The origin of Dracula’s legend

Early belief in vampires was thought to have come from people at the time not fully understanding the process of a body decomposing after death and trying to rationalize this by creating the figure of the vampire to explain it.

Dracula is more than 100 years old and still alive! Of course, almost everybody has heard about Nosferatu that appears in movies, several books, or even in bedtime stories told us in our childhood.

(The film has incorporated female sexuality as a hidden message of Christianity and redemption.)

We all have an idea of who or what the Count was. However, Vlad Tepes (Dracula), the historical figure who inspired Bram Stoker’s novel, is definitely less known.

The story of Dracula was partly based on European folklore and unrelated historical events.

The word dracul is from the Megleno-Romanian language, means 'devil'.

The author of 'Dracula', Bram Stoker, spent several years researching the folklore about an Eastern European count, Vlad Tepes.

Bram Stoker

Vlad Dracula is most famously known as 'Vlad the Impaler'. He was called this because this was his preferred method of executing people. It is an extraordinarily painful way to die. Tepes ensured maximum pain when he impaled his victims by rounding the ends of spikes and oiling them to reduce tearing. Spikes were introduced into the victim's anus and pushed in until the other end emerged from the victim's mouth. The impaled victim was then hoisted vertically, and left to writhe in agony, sometimes for days.

It's also significant to note that eating and death were intertwined in Tepes' life. He often dined with guests before killing them, and he was reputed to have taken meals outdoors, among impaled dead and dying.

Tepes was not a vampire, although one historic account details how he drank a victim's blood. Thousands of people were tortured, disabled or killed by his hand or command.

So who was this man? Was Tepes as bloodthirsty in real life as his fictional counterpart in movies and books? The short answer is yes - even more so.