"The blood is the life!" (Bram Stoker, Dracula)
While we all know that the dead can't really, physically, crawl out of the grave to prey on the living, it does make for an interesting story. Dracula, by Bram Stoker, is the perfect example of the dead coming to life.
We all know the story of the vampire Count Dracula who preys on the living and is eventually killed when he is tricked into standing in the sun.
Where does the inspiration for this story come from, though? I know I'm not the only one who's thought of this so I found the two sources that inspired this dark, romantic tale.
Rhode Island: Winter of 1891
"In the city of Exeter, there lived a widowed Mr. Brown with his two children Mercy and Edwin. In the early winter, Mercy contracts the fatal illness of tuberculosis and dies shortly after.
While her father tries to cope with his grief, Edwin falls prey to the same illness in February of the same year.
The citizens, however, are not convinced that Edwin is really a victim of a fatal disease, but rather, a vampire. In the mind of the locals, there is only one thing that can determine if the vampire theory was true or not: the bodies of Mercy and her mother must be exhumed.
The bodies were then dug up and the people were horrified to find that Mercy's body had turned over. Another factor that alarmed everyone, was the fact that Mercy's corpse was in pristine condition despite having spent months in a coffin. The only way, for certain, that could determine whether or not she was a vampire, was by looking at her heart.
So Mercy Brown's body was opened up and the doctor was horrified to find blood in her heart. This was it. This was the determining factor. There was now only one thing that could be done to save Edwin from certain death: Mercy's heart must be burned and given to her brother to consume. This was the only way to cure him.
Once the heart had been burnt, the ashes were taken and mixed into a drink for Edwin. Even though he drank this foul mixture, it wasn't enough to save him. Edwin Brown succumbed to tuberculosis and died soon after."
This account is only one of two stories that inspired Bram Stoker to write his famous book: Dracula. The other (which is widely believed to have been the biggest inspiration) involves a Romanian ruler named Vlad Tepes.
"Vlad III was sent, as a young boy, to the Ottoman empire in order to appease the Sultan. After four years in the empire, Vlad III (also known as Vlad Dracula, son of the dragon) came home to Romania. Upon hearing about the murder of his father, Vlad Dracula decided to reclaim his father's throne.
In order to frighten and ward off possible invaders/conquerors, Vlad III would take his enemies and drive a giant, sharpened, wooden stake through their middle and put them up on display on his grounds. The sight and smell of death would be so prominent and horrible that it would scare off other invaders that tried to charge the castle.
This form of torture christened Vlad Dracula with a new name: Vlad Tepes, or more simply, Vlad the Impaler."
So whether you believe these two accounts are what inspired Dracula or not, you have to admit that it's still a pretty great story, and knowing what's behind it, is even better.
