27/05/2026
~𝕯𝖗𝖆𝖈𝖚𝖑𝖆~ Happy World Dracula Day from your darkly inclined (& part-Romanian) purveyor of all things beautiful & macabre! There’s so much I could say about Stoker’s Dracula… it’s a tale that has transcended the Gothic genre & brought forth the modern-day vampire archetype, as we know it, “out of the coffin” and into the global light of day - a story that, like the immortal vampire itself, continues to haunt the psyches of both cat-eyed goths & mainstream folks alike.
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My first personal connection to the novel begins at age 11 in a little second-hand bookshop along the foggy California coast town of Half Moon Bay, where the dense fog & ominous cliffs mirrored Stoker’s descriptions of Whitby, England. As soon as I learned the tale of the undead Count, I was desperate to get my hands on it, though never quite brave enough to ask. Somehow, I conjured up a bit of courage and sheepishly handed the paperback over to my father to purchase. Despite his objections, he agreed, and the transaction was made in a series of swift movements - rang up, signed for, bagged and, as if by pure magic alone, placed in my anxious little hands. Finally, Dracula was mine.🤍
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The second connection occurred a few years later, when I learned of my Romanian heritage. I began to recollect Stoker’s Transylvania and the passages that offered me a glimpse into that distant world. Although my family hails from the Eastern cities along the Danube, it became my first portal into the land of my great-grandparents.
“Sometimes, as the road was cut through the pine woods that seemed in the darkness to be closing down upon us, great masses of greyness, which here and there bestrewed the trees, produced a peculiarly weird and solemn effect…”
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Little did I know that one day (in July of 2025) I’d be driving along those very roads, through lush forests and jagged Carpathians on my way to castles worthy of Stoker’s imagination.🕯️
1. MC Dracula
2. Signed copy of “Stoker on Stoker” by Dacre Stoker (great-grandnephew of Bram Stoker) whom I had the pleasure of meeting in 2022.
3. Driving through Transylvania
4. Bran Castle
5. Bran Castle
6. Bran Castle
7. Personal vampire stack
