Dracula and the links to Whitby

Bram Stoker arrived in Whitby, at the end of July 1890. He had a week on his own to explore before being joined by his wife and baby son. Bram would wander the streets and alleys of Whitby during this time.

In the 1890’s Gothic literature was enjoyed. Gothic literature themes included the supernatural with ghosts and demons, haunted locations, grotesque distortions, madness, delusion and obsessions. Stoker’s wanderings around Whitby gave him the ideas for writing Dracula. The ruins of Whitby Abbey, St Mary’s church  and the headstones and the windswept headland are the perfect back drop for a horror story.  Bram Stoker’s love for Whitby and the surrounding area is evident when you read Dracula

The novel Dracula starts with Dracula travelling from Russia to London on a shipwrecked schooner off Whitby’s coast. Conversations that Stoker had with local fisherman told of a recent shipwreck of a Russian schooner called Dmitry. The schooner was carrying silver sand which washed up on Tate Hill Sands beach. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Dmitry becomes the inspiration for the Demeter in his gothic horror novel. Like the Dmitry, the Demeter in Stoker’s novel also runs aground in Whitby harbour on Tate Hill Sands.

All the crew is drowned, including the captain, but a huge black dog runs out of the ship and runs up the 199 steps to Whitby Abbey. That Black Dog is a transformation of Count Dracula, a deadly vampire.

Stoker took names from the gravestones at St Mary’s Church below the abbey. Names then became part of the novel, such as ‘Swales’, the name of Dracula’s first victim in Whitby.

Funnily some people believe that Dracula is buried in the church yard – there is a sign on the door asking people not to ask where his grave is!