How Whitby played a major part in the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s gothic horror novel Dracula
- timbarber
- Mar 27
- 5 min read
Whilst I had loved watching the Hammer Horror versions of Dracula starring Christopher Lee as a kid, I had never actually read the book until more recently. I knew that Whitby had featured in the creation of Bram Stoker’s novel, but had never really known the full story behind the myth.
There is a whole industry in Whitby centred around the myth of the blood sucking Count Dracula. Whitby hosts the twice yearly Whitby Goth weekend, has a popular Dracula Experience and over the years when guiding in the town, I often get asked by people in full costume “Where’s Dracula’s grave mister”. They are often disappointed when I explain that Dracula wasn’t real!
Last year I went and watched an excellent performance of Dracula in the grounds of Whitby Abbey, each scene performed at a different location within the ruins and in 2022 the Abbey was also in the national news when 1,369 people turned up at Whitby Abbey dressed as vampires (creating a world record) to celebrate the 125 year anniversary of the novel being published.
But the story behind the novel starts without much drama. In 1890, Bram Stoker was the manager of a famous actor called Sir Henry Irving. Irving had a reputation as a prima donna and a difficult man. After a tour of Scotland, Stoker was exhausted and needed a break and it was actually Henry Irving that recommended he visit Whitby to re-charge his batteries.
He booked into a local guest house and planned to spend a week decompressing on his own before his wife and son joined him. The guests house was up on West Cliff at 6 Royal Crescent and run by a Mrs Veazey.
Whilst staying at the guest house, his landlady would kick him out for a few hours each morning so that she could clean the rooms. This meant that Bram Stoker had no option but to head out and explore the town.
It is worth noting that Bram Stoker has already written a couple of books set in Ireland where Stoker was born, and at the time he came to Whitby he had the inkling of an idea for another book. The idea of blood sucking creatures or vampires was not new – they had appeared in Romanian folklore and Stoker had already decided that the central character in his next book was going to be called Count Wampyr.
Stoker often wandered down to the public library (where the Quayside Fish and Chip shop is now), to kill time if the weather was inclement and it was here that he found two books which would massively influence his writing.
Firstly, he found a book by the British Consul for Bucharest, a man called William Wilkinson who recorded many stories about Romanian folklore. He talked about a prince in the 1400’s – Vlad Tepes who impaled his enemies on spikes and is perhaps better known these days as Vlad the Impaler. Vlad was known as “Dracula” – the son of the dragon or interpreted by some as just meaning “The Devil”.
This gave Bram Stoker the name of the main character in his book - Dracula – ditching the original Count Wampyr.
The second book was about a disaster that had happened more recently in the harbour when a Russian ship called The Dmitry was wrecked on Tate Hill Sands carrying a cargo of silver sand. This was something that people in Whitby still remembered and Stoker ended up chatting to locals about the event.
This story was to inspire Bram Stoker with the opening scene for his novel. In the book a ship called the Demeter carrying sand and crates of earth is shipwrecked in the harbour with only the dead Captain on board lashed to the ship's wheel. Whilst investigating the wreck – a large black dog is seen leaving the boat and running up the famous 199 steps to the graveyard of St.Mary’s Church.
It is worth noting that there already existed a Yorkshire legend of a big black dog known as Bargeast which haunted the local Moors, so Stoker was using Yorkshire as well as Romanian folklore for insporiation.
As Stoker would have explored Whitby he would have experienced the thick, sea frets which would engulf the town reducing visibility to a matter of feet. And then at dusk walking along West Cliff where the River Esk flows into the sea, bats swoop down low feasting on the local insect life. But there was also situated across the harbour from his lodgings, the ruined Gothic Whitby Abbey sitting on top of East cliff – so you can see how the landscape and local environment would have combined with his research proving key atmospheric inspiration for his novel.
Whitby gets mentioned a number of times within Dracula, including this mention of the Abbey from Mina Murray one of the main characters who narrates some of the dialogue…
“Right over the town is the ruin of Whitby Abbey, which was sacked by the Danes…It is a most noble ruin, of immense size, and full of beautiful and romantic bits; there is a legend that a white lady is seen in one of the windows”.
And later…
“For a moment or two, I could see nothing, as the shadow of a cloud obscured St. Mary's Church and all around it. Then as the cloud passed, I could see the ruins of the Abbey coming into view; and as the edge of a narrow band of light as sharp as a sword-cut moved along, the church and churchyard became gradually visible… It seemed to me as though something dark stood behind the seat where the white figure shone and bent over it. I could not tell what it was, whether man or beast, I could not tell.”
Parts of St.Mary’s church date back earlier than Whitby Abbey and the location is key in the book. There was a seat in the Churchyard that Bram Stoker would often sit and rest, contemplating the next part of his book. This seat becomes known as the suicide seat by Mina as it was the site of the first attack by Dracula in the book (Lucy).
So hopefully, you can see how all these separate elements during his stay were combined to produce probably the most famous gothic horror novel of all time.
His novel was finally published on 1897 and has never been out of print, inspiring hundreds of films and TV shows. The book didn’t actually become a success until after Bram Stoker’s death, but little did he know what a legacy the book would leave on the town.
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