What About Dracula? Romania's Schizophrenic Dilemma - Guest Post from Catalin Gruia

What About Dracula? Romania's Schizophrenic Dilemma - Guest Post from Catalin Gruia

My Fascination With Vampires Has Deep Roots

I was about four when I witnessed the digging up of an undead in a village in the Danubian plain, where I grew up.

It was midnight, full moon, scores of people at the cemetery; and a white stallion that had been made to walk across the grave.

I couldn't get past the compact, black phalanx of old women, standing in rows around the grave. News was passed on from the two men who were down in the grave to drive the stake in: they found the dead man with blood around his mouth (he'd bitten his own hand) and his face turned downward...

These things still happen in today’s Romania more often than you’d think. The belief in strigoi is extremely powerful in the traditional part of Romania.

In January 2004, Toma Petre's relatives exhumed his body in the Marotinu de Sus cemetery, ripped his heart out, burned it to ashes, mixed it with water and drank it. Police put six people under investigation for what the Western media called a vampire slaying.

While researching this story an old woman in Prunisor village (Oltenia) hosted us for several days. She was convinced her dead husband had turned into a ghost haunting her at night. She dug him out several times to pierce his chest with a stake, with no result. Her last attempt was to burn his heart, but it would not catch fire in the stove. She eventually had to cut it in four pieces and throw it into the toilet.

The vampire’s Eastern European lore used by Bram Stoker in his Dracula (hanging garlic at doors and windows, the common beliefs in strigoi and moroi and other superstitions that impressed Stoker) can still be found in Romania.

Nicolae Paduraru (former president of Transylvanian Society of Dracula) and Sabina Ispas (the director of the Romanian Institute for Folklore and Ethnography) identified 50 Dracula superstitions in the Romanian folklore.

About 250 years ago, vampires were taken very seriously in this part of the world. Entire villages in Eastern Europe have been deserted out of fear. In 1725, the case of the first posthumously investigated vampire – Peter Plogojowitz – was first published in an official report, now kept in the State Archive in Vienna.
But it wasn't these things in my own backyard – which I considered mundane – that made me want to learn more about Dracula.

My interest in the vampire count started in 2004, after reading an online article about an English kid who had killed his grandmother and eaten her heart in order to become immortal.

This is how I found out that Dracula has some thousands of followers who emulate a vampire lifestyle, wishing to become vampires. Most do not have a hard time separating reality from fiction and live relatively normal lives, limiting themselves to sleeping in coffins and wearing fake teeth. Others drink blood, most of them with their partners' consent. And there are the sick ones who feel the irresistible urge to drink blood. I remember how excited I was when I learned from Mark Beneke about a very rare form of porphyria that causes the patient's incisors and blood thirst to grow, whiten their skin and makes them sunlight intolerant…
There are millions of fans. Two vampire books are published every week. How did it come to this? How did Dracula become an industry? Why do vampires fascinate us?

Caught in this merry-go-round, I would have liked to write a book about the clan of the "New York vampires", who after a visit to a specialized dentist's office where they lengthened their canine teeth, only go out at night to their clubs, where they occasionally gulp down something bloody.

Fortunately, I realized I wasn't rich enough to fly to New York to study this eccentric urban tribe and I had to pick something closer to home.

After another 5 months I meet Nicolae Paduraru, the president of Transylvanian Society of Dracula, a historical and cultural organization with headquarters in Bucharest, founded in 1991

To inform and educate tourists in search of Dracula
To bring together scholars from Romania and the West
To mediate in the Dracula problem between Romania and the West.

(Romania’s problem is that Dracula lived for real. He was neither a vampire, nor a count and never reigned in Transylvania. The stories about Vlad III Dracula, a 15th century warlord prince of the small Romanian principality of Wallachia, were horror best sellers long before Bram Stoker’s famous novel. Nowadays Romanians have a schizophrenic attitude towards Dracula. They are tempted to transform Dracula into a tourism agent to cash in Western money, but at the same time they’re afraid they may be bartering away their history.)

I found this e-mail I've sent Paduraru 7 years ago:

“Dear Sir,

I'm struggling to learn about Dracula and vampires. Three months ago when I've started this research it was a topic like any other. But now, it’s devouring me. I want to understand. The myth itself is extraordinary, one of the nicest stories I know, combining three paradoxes: life, death and immortality. My name is Catalin Gruia and I am hoping you will have the time and interest to teach me about Dracula and vampires.”

He called me. We met, we became friends and he gave me full access to the Society’s library. For a whole year I've been reading books and seen movies about vampires only.

The following spring I joined a foreign tourist group (led by Nicolae Paduraru) in search of Dracula and saw how they reacted to what they were told in different places connected to Dracula. Although I felt this could be THE frame of this story, I knew I needed to go far beyond the usual Dracula tour and interview people with various backgrounds (history, tourism, academia, journalism, politics, folklore, souvenir sellers, peasants etc). I would then try to piece together the Romanian version of the Dracula puzzle.

As I was struggling to learn about Dracula I’ve reached out and e-mailed some of the world’s leading experts on Dracula, such as Elisabeth Miller (Canada), Massimo Introvigne (Italy), Mark Beneke (Germany), Duncan Light (Great Britain), Charlotte Simsen, former chair of The Dracula Society Quincy P. Morris in the United States.

In Romania I've talked to the best local Dracula experts: historians Lucian Boia, Radu Vergatti, Constantin Rezachievici, Constantin Balaceanu Stolnici, (The Impaler’s last descendant), Sabina Ispas (director of the Romanian Institute for Folklore and Ethnography).

Although he had never been to Transylvania, Bram Stoker was acclaimed for accurately describing the land of vampires. One can also find quite easily scenes, people and landscapes as those described by Jonathan Harker in his voyage through Transylvania. I went out to see all this for myself.

I’I've investigated all the places connected to the historical Prince Vlad Dracula III: Poienari (his fortress), Aref (the village where locals helped him escape the Turks), Targoviste (his capital), Sighisoara (his birthplace), Brasov (town of his Saxon enemies), Bucharest (the city he founded), Snagov (where he is supposed to be buried), Comana Natural Park (probably the place where he was killed in battle) and many others linked to him in one way or another.

I also looked into the realms of the fictional Count: Bran Castle presented as Dracula Castle, Golden Crown Restaurant from Bistritz and Hotel Dracula Castle build in Borgo Pass, Dracula Club from Bucharest etc.
Almost seven years passed since I've started this journey. Although I’m still fascinated by vampirism as a social phenomenon, I’m glad I finally did this story about our two Draculas – as it was more convenient for me. I was right no to travel all the way to New York: my treasure was buried in my own backyard.

Read Other Exclusive Guest Posts from Catalin Gruia on FreeBookDude.com

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Meet Catalin Gruia

Catalin Gruia is a veteran journalist who has written and reported for the Romanian edition of National Geographic for over 10 years. He is currently Editor in Chief of National Geographic Traveler and Deputy Editor in Chief of National Geographic Romania.

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