quite some time and has mutated into many different forms over the years. In fact, I believe that this mutability is what keeps the Vampire genre in such good shape. Had writers stuck to the concepts popularised by Stoker it was likely that the Vampire would have become staid and dull. Instead, like any immortal must do to survive, the Vampire has changed with the times in a number of different ways.

Whether you are talking about Stoker’s Dracula, Hammer’s Dracula, The Lost Boys, Underworld, Twilight, White Wolf’s Storyteller game, Night Watch, Being Human, Doctor Who’s Haemovores or some of the weird stuff you see in Manga you will see a different interpretation of what is essentially the same mythological creature. Vampires have dressed in Victorian garb, Regency velvets, PVC catsuits, 80’s New Romantic frills, shellsuits, police uniforms and Crusader armour. They’ve been lords, ladies, punks, assassins and homeless. Some of them stalk, some of them fly through windows in a floaty way, others hop. They have been obsessed with counting rice and lost socks but they all have that same, all consuming addiction to blood. There is a lot of choice in there. Which makes sense when you consider that your pool for recruiting new blood is the entirity of humanity over the whole of history.

So, this month we intend to celebrate the diversity of the Vampire in all its many forms with a host of writers who all have an interest in the genre.

This year sees a slight change to the format of last year’s Vampire Month. Last year we had four writers with a week each. This year we have six writers who have sent in articles. So, there will be three posts a week – Monday, Wednesday and Friday – throughout the month.

If you are interested in taking part in next year’s Vampire month event or know someone who might be, please feel free to contact me on dalascelles-writing@yahoo.co.uk I am, by the way, still waiting for Ann Rice or Rachel Caine to get in touch…

So, without further ado, I hereby declare this, the second Vampire Month, officially open!

Bram Stoker (1847 – 1912)

20 Friday Apr 2012

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I was reminded by the inestimable Tony Lee that today was in fact the centenary of the death of Bram Stoker, who died following a series of strokes on the 20th April, 1912.

Though he is not credited with the creation of the literary vampire (that credit goes to John William Polidori, one time  personal physician to Lord Byron) he certainly did his bit to ensure that the Vampire became the enduring myth we know and love today. Without him there would have been no Lestat, no Lost Boys, no Blade, no Buffy the Vampire Slayer* and, of course, no Christopher Lee or Gary Oldman as Dracula. In fact, Hammer horror would have spent the entirity of the 70s having nothing good to make films about and Francis Ford Coppola would have been stuck making endless sequels to the Godfather and Vietnam war films.

Of course, there would also be no Twilight. But I feel we can forgive the old chap for that one.

I would like commemerate this occasion by talking about something else which was instrumental in the creation of Dracula and hence all of the above… the town of Whitby. Whitby is the place where Stoker may have got the inspiration for Dracula – at least the evidence suggests this to be the case. Based on the notes he left, the only mention of the name ‘Dracula’ comes from a reference to a book called  ‘An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia’by William Wilkinson (1820) which he found in Whitby library.

Whitby Abbey

Of course, Whitby is also the place where the Demeter, the ship that brings Dracula to England, lands. I suspect this was by way of crediting the contribution the town made to his work.

It is easy to see how Whitby can inspire one of the greatest horror stories of all time. While the inspiration for the character came from Wallachia, the moody and misty atmosphere of this little Northern port town must have had some influence on the feel of Stoker’s writing and, indeed, the interpretations that followed. I remember my own visit to Whitby with fondness. I was a teenager, taking a yaught trip down the north east coast with a group from college, and we stopped overnight in Whitby. We visited the Abbey, went to the Dracula Museum and spent a fun day wandering aroung the place. The Abbey alone is an imposing and grand sight and I have always had a love for dynamic coastal views.

And Whitby is not shy about crowing about its connection to Stoker. Not only is there the Dracula museum and the blue plaques commemmorating his visit but it also welcomes the many goths who congreate there twice a year for the Whitby Goth Festival. And personally, I do not see why they shouldn’t be proud of their role in creating a character who is promising to be almost as immortal in popularity as he was in actuality.

*There is absolute evidence which suggests that, had Bram Stoker not written Dracula, Joss Whedon would never have been born.