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There will be blood as Scots stake claim to Dracula
RESIDENTS of the Yorkshire seaside town where Bram Stoker wrote Dracula are spitting blood after owners of a Scottish castle staked a claim to be an inspiration for the story.
For more than a century Whitby has loomed large in the vampire cult where the fictional count is as real to many visitors – including the thousands of goths who descend twice a year – as the port's links with real life figures such as Captain Cook and Lewis Carroll.
Now Slains Castle in Aberdeenshire – a ruined fortress which developers want to turn into 6m holiday apartments – is also claiming a Dracula connection.
It is claimed by some north of the border that Stoker wrote at least part of his horror classic in 1895 while staying at Crookit Lum Cottage, near Aberdeenshire's Cruden Bay, and may have used Slains Castle as the model for Dracula's Castle in Transylvania.
However Whitby residents insist that there is not a shred of evidence to support the theory.
Whitby councillor Dorothy Clegg said: "I am sick to death of this. It is just not true.
"It is nonsense to suggest it is anything to do with Scotland. I think he did pay a holiday visit there but that's about it.
"I mean the Dracula Society in London even came up here and dedicated a seat in the town and the BBC filmed its version here in 1976."
Leslie Brown, manager of the Dracula Experience museum in Marine Parade, Whitby, open for more than 25 years, said it was only recently that the Scottish angle seemed to have gained some currency.
He said: "I just laughed it off at first. History and everything else shows Bram Stocker stayed in Whitby and was a frequent visitor. It is not our busiest time of the year but we attracting 100 visitors a day with our exhibitions showing the connection to Whitby – not Scotland."
Former Whitby churchman Graham Taylor, also known as bestselling chiller writer GP Taylor, said there was no evidence Stoker ever went to Scotland at all, adding: "It is a complete fiction and just ridiculous. Whitby is the rightful place and Whitby is where the connection will stay."
It has long been thought that aside from setting much of his novel in Whitby, Stoker took his cue for the scenes in Transylvania from Bran Castle, a medieval fortress in the Romanian mountains where Vlad the Impaler actually stayed in the 1400s and which has featured in many vampire films.
Critics have also pointed out that the paint on Slains Castle would barely have been dry when Dracula was published in 1897. Although the first castle was built in 1597 by the ninth earl, the present ruin is mainly of a much later folly built in 1837.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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