The Greatest Horror Story Ever Told!

The 1897 novel “Dracula” is the revelatory horror story that introduced the character of Count Dracula, and made Transylvania one of the scariest places in the world!

This #31daysofhorror “Wednesday’s Bookmobile” travels to the home of Count Dracula!

The story is straightforward, and in 1897 must have shocked the world: the mysterious Count Dracula seeks a way to move from Transylvania to England so that he may find new blood and spread the “curse of the undead.”

This leads ultimately to a battle between Dracula and a small group of men and a woman led by Professor Abraham Van Helsing.

This rare “first edition” of the novel now sells for $45,000!

Here is some interesting trivia about the book’s Author, Bram Stoker:

Between 1879 and 1898, Stoker was a business manager for the Lyceum Theatre in London. He wrote short stories and novels to supplement his income – that includes “Dracula.”

“Dracula” has been released multiple times in many different formats, and remains one of literature’s greatest achievements.

Sadly, Stoker himself made little money from the book, as it has grown in stature over the century since publication…Director Francis Ford Coppola made one of the latest films to tackle the book, and included the Author’s name in the title:

The book is told as a series of letters, diary entries, newspaper articles, and ships’ log entries, whose narrators are the novel’s protagonists, and occasionally supplemented with newspaper clippings relating events not directly witnessed.

The dread builds throughout the novel, as the “mark of Dracula” begins to appear.

This diary entry discusses how sick Lucy has become:

“Last night I found her leaning out when I woke up, and when I tried to wake her I could not; she was in a faint…I looked at her throat just now as she lay asleep, and the tiny wounds seem not to have healed. They are still open, and, if anything, larger than before, and the edges of them are faintly white. They are like little white dots with red centres.”

That doesn’t sound good!

Interestingly, there is an ending to the novel that wasn’t used: it has Dracula’s castle actually being destroyed:

“As we looked there came a terrible convulsion of the earth so that we seemed to rock to and fro and fell to our knees. At the same moment with a roar which seemed to shake the very heavens the whole castle and the rock and even the hill on which it stood seemed to rise into the air and scatter in fragments while a mighty cloud of black and yellow smoke volume on volume in rolling grandeur was shot upwards with inconceivable rapidity.

From where we stood it seemed as though the one fierce volcano burst had satisfied the need of nature and that the castle and the structure of the hill had sunk again into the void. We were so appalled with the suddenness and the grandeur that we forgot to think of ourselves.”

— Deleted excerpt from the original Dracula manuscript

So Dracula’s Castle lives on, as does the greatest horror story ever written…while “Dracula” set the standard for horror, here’s a more modern book that does a pretty good job as well:

Stephen King’s second novel is a masterpiece of terror – read more about “Salem’s Lot” here:

https://johnrieber.com/2019/10/02/vampires-invade-salems-lot-wednesdays-bookmobile-has-stephen-kings-horrific-shocktober-battle/

And a terrific group of Writers, including my friend Robbie Cheadle, have contributed to the perfect book for #31daysofhorror:

This terrific collection of stories is now available – click here to find out more:

https://johnrieber.com/2019/08/21/death-among-us-wednesdays-bookmobile-rides-an-anthology-murder-mystery-train/

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Leave a comment with your scariest book!

Categories: Art, Books / Media, Cult Movies, Exotic Travel, Halloween, Horror films, Pop Culture

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