Waking the Undead

"So there are no vampires in Transylvania? No Count Dracula?"

"Fictions, my friend. The vulgar fictions of a demented Irishman."

There's a features piece of mine on Dracula, vampires and the often-overlooked Dubliner Bram Stoker in the latest issue of Verbal Magazine.

"There was darkness though beneath the pristine surface of the Victorian era. For this was also the age of the penny dreadfuls, sideshows and séances, where emerging forces such as photography, hypnotism and electricity were still wrapped up in an otherworldly sense of mystery. Many freethinkers joined secret Masonic-style societies designed to exploring the realm between this life and the next. Dabbling in the dark arts had become chic in reaction to the increasingly rational Industrial Age. Stoker was no exception and became part of the Order of the Hermetic Dawn, whose alumni would include the poet W B Yeats and the self-confessed “antichrist” Alistair Crowley. With his interest in the occult firmly ingrained, Stoker combined a wealth of influences to form his most famous creation. It would take him eight long years..."