Castle Dracula

Castle Dracula (also known as Dracula’s castle) is the fictitious Transylvanian residence of Count Dracula, the vampire antagonist in Bram Stoker's 1897 horror novel ''Dracula''. It is the setting of the first few and final scenes of the novel.

Events in the novel taking place in or near the castle

In the novel's first chapters, the young English solicitor Jonathan Harker, traveling from London via Paris, Munich, Vienna, Budapest, Klausenburg, and Bistritz, arrives at the castle after being picked up in the Borgo Pass by a mysterious driver, whom Harker later recognizes as his host, Count Dracula, himself. During the trip, he apparently falls asleep but wakes up when the calèche reaches the stronghold. The driver disappears and Harker thinks himself lost until the door opens and the Count bids him welcome.

After some meals, which Harker always takes alone, and various conversations about the Carfax property near Purfleet, which his host wishes to purchase, Harker discovers that his patron has some disturbing habits, like climbing down the walls of the building like a lizard. Harker finds himself a prisoner in the castle.

One night, when he falls asleep in a forbidden room, he is harassed by the three Brides of Dracula, who are interrupted by a furious Count, claiming the guest for himself. Apart from the scene with the female vampires, however, who provokes a strange desire in him to be kissed by those red lips, Harker is not attacked in any way. The Count induces him to stay for a much longer time than planned and write some letters home to appease his employer and his fiancée Mina Murray. Harker scales the walls of the castle himself, enters the Count's empty room, and discovers a crypt in the chapel, wherein fifty boxes with earth are stored; in one of them, he finds the Count, who has just fed on blood. Harker tries to hit him with a shovel, but the blow is diverted by the Count's hypnotic powers. In this box, the Count is later transported to be shipped to England. Harker remains in the castle with the seductive female vampires but finally manages to escape to Budapest, where he is taken care of by Sister Agatha.

All events are recorded in Harker's journal, which later serves his friends as a report about the vampire and as a travel guide. After Lucy Westenra, Mina Murray's old school friend has died from a mysterious illness, Professor Abraham Van Helsing visits Mina and reads the diary, which he confirms to be a realistic account of the unbelievable circumstances Jonathan was confronted with.

In the final chapters, the vampire hunters chase the Count, who returns to his homeland by ship. Dracula tricks them by directing the vessel to Galatz, while Van Helsing and his friends are waiting for the ''Czarina Catherine'' to show up in Varna. In Galatz, the party splits into three couplings: Van Helsing and Mina travel by train to Veresți near Suceava and continue with a purchased horse carriage over Bukovinian territory to the east end of the Borgo Pass; Jonathan Harker and Arthur Holmwood buy a steam launch to follow the Count's box, transported by Slovak boatmen via the Sereth and the Bistrița River, while Dr. John Seward and Quincey Morris head in the same direction by horse. The box with the Count is taken over from the Slovaks by Szgany (Gypsies), who transport it by leiter wagon. The routes of the Szgany and the three couplings finally converge at a place in the immediate neighborhood of the castle, where Van Helsing and his men force the convoy to stop. Harker manages to decapitate the vampire with his Kukri knife, while Morris plunges his Bowie knife into the heart.

The only person to actually enter the castle during this episode is Van Helsing, who leaves the night camp shared with Mina to do away with the vampire sisters. Mina is already affected by her "blood wedding" with the vampire and left within a circle of Holy Bread.

In a final note, written seven years after their dramatic adventures, Harker reports on the group's return to Transylvania:

Three paragraphs from the original manuscript, in which the building itself is swallowed by a volcanic cataclysm, do not appear in the printed version. Possible reasons mentioned are that Stoker wanted to leave the option of a sequel open, or that this dramatic finale reminded too much of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher":

In his annotated ''Dracula'' edition, Leslie Klinger suggests as part of his conceit in considering ''Dracula'' a collection of true documents that these lines were part of Count Dracula's efforts to "cover up" the truth about the vampire's continuing activities, but that Stoker sabotaged the Count's editorial intervention by deleting these lines.

Physical characteristics and lay-out

The first description is given by Jonathan Harker when the calèche reaches the courtyard of the castle:

The ruined state of the castle is confirmed by the Count's words:

The interior decoration, on the other hand, is still in good shape and the library is well equipped:

Harker's window opens into the courtyard, but soon he sets out for a little expedition:

All other doors are locked, however. The Count warns him not to sleep outside the rooms he already knows, including the library and the dining room; it seems as if the castle has a life of its own:

When Harker finds another open door, though, he ignores this warning and falls asleep in the forbidden chambers:

In this room, indeed, the ladies of the castle pay him their tantalizing visit. The Count's room is also one story below Harker's own room; from there, a circular staircase and a tunnel leading to the chapel with the boxes:

When Van Helsing comes to Castle Dracula, he goes directly to the ruined chapel and finds Dracula's "brides" in three of the tombs there, as well as Dracula's own tomb, which is empty.

Location

The site of Dracula's home is only described vaguely by Stoker. The route descriptions hardly mention any recognizable landmarks, but focus on evocations of a wild and snow-covered landscape, haunted by howling wolves and lit by supernatural blue flames at night. Because of this conspicuous vagueness, the annotated ''Dracula'' editions by Leonard Wolf, Clive Leatherdale and Leslie Klinger simply assume Bram Stoker had no specific location in mind and place the castle in or immediately next to the Borgo Pass. As a consequence, these editions take for granted that the Count's men, pursued by Harker, Holmwood, Morris, and Seward, follow the Bistrița River all the way up to Vatra Dornei and then travel the route through the Borgo Pass already taken by Van Helsing and Mina. The same view is adopted by Andrew Connell in his Google Map mark-ups. These theories ignore or misinterpret Stoker's hint that around the 47th Parallel, the Count's men are supposed to leave the river and cross-over to Transylvanian territory:

The author Hans Corneel de Roos has theorized the site Stoker had in mind while shaping his narrative was an empty mountaintop in the Transylvanian Călimani Mountains near the former border with Moldavia, about 20 miles southeast of the Borgo Pass.

Sources of inspiration

Bram Stoker's hand-written notes for ''Dracula'' identify a setting for a castle early on (about 1890). At this stage, no specific castle had been identified as inspiration. Having taken Transylvania as the location for Castle Dracula, it's possible that he copied information about a castle at Vécs from one of his sources on Transylvania, the book by Major E.C. Johnson.

A further option is that Stoker saw an illustration of Castle Bran (Törzburg) in the book on Transylvania by Charles Boner, or read about it in the books by Mazuchelli or Crosse. In 1893 Bram Stoker discovered Cruden Bay in Aberdeenshire in Scotland, which became the regular spot for his monthly summer holiday, largely devoted to writing. Parts, if not most, of ''Dracula'' were written there. Nearby Slains Castle appears to have inspired part of the floor plan for Castle Dracula, in particular the 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." Compare this with the description of Slains Castle from a 1922 sales document: "On the Principle Floor: Entrance Hall (heated with stove) leading to Central Octagonal Interior Hall (heated with stove and lighted from above)."

Although the historical Poenari Castle built under Vlad Țepeș is not mentioned in any of Stoker's research notes, Sir Christopher Lee notes in the documentary film ''In Search of Dracula'' (1974) the resemblance between it and the fictional Castle Dracula: "Bram Stoker did not know that a real Castle Dracula existed. But his description of the castle in the Borgo Pass is uncannily apt. The real Castle Dracula is perched on top of a rock 1,000 feet above the Argeș River in Wallachia."

Tourist attraction

Since 1997, Bran Castle near Brașov has been marketed as "Dracula's Castle". However, Bran Castle is not mentioned in the book ''Dracula''. The website promoting Bran Castle claims it was one of Vlad the Impaler's temporary residences. Since Van Helsing and Mina in Chapter 25 do not identify Count Dracula as the historical Vlad III Dracula (Vlad Țepeş or Vlad the Impaler) but as a nameless "other of he Dracularace", living "in a later age", this claim does not support the identification of Stoker's fictitious building with the Bran Castle.Hans Corneel de Roos, ''Bram Stoker's Vampire Trap: Vlad the Impaler and his nameless Double'', in: ''The Ultimate Dracula'', Moonlake Editions, Munich, 2012. However, in Chapter 18, Van Helsing confirms Dracula and Vlad are one and the same: "He must, indeed, have been that Voivode Dracula who won his name against the Turk, over the great river on the very frontier of Turkey-land."

For the same reason, Poenari Castle in Argeș County does not qualify as the "real" Dracula Castle; Stoker never heard of Poenari Castle. Both Bran Castle and the Poenari Castle are more than 100 miles away from the site Stoker actually selected and took down in a cryptic handwritten note. A hotel called ''Castel Dracula'', located in Piâtra Fântânele in the Borgo Pass, which promotes itself as being constructed at the place of Stoker's fictional castle, at least is located at the point where Harker left the post carriage from Bistritz to Bukovina to be picked up by the Count; their route must have led over the former watchpost of Dornișoara towards the Călimani Mountains peaks in the south-east.

In popular culture

In addition to the many adaptations of ''Dracula'' in film, and other films featuring the character, there are video games called ''Dracula's Castle'', ''Escape Dracula's Castle'', ''Restore Dracula's Castle'', and ''Demon Castle Dracula'' (''Akumajō Dracula''), known in the west as ''Castlevania''.

Notes and references

Bibliography

* Boner, Charles. ''Transylvania: Its Product and Its People''. London: Longmans, 1865
* Crișan, Marius Mircea ''The Models for Castle Dracula in Stoker’s Sources on Transylvania'', Journal of Dracula Studies Nr. 10 (2008)
* Crosse, Andrew F. ''Round About the Carpathians''. Edinburgh and London: Blackwood, 1878
* De Roos, Hans Corneel. ''The Ultimate Dracula'', Moonlake Editions, Munich, 2012,
* Eighteen-Bisang, Robert and Miller, Elizabeth. ''Bram Stoker's Notes for Dracula: A Facsimile Edition'' Toronto: McFarland, 2008,
* Leatherdale, Clive.''Dracula Unearthed'', Westcliff-on-Sea, UK: Desert Island Books, 1998
* Mazuchelli, Nina Elizabeth">Elizabeth Sarah Mazuchelli">Mazuchelli, Nina ElizabethA Fellow of the Carpathian Society. ''Magyarland: Being the Narrative of Out Travels Through the Highlands and Lowlands of Hungary.'' 2 vol. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington, 1881
* Johnson, Major E.C. ''On the Track of the Crescent: Erratic Notes from the Piraeus to Pesth.'' London: Hurst and Blackett, 1885
* Miller, Elizabeth. ''Dracula: Sense & Nonsense''. 2nd ed. Westcliff-on-Sea, UK: Desert Island Books, 2006.
*Shepherd, Mike. ''When Brave Men Shudder: the Scottish origins of Dracula.'' Wild Wolf Publishing, 2018.
* Stoker, Bram. ''Dracula – A Mystery Story''. London-Westminster: Arch. Constable & Sons, 1897
* Wolf, Leonard. ''The Essential Dracula'', New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1975, followed by ''The Essential Dracula: The Definitive Annotated Edition'', Penguin, 1993
* Klinger, Leslie S. ''The New Annotated Dracula''. W.W. Norton & Co., 2008.

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Fictional elements introduced in 1897
Bram Stoker
Dracula
Transylvania in fiction
Fictional fortifications
Fictional buildings and structures originating in literature