The birth of Count Dracula
It is 1895, just after dawn, and a storm lashes the Aberdeenshire coast. High on a cliff, a caped figure perches ‘like a great bat’, brooding and plotting. He is writer Bram Stoker, in the throes of creating his monstrous, mesmeric vampire that will terrify the world. Now, 127 years later, Stoker’s descendant reveals the full, chilling story of how Scotland witnessed...
HE is the bloodthirsty aristocrat who has been striking fear into the hearts of mortals ever since his terrifying tale was first committed to print more than 120 years ago. And this summer Count Dracula is expected to bring a spine-tingling boost to tourism in Scotland.
For a descendant of Bram Stoker, the author who created fiction’s most feared vampire, will be highlighting the vital role Aberdeenshire played in shaping the literary-horror phenomenon. Here, in his own words, he tells of the genesis of the monster
THE scene is set in August 1895, against the backdrop of a crashing sea. Along the sand, a hunched figure paces back and forth intently, his cape blowing wildly in the wind. Every morning, shortly after dawn, his routine is the same: he walks by the shore, angrily waving a heavy stick above his head and shouting above the noise of the waves. The man on the beach is Bram Stoker, literary giant, creator of Count Dracula, and my great grand-uncle.
But to the residents of the nearby village, he presents a fearsome and perplexing spectacle. They know him as a middle-aged, smartly dressed theatre manager from London, who has become a regular visitor to their part of the Aberdeenshire coast.
Perhaps they imagine his wild antics are something to do with his profession: maybe he is rehearsing, getting into character for some sort of stage performance.
What they could never have imagined is that Bram is in the throes of creating what will become one of the most famous, most recognisable and most terrifying monsters of all time.
This year it will be my privilege to organise walking tours close to the village of Cruden Bay, which played such an important part in bringing the vampire to life.
Through family stories and using Bram’s diaries, notes and other writings, I have learned just how important this place was in shaping the evil fiend for which he became famous. The landscape in places has a violent drama which spoke to Bram’s sense of the supernatural.
The buildings – including a striking clifftop castle – also played their part, as did the weather, the local people and their superstitions.
Bram first visited Cruden Bay in 1892 while on a walking tour. He later wrote: ‘When first I saw the place I fell in love with it. The next year I came again, and the next, and the next.’
Between 1892 and 1910, he visited the area at least 12 times. Although working as business manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London, he was also a parttime author, and told a local resident he got ideas for stories while walking the coastline.
Aberdeenshire may seem a surprising choice for Bram’s summer holiday. More than 500 miles from London, it took a 14-hour journey to get there. Not only that, he mixed with the elite of London society and would be expected to take the waters in a fashionable European spa resort.
An explanation comes from another of his novels, The Shoulder of Shasta, and the words of a character who was not ‘in any way addicted to society life’ but instead ‘longed for the wilderness’.
In 1895, he started writing Dracula – a process that was to consume him entirely for two years.
At 7am every day he walked along the beach before returning for breakfast. Mrs Cruickshank, who worked at the local Post Office, recalled him dressed in tweeds and a round beret, describing him as ‘a familiar figure with his stout walking-stick as he strolled along the sands and the cliffs’.
Another resident remembers his long cape and wide-brimmed hat. His pose was highly distinctive, as he walked with his hands behind his back, head down, with a slight stoop, utterly absorbed in intense thought. At the south of the beach are rocky crags where Bram would spend hours mulling over the writing of Dracula.
His wife Florence later explained: ‘When he was at work on Dracula, we were all frightened of him. It was up on a lonely part of the east coast of Scotland, and he seemed to be obsessed by the spirit of the thing.
‘There he would sit for hours, like a great bat, perched on the rocks of the shore, or wander alone up and down the sandhills thinking it out.’
Distant and prone to an outburst of temper if interrupted while writing or thinking about the novel, it’s possible Bram was using a method acting technique to get into the mind of his characters.
He must have presented a fearsome sight as he marched up and down the beach in the embodiment of Count Dracula.
Today Slains Castle outside Cruden Bay is an evocative ruin which has been mentioned as a possible inspiration for Dracula’s Castle. However, the connection is slightly more nuanced. The castle Bram had in mind for The Count was inspired by drawings he found in books about Transylvania.
Nevertheless, one of the rooms in Slains Castle turns up in Castle Dracula. In Chapter Two of the book, solicitor Jonathan Harker finds himself in an octagonal room.
‘The Count halted, putting down my bags, closed the door, and crossing the room, opened another door which led into a small octagonal room lit by a single lamp, and seemingly without a window of any sort.’
At Slains – which was still intact and inhabited in the 1890s – an octagonal room was used to welcome guests before they were shown into the drawing room. It’s plausible that Bram sat there.
It’s tempting to speculate the other rooms in Slains Castle were used during the writing phase of the novel. Despite there being no exact match, one similarity should be noted: Jonathan Harker couldn’t find a door knocker or bell at the front door of Castle Dracula; and likewise, no bell or door knocker was provided for the front door of Slains Castle.
Bram picked distinctive features
he encountered during his travels for use in his novels. The sight of the castle dramatically perched on top of the cliff undoubtedly acted as a stimulus to Bram’s imagination, but there is more as well.
Cruden Bay has a wide sandy beach lying between two rocky promontories. It’s broad curve is backed by sand dunes and twothirds of the way along, Hawklaw hill can be seen.
Bram wrote: ‘If Cruden Bay is to be taken figuratively as a mouth, with the sand hills for soft palate, and the green Hawklaw as the tongue, the rocks which work the extremities are its teeth’.
The parallels with Dracula’s fictional fangs are clear. Another feature of the beach are the sand devils which appear when gusts of wind blow the dry sand along the foreshore. As the grains speed along and writhe for a second or two they resemble ghostly serpents. Perhaps a similar sight inspired the famous scenes in Dracula.
When the three vampire sisters appeared before Harker: ‘Something made me start up, a low, piteous howling of dogs somewhere far below in the valley, which was hidden from my sight. Louder it seemed to ring in my ears, and the floating motes of dust to take new shapes to the sound as they danced in the moonlight.
‘Quicker and quicker danced the dust. The moonbeams seemed to quiver as they went by me into the mass of gloom beyond. More and more they gathered till they seemed to take dim phantom shapes.
‘The phantom shapes, which were becoming gradually materialised from the moonbeams, were those three ghostly women to whom I was doomed.’
The local people also influenced him, including the fishermen. Many were superstitious and some of their traditions were pre-Christian.
Although deeply religious, once out at sea they would revert to the pagan attitudes of old. It was taboo to mention anything to do with the Christian religion, such as a minister or a church, while out in a boat.
Bram took the old pagan beliefs seriously. He wrote in one of his non-fiction books that ‘in times when primitivity holds sway, we are most in touch with the loftiest things we are capable of understanding’.
And in Dracula, vampire hunter Van Helsing asks: ‘Is there fate amongst us still, sent down from the pagan world of old...?’
It seems the whole world knows about Count Dracula, but they do not know nearly half as much about his creator.
I want to remedy this – and the only way I can do this is by going beyond his novels and actually visiting the places he went to.
Along with my friend and full-time writer Mike Shepherd, I have been able to amass enough material to make this tour like no other.
It is my purpose in life to put together a jigsaw of Bram’s past from the disjointed pieces he left us. When the final parts are collected and slotted together everyone will be able to better understand my ancestor – and the role this part of Scotland played in giving rise to the immortal legend of Count Dracula.
The tour will run from May 22-28 and June 12-23. Tickets and further information can be found at https://experience-transylvania.com/125years.html