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In Search of Dracula

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In Search of Dracula SI M-A 2006 pgs cut 1/23/06 2:49 PM Page 25 NOTES ON A STRANGE WORLD MASSIMO POLIDORO In Search of Dracula recently had the opportunity to Ironically, though the novel was first travel through Europe in search of published in English in 1893, Romania’s Ithe reality behind some famous most famous fictional resident, Count ancient legends. I was part of a team of Dracula, was almost unknown there investigators for a TV show called until 1992. Only with the fall of com- “Legend Detectives,” which subse- munism was Bram Stoker’s classic finally quently aired in December 2005 by translated and published in Romania. Discovery Channel Europe. But the question remained, could I was particularly interested in the Vlad Tepes have been the model for legend that was scheduled for May: Stoker’s infamous Count? Count Dracula, the world’s most What is known of Vlad the Impaler famous vampire. Such is the enduring comes from a series of lurid stories dat- power of Bram Stoker’s classic horror ing back to the late fifteenth and early story, first published in 1897 and never sixteenth centuries. They depict a man out of print, that modern-day surrounded in corpses, a tyrant and Transylvania in Northern Romania has madman, who literally drank the blood become a tourist Mecca. of his enemies. There are good reasons Fans of the fictional count flock there to think that Stoker was struck by this A bust of Vlad Tepes in Bucharest, Romania. by the coachload persuaded that in the evil character and borrowed his sur- land of mist-shrouded mountains, they Son of the Devil name, “Dracula,” because he thought it meant “son of the devil,” to create his will find clues to the source of the great- Bram Stoker’s Dracula was by no means est vampire of them all: the Transylvanian own vampire. In fact, it meant “son of the first vampire story. It was the culmi- the dragon,” and this was because Vlad‘s nobleman who left his remote homeland nation of a writing tradition of Gothic father had joined an order of knight- to spread his evil plague. horror stories that had begun nearly hood called the Order of the Dragon. For the true believer, the bound- eighty years earlier with “The Vampyre,” Dragon is written dracul in Romanian, aries between Stoker’s creation and by John Polidori. (Was he a relative of and so Dracula literally means “son of historical fact have become blurred, mine, I wonder?) Others followed, like Dracul.” like all great legends. Many people “Varney the Vampire” (1847), a serial But to many Romanians, Vlad is a believe that the immortal count was that ran in magazines called “penny national hero, a saviour. They reject the based on a real person: a medieval dreadfuls” for more than two years, and J. tales of a psychopathic tyrant as vicious Romanian warlord called Vlad Tepes, Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Carmilla” (1871), propaganda promoted by Vlad’s enemies. also know as “Vlad the Impaler” and which centered around a lesbian vampire. “Vlad Dracula.” But Dracula was a departure. In Massimo Polidoro is an investigator of the Was this famous national hero the Stoker’s hands, the vampire became all- paranormal, author, lecturer, and man behind the legend? That was the powerful, the embodiment of evil—and a cofounder and head of CICAP, the Italian first question we were going to investi- creature whose immortality was bound up skeptics group. His Web site is at gate during our stay in Transylvania.1 in a rich cocktail of blood, sex, and death. www.massimopolidoro.com. SKEPTICAL INQUIRER March / April 2006 25 SI M-A 2006 pgs cut 1/23/06 2:49 PM Page 26 They honour him as the legendary king they had seen him posthumously walking who, like Britain’s King Arthur, will one in his yard. Something had to be done. day return to save his country. Six local men then volunteered to Part of the reason for this lies in enact the ancient Romanian ritual for places like Sigihisoara, a town built by dealing with a strigoi. Just before mid- Germans, or better, Saxons, who had night, they crept into the cemetery on moved to Transylvania to become mer- the edge of the village and gathered chants. They took hold of the region around Toma’s grave. and didn’t even let Romanians enter the It seems that the destruction of a town—they had to pay a toll first. Vlad strigoi has some parallels with the meth- resented this and sided with the ods used by Stoker’s heroes to destroy Romanians. In his lifetime, he also Dracula. But rather than drive a stake fought bravely against the Turks, who through the creature’s heart, the six men had conquered parts of Europe already, dug Toma up, split his ribcage with a and this spread panic among the pitchfork, removed his heart, put stakes Christian kings. So Vlad was considered through the rest of his body, and sprin- a crusader. Europe, then, first knew him kled it with garlic. Then they burned the as a hero. heart, put the embers in water, and shared However, Vlad lost his battles and the grim cocktail with the sick child. was defeated by the Turks, and his A view of Bran Castle, strongly promoted by the For a little while, it all seemed to have legacy was set by the victors. There are tourist board as the real "Castle Dracula"; in worked well. Eventually, the sick girl got reality, Vlad may have stayed here as a guest at still many pamphlets surviving, printed some point during his reign, but it was certainly better again, so the ritual must have by the Germans soon after his death, in never his castle. worked, or so many in the village thought. which his exploits are recounted in Local police appeared to be less gory detail and he is portrayed as a understanding. After Toma’s daughter devil-like figure. complained, they arrested the men and It’s ironic that the man whose name charged them with illegally exhuming the helped inspire one of the most famous corpse. They were sentenced to six fictional horror stories of all time, written months in jail, but did not serve the time. in the nineteenth century, was also the What really surprised me, however, subject of some of the very first printed was why Toma’s daughter was angry at horror stories in the fifteenth century. her relatives. It was not because they had And this also shows the power of propa- desecrated the body of a dead person ganda: for a brief moment, he’d been the that deserved more respect, but because The author explaining to a television crew how hero of Europe; then, after his death, his Vlad used stakes. she had not been invited to the ritual! enemies destroyed his reputation. “These are very ancient practices During the reign of communist dic- haunting descriptions of vampiric rituals. indeed,” anthropologist Fifor Mihai, tator Nicholae Ceausescu, Vlad Dracula Stories of vampires are, in fact, very who served as a consultant during the was again venerated as a hero. They por- old in Romania; however, they prefer to trial, told me. “And they are about com- trayed him as a nationalist icon, a man call these creatures strigoi. They are seen municating with the dead, laying the who united and protected Romanians as ghosts, undead, immaterial things; dead to rest. The media and newspapers from their enemies, imperialist Turks they are usually a recently buried member have made much of the gory aspects, and capitalist German merchants. of the family, who returns to haunt his but these people have been doing this His brutal methods were either dis- relatives and drain their life forces, some- sort of thing for many, many centuries, missed as enemy propaganda or, when times in dreams. In order to bring peace and in the past, the authorities have they couldn’t be explained away, as a to the family and to the undead itself, turned a blind eye.” necessary evil. In fact, Ceausescu was so some “rituals” need to be performed. These beliefs are very different from enamoured of Vlad that he is even These are very secret practices that, I those held by people who are Dracula reported to have once said: “A man like was surprised to learn, still continue fans; with them, it’s all about image, the me comes along only every 500 years.” today. In January 2004, one such episode immortality, and sexiness of vampires. became public and created a scandal. But for the people in Romania, these are Death of a Strigoi After Petre Toma of the village of deeply held views, as strongly held as Having ascertained that the real figure of Marotinu de Sus died in a field accident religious faiths. Whether that means Vlad Tepes was only a loose inspiration in December 2003, his relatives com- customs such as digging up a body and for Stoker’s fiction, we wondered if local plained that a child’s illness was to blame removing its heart should somehow be folklore provided the inspiration for his on Toma, since some neighbors claimed preserved, I’m not so sure. 26 Volume 30, Issue 2 SKEPTICAL INQUIRER SI M-A 2006 pgs cut 1/23/06 2:49 PM Page 27 In the end, our investigation found the real Dracula, but probably little Trevisick, and Alex Obradovich for their in- Romania to be a country of striking more than what was given in the tour valuable help in the research and docu- contrasts and rich traditions.
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