Two to celebrate Halloween in padded coffins at Count Dracula’s castle

“NO GARLIC or garlic-scented items allowed, including perfume,” read the house rules of Count Dracula’s castle to ensure that Halloween night guests cannot avoid the vampire.

On October 31, two people will be allowed to sleep in velvet trimmed coffins in the seclusion of the count’s crypt and will spend the rest of the night in the Carpathians castle completely alone, vacation rental marketplace Airbnb says.

The company launched a promotional contest via Airbnb last week to pick the castle’s first overnight guests since Romania’s postWorld War II communist regime expelled the owners, the Habsburg royal family, almost 70 years ago.

In 2006, a democratic government that replaced the fallen communists restored the 14th-century Bran fortress, known as “Dracula’s Castle”, to Habsburg descendants. Situated in the wooded foothills of the Carpathian mountains, it is now a museum and major tourist attraction in EU member Romania.

The castle was never part of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, although Romania’s notorious 15th century ruler Vlad Tepes (Vlad the Impaler), whose life inspired the book, may have set foot there briefly.

Vlad was notorious for his cruelty, impaling Turks and thieves on wooden stakes, but he was no vampire and vampires are not part of Romanian superstition, which includes the belief that garlic wards off evil.

Airbnb said the winning pair would walk through the castle’s labyrinth of dark corridors to eventually discover a secret passage to the grand dining room. There, an intimate candlelit dinner would await.

“Bran Castle is where the legend of Dracula was born, and I have many stories to share as I guide the guests through the dark secret passages,” said Dacre Stoker, a descendant of Bram Stoker who would play the role of Jonathan Harker, a character from the novel. – Reuters