Digging for Dracula

By John Sean Hillen

Carla Laemmle, niece of the founder of Universal Studios, who was the first person to ever speak in a Dracula ‘talking’ movie and who lived on the actual movie lot for a number of years; Bela Lugosi Junior, son of one of the big screen's most well-known character vampires; Jeanne Youngson, wife of an Academy award-winning producer and director, who established the first-ever (maybe the only) Dracula Museum, in New York; Forrest Ackerman, sadly departed, the world's foremost collector of artifacts horror and fantasy and originator of the sexily-clad vampirellas; Vincent Hillyer, a former California almond farmer once married to the sister of the Shah of Iran as well as to Milly Vitale, a prominent Italian actress, who offered $10,000 to anyone who could bring him a vampire and had two doctors lined up to verify the find - these are just some of the colorful, larger-than-life characters Sean Hillen met during his search for the origins of Dracula. Not to mention a midnight meeting in the ruins of Vlad the Impaler's castle, deep within the rugged mountains of Wallachia, Romania.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 26, 1997
• ISBN: 9780953145522

Book preview

beaten

Preface

Aside from her husband, my elder sister, Phyllis, worships two other men. But there is little familial jealousy. Both are dead, or so it is commonly thought. One is a man who wore take-a-deep-breath, sapphire-studded trousers, loved the limelight and is believed to be the all-time King of Rock n' Roll. The other is a man who wore a flowing black cape, loathed any kind of light and is believed to be the all-time Prince of Darkness. Both Elvis and Dracula have pride of place in my sister's bedroom in a quiet suburb of Antrim, a town that lies snug along the shores of Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland. She has caringly erected small altars in homage to her heroes. Visitors are shown soundtracks from movies, ceramic statuettes, photographs, videos, key-rings, pens and wall-size posters.

In stark contrast, my mother adores neither man. The first she considers a pleasant enough singer though, being Irish Catholic, she's somewhat perplexed by the swiveling movements of his hips and eyebrows. She abhors, and is utterly terrified by, Dracula. The latter sentiment is surprising, for Phyllis Senior, it must be added, has been an emergency room nurse in Belfast's Royal Victoria Hospital for many years. She has seen more bullet-riddled bodies and limbless corpses than you and I have had mashed potatoes for dinner. She is also an avid horror fan. No grisly murder is grisly enough for her. Her sons and daughters have long exhausted the murder novel lists in their search for suitable Christmas and birthday gifts. Psycho and Natural Born Killers hold about as much shock-value for her as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or The Adventures of Lassie.

So, it surprised me greatly to find out in my youth, that my mother hastily retreated to her kitchen with a large basket of washing to iron every time eerie music and the sonorous tones of Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee wafted from the television set. They send the chills down my spine, was her only explanation, as she swiftly departed from the living room, half-hidden behind the plastic basket. She would then promptly raise the volume on the kitchen radio to allow the dulcet tones of Bing Crosby and Dean Martin to obliterate all traces of sound from the horror film that the rest of her family sat watching contentedly.

The contrast between the views of Phyllis Junior and those of Phyllis Senior about the exploits of the regal Long-Toothed One may seem surprising, but such contrasting reactions are actually quite common. The persona of Dracula seems to tap into some subterranean fear or craving, something that is deep-rooted and primordial in the human psyche.

For the last 100 years, since the first publication of Dublin author Bram Stoker's classic Gothic novel, the figure of Dracula has both terrified and titillated. A bubbling stream of emotions follows his footsteps universally and no one has put their finger on the pulse as to exactly why.

Realizing the tremendous hypnotic power that he wields, Hollywood staked its claim early. Ever since Universal Studios riveted viewers to the screen with Tod Browning's 1931 version, and sent others, like my poor mother, scurrying to the safety of their kitchens, a veritable carousel of plots and story-line twists has emerged. For more than half a century, the film and merchandise industries have sucked in an estimated four billion, repeat 'billion' dollars in profits from the character. Among others, Dracula has met Batman, the Mummy, Sherlock Holmes and Billy the Kid, not to mention a few space aliens.

The Prince of Darkness arises from sleep in every shape, color and gender on celluloid. There's Dracula: A Pain in the Neck, most celebrated because audiences drank fizzy lookalike blood and ate gingerbread crucifixes during the shows while Dracula: Dead and Loving It, is the companion piece to Mel Brook's classic farce, Young Frankenstein. In Love at First Bite, luckless Dracula is thrown out of his Transylvanian castle by outraged Communist authorities. En route to America there is a mix-up with coffins and he ends up in the heart of Harlem. A fictional vampire family of sorts has emerged with the making of films such as Dracula's Daughter, Dracula's Widow, and even Dracula's Dog, set in Los Angeles. The Count has become as much a twentieth century icon as Donald Duck, Marilyn Monroe and my sister's other UnDead hero. He has been immortalized and, in turn has helped immortalize people like Lugosi and Lee, Jack Palance and John Carradine, who have dared to act out the role on stage and screen.

Concerned about our children's diet and education, Dracula has promoted Count Chocula breakfast cereals and Drac Snax candy, as well as cartoon books devoted to him. He has also marketed everlasting batteries and home insurance on television commercials. He has inspired musical productions ranging from the Dracula version of The Nut-Cracker Suite to Dracula: Seduction in Blood by a cast called Fahrenheit. His exploits are also celebrated by groups such as Dracula Milk Toast, a progressive three-piece band from San Francisco whose work is described as a little on the dark side with psychedelic overtones. To accurately count the number of books sold on the Count is a monster of a task.

In Dracula Unbound, an archaeologist in the Utah desert finds two skeletons, a ghost train passes the dig site and the fellow ends up as a guest of Bram Stoker. All Dracula's Children is the first to use a Romanian setting combined with the horrors of AIDS and erstwhile dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. In a short story by Woody Allen called Getting Even, the Aristocratic Count has problems when he arrives early for a dinner and finds he has mistaken a solar eclipse for the coming of night.

Children's books are also plentiful with the most popular being, Little Dracula's First Bite, The Count's Counting Book and Vlad the Drac. Indeed, the novel, Dracula itself has never been out of print and has sold more copies than any other book bar the Bible. It has been translated into most world languages including Chinese and Gaelic. Even modern man's newest technological communication system - the Internet - is not immune from his influence. At last count, there were 12,193 web sites devoted to Dracula and vampires.

My interest in the vampire was initially mild to say the least, arising from a child's fascination with horror and fanned in adulthood by the recent film directed by Francis Ford Coppola. But my passing interest became an intense one when, as a foreign correspondent for The Times of London in Romania, I was assigned to write an article on the first-ever World Congress of Dracula. Dutifully, I trotted along to the Bucharest location for what I considered would be an hour or so of my time to write a short story for the inside pages of the next day's edition. Instead, I found myself amidst an army of elbow-thrashing, camera-whirring world media and whirled into a bizarre, week-long trek in the company of philosophers, writers, senior academics and confirmed vampirologists through the wilds of Transylvania. Some participants liked to sleep in coffins. Others had their teeth altered to match the object of their hero-worship. And still others, offered generous financial rewards for the first verified sighting of the Prince.

Stories stormed over the world's newswire services and became front page-headlines from Osaka to Orange County. The Times not only ran with the latest developments on the hunt for Dracula but also broke with tradition and its normal somber policy on editorials to devote a special opinion column to the Count. Under the headline, "Dracula is an archetype in the vernacular as well as the Jugular, the newspaper concluded that, The cinematic and fictional genre which has grown up stands or falls by its fidelity to the unquiet spirit of the original."

Being from Ireland, home of the vampire's maker, and having lived in Transylvania, alleged home of the vampire itself, I felt a strong urge to investigate this phenomenon further, to dig for Dracula in an attempt to unearth some insights into his condition and ours, to find out what made him what he is today. My journey took me from the dark, mysterious forests of the Carpathian Mountains, the very heart of eastern Europe's vampire-roving region, to the glittering galaxy of stars that is Hollywood, USA. I searched for Dracula under a midnight moon in the fifteenth century ruins of Vlad the Impaler's castle, rowed across a swamp to get to his forbidden burial place on Snagov Island, clambered through the monumental floating tombs in the City of the Dead looking for clues and examined mummified remains deep in a Dublin church crypt, all to uncover the inspiration that brought Bram to brilliance.

In doing so, I met a rainbow of idiosyncratic people in a host of strange places. Many of both were charming and graceful and a few were outright menacing and dangerous. At times, I was filled to bursting with paroxysms of laughter, at others with deep intrigue and still others, with fear for my own life. On several occasions, I wondered if there was indeed a clear difference between fact and fiction, between reality and the world of the imagination.

I am quite pleased I survived intact to tell the tale and I suppose, all in all, my experiences can be most aptly described as la grande adventure. So, without further ado, I now invite you to put a piece of garlic in your pocket, hoist a shovel over your shoulder and come with me as we go merrily Digging for Dracula.

In the words of the world's most famous Count, "Come freely. Go safely; and leave something of the happiness you bring!"

Vlad the Impaler

"Do you know where you are going, and what you are going to?" (Dracula, Bram Stoker)

The boat, which had once boasted a rich blue exterior, seemed as if it had suffered from a very severe dose of dandruff. Decades of summer heat had curled the last flakes of color which, at a soft touch, fell like tiny autumn leaves into the swampy water. We stood on a creaky wooden deck by the water's edge, wondering if we might soon be floating with them if we embarked on what we now considered to be a rather foolhardy plan. We were on a search for the remains of Vlad the Impaler, a 500-year-old military genius whom some consider was an inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula. And all we could find to bring us to his final resting place was this rickety, flat-nosed, dandruff-ridden boat. It was early November in Romania and the sky overhead threatened rain. Through a light mist we could vaguely make out our intended destination in the distance across the lake. A plume of white smoke rose from a tall, narrow tower but, aside from that, there was no other sign of activity.

The only sound was the harsh cawing of lean, hungry-looking black crows perched along the tops of a line of oak and lime trees a hundred yards behind us. As they peered down at us with great interest, they reminded me distinctly of a very different bird. I immediately expelled the chilling thought from my mind.

Are you positive it won't sink? I said to the thin, gray-haired man, who puffed heavily on the butt of a cigarette. We can't swim very well you see, and if the bottom drops out, then, well, we'll not be coming back. At least, not in the way we would like. My assistant repeated the gist of my words in Romanian while Benny and I exchanged anxious glances. The old man spoke rapidly and my assistant translated: He says he can't give any guarantees but it has always been a good boat. Last time, he went out, it was fine. You should bring a couple of tin cans just in case. I felt very reassured.

The rain was approaching fast. We had to make a decision before darkness fell. When did he last go out, I asked. Six or seven years ago. Oh.

But he says he didn't even have to use the cans. They're still here. See, said my assistant. I looked around to find a small pile of rusted cans in a wooden box beside a dirt-engrained life-belt. A torn label indicated that one can had once held baked beans.

Well, Benny, what do you think? I asked. You've come a long way for this. Do we test the elements or give it all up and go for a cold beer? Benny stepped into the boat, the only one available for use. It moved gently from side to side under his weight. He stamped his feet like a guardsman outside Buckingham Palace. We waited for a few moments. No water leaked through its wooden base.

Well, it seems fine to me. Let's give it a try. After all, as you say, we've come this far, he said. We can't stop now. And so it was that on a dreary, gray afternoon, Benny Keeshan, an English friend, myself and my Romanian assistant, pushed a squat little boat with stunted oars out into the green, swampy waters of Snagov Lake in search of the burial place of a bearded, fifteenth century hero who brought peace to his country and held back marauding Turks through his penchant for impaling people.

Our destination was a small, fortified medieval monastery on the far side of the lake, which at one time, during the church's heyday, had occupied the entire area of the island. We had been told by Romanian clerics that beneath an unmarked stone at the entrance of the monastery was a casket, partially covered by a purple embroidered shroud, containing a skeleton and fragments of a faded silk shirt similar to those that would have been worn by the Impaler. It had a ring of a dragon sewn on one sleeve and the insignia of a crown on the other. In those cruel and ruthless times, when witches were burned at the stake and wars were started at the drop of a head, princes and boyars hid their treasures here. A flourishing settlement of several thousand people stood on the shores of this lake with guards posted round-the-clock to watch for plundering invaders on the prowl for wine, women and whatever else they could nab.

During our meetings with Romanian historians and academics over the previous few months, we had learned that Vlad, or Dracula, as he was known, used this island as a military base. During times of danger, he hand-picked soldiers to hide his treasure in barrels and put them at the bottom of the reed-covered lake, one of the deepest in Romania. Being selected to perform such a delicate and challenging task was considered an honor, but it had definite drawbacks. The main one was that those chosen were duly impaled on sharp ten-foot wooden stakes, a most efficient way of keeping secret the whereabouts of the treasure.

You can imagine the scene at work:

Good morning, Mircea, how are ye doin' today? Are ye almost finished renovating that cottage of yours? You've been at it for about three years now.

Hello, sir. Yes, sir, we'll finish the bedroom next week, sir. Then it's over, sir. Just in time for the birth of our first child, sir.

That's great, Mircea. Congratulations. I hope you have many happy years in it, you deserve it. Now Mircea show me the roster list for tomorrow's shift. We've got a special job to do for Vlad.

Yes, sir.

By the way, Mircea, you aren't on duty tomorrow morning by any chance, are you?

Yes, sir. I am, sir. Looking forward to it, sir.

O dear, it's just not your lucky day, Mircea. Don't mind me asking. But are you fully paid up on the company's life insurance policy?

Now only the solitary brown stone chapel remained and a veritable army of ghosts, some of which I half-expected to float to the surface of the water wearing necklaces of weed and drag us down, squealing, to the murky depths below. On the other hand, maybe a decent, honest soul like Mircea would be nice to us and pop out with a big toothy grin to tell us exactly where he put the diamonds.

I dared not mention these thoughts to Columbia, my brown-eyed Romanian assistant, as we dipped our oars into the water and slowly left the shoreline. The young woman sat motionless, gripping white-knuckled to a broken plank in the middle of the boat while staring over the side with knitted eyebrows. The thick webbed strands of weed sprayed across most of the water's surface and our inability to see to the bottom did not imbue us with a carefree sense of well-being as we set out on our journey. Within minutes, the only sounds to be heard were the splashing of oars and the grunts and groans of Benny and I as we heaved up several kilograms of green slime with every stroke. To take my mind off my aching arms, I tried to recall details of my last visits here.

When I first came to Romania in 1987, the island presented a very different picture. I had traveled to a number of Communist countries and while in Romania was befriended by a generous Bucharest family, who helped me avoid the ever-watching eyes of the Securitate, the nation's secret police. Staying with Romanians was forbidden by law, but we managed on one occasion to travel together out of Bucharest. I recalled passing a sign for Snagov on the main road but it seemed like merely a quiet, non-descriptive place with few civilians around and a sign prohibiting entry. White goats were tethered to wooden fences and a cackle of ducks waddled along the roadside. Farmers walked past carrying long scythes with wooden handles. But we were not allowed closer to the lake. It was kept isolated deliberately through the deployment of well-armed soldiers, for here was located one of the four trillion holiday homes of the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, his wife, Elena, and their playboy son, Nicu. The area provided an easy and convenient break from the noise and pollution of Bucharest and Nicu liked peace and quiet for his infamous drinking bouts. His recklessness ended his life abruptly. He died, aged 41, in a Vienna hospital two years ago from acute liver failure after being released from prison on genocide charges.

After the fall of Communism in 1989, I had spent many enjoyable weekends on the other side of the island, ten miles away. Today, this area attracts large crowds from the city. It is now a barometer of Romania's post-Communist advance into the thronging capitalist marketplace. A typical