94 Fun Facts About Dracula

Dracula appeared in 1897, late in which British monarch's reign?

Victoria was in her Diamond Jubilee year when Dracula appeared in May 1897, and the novel pits its ancient Count against the era's newest tools: typewriters, phonographs and blood transfusions.

Bram Stoker was born in which country?

Ireland: Stoker was born at Clontarf in 1847 and could not stand or walk until he was seven, yet he grew into an outstanding athlete and footballer at university.

What was Dracula titled on the printer's typescript before a last-minute change?

The Un-Dead heads the printer's typescript, changed to Dracula at the last minute; the typescript then vanished for decades until it was found in a barn in Pennsylvania in the early 1980s.

A footnote Stoker copied from an 1820 history told him the name 'Dracula' meant what?

Devil was the meaning given in William Wilkinson's 1820 history; its footnote said the name went to anyone conspicuous for courage, cruel actions or cunning.

In the novel, what is the name of the ship that carries Dracula and his boxes of earth to England?

The Demeter, a Russian schooner out of Varna, runs aground in a storm with its dead captain lashed to the wheel and a large dog leaping ashore.

In which English seaside town does Dracula come ashore?

Whitby is the North Yorkshire port where Stoker holidayed in 1890 and is thought to have found, in the public library, the history book that gave him the name Dracula.

How is the novel Dracula structured?

Dracula is an epistolary novel told through letters, diaries and clippings, plus phonograph entries and a ship's log, so no single narrator sees the whole story.

In which city does Mina's fiancé end up delirious in hospital after escaping Dracula's castle?

Mina's fiancé is found in the Hospital of St Joseph and Ste Mary in Budapest; she travels there to nurse him and they marry before going home.

What does Dracula's asylum patient Renfield feed the flies he collects to?

Renfield feeds his flies to spiders, then the spiders to sparrows, hoping to absorb their lives; Dr Seward records the zoophagous habit in his phonograph diary.

Professor Abraham Van Helsing is from which country?

Van Helsing is from Holland; Dr Seward's old teacher practises in Amsterdam, speaks broken English, and brings consecrated wafers with him to fight the vampire.

In the novel, Dracula claims descent from which famous conqueror?

Dracula names Attila the Hun among his Székely ancestors, boasting to his guest that no one was ever so great as Attila, 'whose blood is in these veins'.

Which of these features does Stoker give Dracula in the novel?

Hair on his palms is among the oddities Harker notes at the castle, where the Count is an old man with a long white moustache; months later Harker sees him in London, grown young again.

In Stoker's novel, what effect does sunlight have on Dracula?

In the novel sunlight's effect on Dracula is that it weakens him but is not fatal: he walks London by day, and the fatal-sunlight rule came from the 1922 film Nosferatu.

Which actor-manager, Stoker's employer at the Lyceum Theatre, is often said to have partly inspired Dracula?

Henry Irving befriended Stoker after a favourable review of his Hamlet and in 1878 hired him to run the Lyceum, a post Stoker held for 27 years, until the actor's death.

Stoker's wife Florence Balcombe had previously been courted by which famous writer?

Oscar Wilde was upset by her choice, but Stoker, who had known him since their student days, kept up the acquaintance and visited him on the Continent after his release from prison.

Sheridan Le Fanu's 1872 vampire novella, an acknowledged influence on Dracula, was called what?

Carmilla, serialised 1871–72, features a female vampire who preys on a lonely young woman and can take the form of a large black cat.

The 1901 Icelandic Dracula proved to be adapted from 'Mörkrets makter', a newspaper serial from which country?

Sweden's serial began in June 1899 and ran almost twice as long as Stoker's novel; scholars took the Icelandic text for Stoker's own work, a translation or an early draft, until the Swedish serial resurfaced in 2017.

Vlad the Impaler was probably born in Transylvania but ruled which neighbouring principality in three separate reigns?

Wallachia was Vlad's realm in 1448, 1456–1462 and 1476; his first reign lasted two months before a rival retook the throne, and his last ended when he was killed in battle.

Vlad the Impaler's father took his nickname from which chivalric order, joined in 1431?

Vlad II was inducted into the Order of the Dragon in 1431 by Sigismund of Luxemburg, who founded it to defend Christendom against the Ottomans; 'Dracula' means son of Dracul.

Which Ottoman sultan did Vlad try to kill in a night attack near Târgoviște in June 1462?

Mehmed II, the conqueror of Constantinople, invaded in 1462 after Vlad had his envoys impaled; the night raid never reached the sultan, who marched on to find thousands of impaled prisoners outside the capital.

According to historian Radu Florescu, in which Transylvanian town was Vlad the Impaler born?

Florescu placed Vlad's birth in Sighișoara, where his father kept a residence in the 1430s; Vlad and his younger brother Radu were later held hostage by the Ottomans.

Bran Castle, marketed to tourists as 'Dracula's Castle', was built in 1377 by whom?

Local Saxons from Brașov built Bran Castle in 1377 under a royal privilege from Louis I; there is no evidence Stoker ever heard of it.

What did a court order after Florence Stoker sued the makers of Nosferatu for copyright infringement?

A German court ruled for Florence Stoker in July 1925 and ordered all copies destroyed, but prints had already gone abroad, so the film she never saw outlived the order.

Who directed the 1979 remake Nosferatu the Vampyre, starring Klaus Kinski?

Werner Herzog directed Klaus Kinski as the Count and Isabelle Adjani as Lucy, and made the film in two versions, the actors speaking German in one and English in the other.

Universal's 1931 Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi, was based directly on what?

A 1924 stage play by Hamilton Deane, revised for Broadway by John L. Balderston, is what the film adapted; Lugosi had starred in it there from 1927, while he was still mastering English.

The 1931 Dracula's sets were reused at night to shoot a simultaneous version in which language?

Spanish: director George Melford studied the day unit's English-language footage before composing his own shots at night, and his Drácula, with Carlos Villarías as the Count, runs almost half an hour longer.

The music over the opening credits of the 1931 Dracula is an excerpt from which ballet?

The credits play Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake; the film has no original score, and Universal reused the same excerpt over the titles of The Mummy in 1932.

Bela Lugosi's birthplace, Lugos, was in Hungary when he was born in 1882; which country is it in today?

Romania: Lugos is now Lugoj, in the country's west, so the screen's most famous Dracula was born in the Count's modern homeland; he left in 1919, forced out for his part in an actors' union during a failed revolution.

Bela Lugosi was buried wearing what?

His Dracula cape and costume went into the grave with Lugosi in 1956; his son has said that he and his mother made the choice, believing it was what the actor would have wanted.

Which notorious director gave Lugosi late low-budget roles, including a posthumous cameo in Plan 9 from Outer Space?

Ed Wood cast Lugosi in Glen or Glenda and Bride of the Monster, then built Plan 9 around silent footage shot before the actor died in 1956, with a body double filling in for the rest.

Hammer's 1958 Dracula, starring Christopher Lee, was the first Dracula film to do what?

Be shot in colour: the film made Christopher Lee's name, and he went on to play the Count six more times for Hammer.

What is unusual about Christopher Lee's Count in Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966)?

He never speaks a line, only hisses: Lee said he refused the dialogue he was given, while screenwriter Jimmy Sangster wrote that he gave the vampire none, because vampires don't chat.

Christopher Lee was the step-cousin of which famous author, whose uncle married Lee's mother?

Ian Fleming's uncle, the banker Harcourt Rose, married Lee's mother after her divorce, making the two men step-cousins; Lee played the Bond villain Scaramanga in 1974.

Who played the Count in Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 film Bram Stoker's Dracula?

Gary Oldman played the Count opposite Winona Ryder's Mina; the effects around him were done in-camera by Coppola's son Roman, hired after an effects team said the director's ideas needed computers.

Which Oscar did Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula win?

Best Costume Design went to Eiko Ishioka, whom Coppola knew from her Japanese poster for Apocalypse Now; he treated her costumes as more important than the sets, and the film also won for makeup and sound editing.

In the 2012 animated film Hotel Transylvania, who voices Dracula?

Adam Sandler voices Dracula in the first three films, with Selena Gomez as his daughter Mavis; for the fourth, in 2022, the role passed to Brian Hull, who had first voiced the Count in the short Monster Pets.

In Hotel Transylvania, why did Dracula build his monsters-only hotel?

In Hotel Transylvania his wife was killed by a human mob — Martha died when torch-bearing villagers burned their home — so Dracula built the hotel to raise Mavis in safety until the backpacker Johnny stumbles in.

Bram Stoker spent ten years in the civil service at which institution while moonlighting as a critic?

Stoker spent ten years as a clerk at Dublin Castle, following his father into the civil service, while reviewing theatre for the Dublin Evening Mail, a paper co-owned by Sheridan Le Fanu.

Which of these was another of Bram Stoker's horror novels, published in 1911?

The Lair of the White Worm (1911) was Stoker's last novel, published a year before his death; Ken Russell filmed it in 1988 with Amanda Donohoe and Hugh Grant.

In Stoker's early notes, the vampire's castle was set in which region rather than Transylvania?

Stoker's early notes placed the castle in Styria, in Austria, with the villain called 'Count Wampyr'; he moved the story to Transylvania after reading about the region.

Stoker is thought to have written most of Dracula on summer holidays in which Scottish village?

Cruden Bay, on the Aberdeenshire coast, drew Stoker back summer after summer; the Kilmarnock Arms Hotel still has a guest book he signed, and nearby Slains Castle is often cited as a model for the Count's.

Contemporary reviewers often compared Dracula to which Wilkie Collins novel?

The Woman in White (1859–60) was an especially common comparison: The Bookman said no mystery had been so closely woven since Wilkie Collins, though the horror was Stoker's own.

The 1897 first edition of Dracula was bound in cloth of which colour, lettered in red?

Yellow cloth lettered in red covered Constable's six-shilling first edition; Stoker's contract paid no royalty on the first thousand copies, so the book earned him little in his lifetime.

The title of Drakula halála (c. 1921), the first film to feature Count Dracula, is in which language?

Hungarian: the title means 'Dracula's Death'. Károly Lajthay's silent film is lost apart from a few publicity stills, and its Drakula is an asylum inmate who insists he is the immortal Count.

Stoker's Dracula is not staked: which weapon does the American Quincey Morris drive into his heart?

A Bowie knife does the job at sunset, at the very moment another hunter shears through the Count's throat with a curved Gurkha kukri. No stake is involved.

In Bram Stoker's Dracula, how does the Count leave his castle window at night, horrifying his visitor?

Crawling down the wall face-first, his cloak spread like wings, the Count reminds his watching visitor of a lizard. The visitor later copies the climb to reach his host's room.

Which risky medical procedure does Van Helsing carry out on the fading Lucy again and again in Dracula?

Blood transfusion was a real gamble at the time, as nobody had yet identified blood groups. Lucy receives blood from four different men, her fiancé first, with no matching at all.

Bram Stoker packed Dracula with vivid detail about Transylvania despite which fact about his own travels?

He never went there: Stoker never set foot in Eastern Europe. He built his Transylvania from books, doing most of his research in the London Library.

What is Dracula's English visitor doing when the Count sees blood and suddenly grabs at his throat?

Having a shave, the visitor cuts himself in surprise at the Count's greeting, then sees that his host casts no reflection in the glass. The Count flings the mirror out of the window.

When Dracula's wrecked ship runs aground in England, which animal is seen leaping from the deck to shore?

A large dog springs ashore the instant the schooner hits the sand, then vanishes into the night. It is the Count himself in animal form, arriving unseen.

Quincey Morris, the only American among Dracula's band of vampire hunters, comes from which US state?

Texas is home to Quincey, who tells a friend he once had to shoot his own mare on the Pampas after a vampire bat drained her in the night.

What visible change comes over the Count in Bram Stoker's Dracula as he feeds on blood in London?

He grows younger: the white-haired old man of the castle turns up in a London street with a black moustache and pointed beard, restored by fresh blood.

Which actress brought the script of 1992's Bram Stoker's Dracula to Francis Ford Coppola and then played Mina?

Winona Ryder handed him the screenplay at a meeting meant to clear the air after she pulled out of his film The Godfather Part III.

What happens to Dracula's body the moment he is finally killed at the end of Bram Stoker's novel?

It crumbles into dust almost in the space of a breath, though Mina first glimpses a look of peace on his face. Her own vampire's curse lifts at the same moment.

What does Lucy's mother do, meaning only to help, that leaves her daughter open to Dracula's attack?

Clears away the garlic: finding the smell of the flowers stifling, she takes them out of the bedroom and opens the window, undoing Van Helsing's protection.

According to Van Helsing, what has to happen before Dracula can enter a household for the first time?

He must be invited by someone inside, though once asked in he can come and go as he pleases. Stoker is credited with adding the rule to vampire lore.

Which nighttime habit, shared with her late father, draws Lucy out to her first meeting with Dracula?

Sleepwalking takes Lucy out in her nightdress to a churchyard seat on the cliff, where Mina finds her with two tiny punctures in her throat.

In which long-running video game series does the whip-wielding Belmont clan battle Count Dracula?

Castlevania even ties itself to the novel: the hero of one instalment, John Morris, is the son of Stoker's Quincey Morris.

Who played Count Dracula opposite Nicholas Hoult's long-suffering servant in the 2023 horror comedy Renfield?

Nicolas Cage was even digitally dropped into footage of the 1931 Dracula for the black-and-white opening, taking the place of the original star.

What does a frightened innkeeper's wife press on the English traveller as he sets out for Castle Dracula?

A crucifix from her own neck, pressed on him for his mother's sake. As an English Churchman he thinks such things idolatrous, but he cannot bring himself to refuse the old lady.

By what title does the asylum patient Renfield address Dracula, whose arrival he senses from his cell?

Master is the word Dr Seward overhears as Renfield promises to be patient and begs not to be passed over when the good things are handed out.

Which actor played the monster hunter Gabriel Van Helsing in the 2004 action film Van Helsing?

Hugh Jackman's hunter has lost his memory and works for a secret society based in Vatican City, a long way from the elderly professor of Stoker's novel.

How is the captain found when Dracula's ship runs aground in England with no living crew aboard?

Dead, tied to the wheel by his own hands, the captain has a corked bottle in his pocket. Inside are the last pages of his log, telling how the crew vanished.

Which title does Lucy's fiancé Arthur Holmwood inherit when his father dies midway through Dracula?

Lord Godalming is what his friends call him from then on. His fortune, along with Quincey Morris's, pays for the hunt for the Count, including the long chase across Europe.

What nickname do London children give the beautiful woman who lures them away on Hampstead Heath in Dracula?

The Bloofer Lady is a small child's attempt at 'beautiful lady'. Van Helsing works out that she is the lately entombed Lucy, risen as a vampire.

Which then-new invention does Dr John Seward use to keep his diary in Dracula?

A phonograph records his spoken diary on wax cylinders, which Mina later types out so the whole band of hunters can read it.

How does Van Helsing keep track of the fleeing Count during the chase back to Transylvania in Dracula?

By hypnotising Mina at sunrise and sunset, he taps the link the Count forced on her. All she can report is darkness, lapping waves and creaking masts.

Which animal's head smashes through Lucy's bedroom window in Dracula, frightening her mother to death?

A wolf, a great gaunt grey one, had escaped that night from London Zoo, where its keeper called it Bersicker. A tall stranger had been seen watching it that afternoon.

Which pet does the fly-eating patient Renfield beg Dr Seward to give him in Dracula?

A kitten is what he pleads for, meaning to feed it the sparrows he has tamed. Refused, he eats the birds raw himself and is sick with feathers.

What is the name of the crumbling estate near London that Dracula buys, right beside Dr Seward's asylum?

Carfax, the novel suggests, takes its name from the old French 'quatre face', because the house is four-sided and squared to the points of the compass.

According to Van Helsing, which barrier can Dracula cross only at certain moments unless he is carried over?

Running water stops him except at the slack or the flood of the tide, so on his voyages to and from England he lies shut in a box, carried by others.

Who played the Count in Mel Brooks's 1995 spoof film Dracula: Dead and Loving It?

Leslie Nielsen played the Count, with Mel Brooks casting himself as Van Helsing in a send-up that follows the 1931 film more closely than the novel.

Which Marvel hero made his first appearance in the comic The Tomb of Dracula in 1973?

Blade began as a supporting character in the comic's tenth issue, written by the aptly named Marv Wolfman, long before he starred in solo comics and films.

What happens when Van Helsing touches a consecrated wafer to Mina's forehead to bless her in Dracula?

It sears a red scar into her skin, proof that the Count's attack has made her unclean. The mark fades only at the instant he is destroyed.

At which Carpathian crossing does the Count's carriage collect the English traveller bound for Castle Dracula?

The Borgo Pass is real: on maps it is the Tihuța Pass, where a hotel now trades on the novel under the name Castel Dracula.

On which fashionable London street does Dracula buy a townhouse, where the hunters lie in wait for him?

Piccadilly is where the hunters get in by hiring a locksmith in broad daylight, trusting that a bold front will look respectable to any passing policeman.

What spills from the Count's slashed coat when the hunters ambush him at his London townhouse in Dracula?

Gold and banknotes pour out of the gash, and the Count snatches a handful from the floor before hurling himself through a window to escape.

To which Black Sea port do Dracula's hunters race by train, the same port his ship first sailed from?

Varna is where they wait in vain: wrapped in fog, the Count's ship slips past and lands his box at the river port of Galatz, turning the hunt into a chase upstream.

At which legendary school of black magic does Van Helsing say the Count studied in Bram Stoker's Dracula?

The Scholomance comes from Transylvanian folklore: a school hidden in the mountains where the devil taught the scholars and claimed every tenth one as his fee.

Which illness do the nuns nursing Mina's fiancé blame for his wild talk after he flees Castle Dracula?

Brain fever keeps him in the sisters' care for nearly six weeks, until Mina travels out to nurse him and marries him at his bedside.

Which chicken dish does the English traveller enjoy on his way to Castle Dracula, noting the recipe for Mina?

Paprika hendl, the waiter tells him, is a national dish served all along the Carpathians. He finds it very good but thirsty, and suspects it of causing a night of queer dreams.

How does Dr Seward know Professor Van Helsing before calling him in to examine Lucy in Dracula?

As his old teacher, the professor comes at once, for he owes his pupil a debt: Seward once sucked the poison of gangrene out of his wound.

In Dracula, what are the flickering blue flames seen on St George's Eve said to mark?

Buried treasure, the Count explains, lies under any spot where a blue flame shows on that one night of the year. His coachman had stopped to mark several.

Dracula is dedicated to 'Hommy-Beg', the childhood nickname of which Victorian novelist and friend of Stoker?

Hall Caine was given the pet name, Manx for 'Little Tommy', by his grandmother. Stoker met him in London and counted him among his closest friends.

Which tech billionaire bought the long-lost typescript of Dracula, rediscovered in a Pennsylvania barn?

Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, became the owner of all 541 typed pages, which had been given up for lost until they surfaced in the early 1980s.

Bram Stoker's 1903 horror novel The Jewel of Seven Stars centres on an attempt to revive what?

An Egyptian mummy, Queen Tera, is the one an archaeologist plots to bring back to life. A revised 1912 edition rewrote the ending so that the hero and heroine marry.

Which American poet did the young Bram Stoker idolise, write an emotional fan letter to, and later meet?

Walt Whitman was his literary idol: Stoker wrote him an extraordinary letter in 1872, while still a young civil servant, and the two men did eventually meet.

The Bram Stoker Award, given each year for horror writing, is a statuette in the shape of what?

A haunted house eight inches tall, in fact, with a front door that swings open to show a brass plaque engraved with the winning work and its author.

Which singer wrote and performed 'Love Song for a Vampire' for the end credits of 1992's Bram Stoker's Dracula?

Annie Lennox released it in 1993 as a double A-side with 'Little Bird', and its video, directed by Sophie Muller, is cut together with footage from the film.

Which director, a veteran of silent horror films, made Universal's 1931 Dracula starring Bela Lugosi?

Tod Browning had made his name in silents and never felt fully at ease with sound. He directed Lugosi in a second vampire thriller, Mark of the Vampire, in 1935.

Which German actor played the gaunt vampire in Nosferatu, the unauthorised 1922 film version of Dracula?

Max Schreck later had a film made about him: Shadow of the Vampire, with Willem Dafoe in the role, imagines that the actor really was a vampire.

Who wrote and directed the 2024 remake of Nosferatu, starring Bill Skarsgård as the vampire?

Robert Eggers first set out to make it in 2015 as his second feature, called it a passion project, and then put it off for years.

Which illustrator of darkly comic little books designed the sets and costumes for Broadway's 1977 Dracula revival?

Edward Gorey won a Tony Award for the costumes, and the director of the 1979 film wanted to shoot in black and white partly to echo his stark staging.

What is Mina Murray's job at the start of Dracula, before she marries and joins the hunt?

Schoolmistress, or assistant schoolmistress to be exact: in her spare hours Mina drills herself in shorthand and typing so that she can help her future husband with his work.