1
00:00:00,240 --> 00:00:03,480
Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast am on

2
00:00:03,640 --> 00:00:05,240
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and.

3
00:00:05,400 --> 00:00:07,880
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori with you.

4
00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:10,320
Speaker 2: Les Klinger is considered to be one of the world's

5
00:00:10,360 --> 00:00:16,120
Speaker 2: foremost authorities on Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, H. P. Lovecraft, Frankenstein,

6
00:00:16,600 --> 00:00:19,840
Speaker 2: in the history of mystery and horror fiction. He's the

7
00:00:19,960 --> 00:00:22,479
Speaker 2: editor and author of many books. He's a two time

8
00:00:23,120 --> 00:00:26,880
Speaker 2: Edgar Award winner and has edited two anthologies of classic

9
00:00:26,960 --> 00:00:31,280
Speaker 2: nineteenth century mysteries, along with co editing five anthologies of

10
00:00:31,320 --> 00:00:35,280
Speaker 2: Sherlock Holmes stories. He is the New York Times best

11
00:00:35,320 --> 00:00:41,800
Speaker 2: selling editor of New Educated Dracula Less. Welcome back, have

12
00:00:41,880 --> 00:00:42,199
Speaker 2: you been?

13
00:00:42,920 --> 00:00:44,800
Speaker 3: I've been good, George. How are you great?

14
00:00:44,880 --> 00:00:47,560
Speaker 2: And I'm glad you're not with the Washington Post right now?

15
00:00:48,320 --> 00:00:52,040
Speaker 3: Well, me too. It's a bad time to be a journalist.

16
00:00:52,280 --> 00:00:53,640
Speaker 2: Do you have any friends out that way?

17
00:00:54,360 --> 00:00:59,640
Speaker 3: I do one, my old friend Michael Dirta, who is

18
00:00:59,680 --> 00:01:02,440
Speaker 3: still on the staff. I'm going to still be doing books,

19
00:01:02,800 --> 00:01:04,920
Speaker 3: thank goodness. Good for him.

20
00:01:04,959 --> 00:01:07,039
Speaker 2: Now, how did you get interested in Bram Stoker?

21
00:01:08,280 --> 00:01:12,240
Speaker 3: Well, when I was finished with my Shack Holmes books,

22
00:01:12,400 --> 00:01:15,120
Speaker 3: which were that was a passion that I discovered in

23
00:01:15,200 --> 00:01:19,600
Speaker 3: law school and was fascinated by Holmes for years and years.

24
00:01:19,760 --> 00:01:23,440
Speaker 3: But when I finished the Sholock Holmes books, I had

25
00:01:23,560 --> 00:01:28,000
Speaker 3: enjoyed the process of writing an annotated book so much

26
00:01:28,440 --> 00:01:31,920
Speaker 3: that I wanted to do another one, and I thought

27
00:01:31,920 --> 00:01:34,240
Speaker 3: about it. My wife said, why did you do Dracula?

28
00:01:34,319 --> 00:01:36,080
Speaker 3: You love that book? And I thought about it, and

29
00:01:36,120 --> 00:01:41,480
Speaker 3: it was perfect because Dracula and shrawck Homes were exactly contemporary.

30
00:01:42,080 --> 00:01:44,640
Speaker 3: I like to think they walked the streets of London together.

31
00:01:45,440 --> 00:01:49,120
Speaker 2: How do you think ram Stoker got the concept of Dracula.

32
00:01:50,120 --> 00:01:54,440
Speaker 3: Well, there were a lot of vampire legends around already.

33
00:01:55,320 --> 00:01:57,640
Speaker 3: His mother had told him tales when he was a

34
00:01:58,160 --> 00:02:03,040
Speaker 3: wee lad in Dublin of vampires, and he was fascinated

35
00:02:03,040 --> 00:02:06,760
Speaker 3: by the subject. Some say he had a role model

36
00:02:06,920 --> 00:02:11,120
Speaker 3: in his mentor, Sir Henry Irving, but I think that's

37
00:02:11,400 --> 00:02:14,800
Speaker 3: a bit of an exaggeration. But he wanted to be

38
00:02:14,840 --> 00:02:17,680
Speaker 3: a writer. He had written a number of sensational books

39
00:02:18,680 --> 00:02:22,520
Speaker 3: that frankly weren't very good, but he cast around for

40
00:02:22,600 --> 00:02:25,799
Speaker 3: an idea came up with the idea of the vampire.

41
00:02:26,360 --> 00:02:30,240
Speaker 3: The vampire had been in English literature already, there are

42
00:02:30,280 --> 00:02:34,160
Speaker 3: two great works before him. There was John Paulodorius The

43
00:02:34,240 --> 00:02:37,600
Speaker 3: Vampire way back in the time of Mary Shelley, and

44
00:02:38,440 --> 00:02:43,520
Speaker 3: the sensational Varney the Vampire that had been a multi

45
00:02:43,600 --> 00:02:49,160
Speaker 3: part dime novel series in the newspapers and elsewhere. And

46
00:02:49,560 --> 00:02:52,480
Speaker 3: he decided to write a book about vampires, and so,

47
00:02:53,360 --> 00:02:56,720
Speaker 3: to our great fortune, he sat down and wrote Dragula.

48
00:02:57,040 --> 00:02:59,000
Speaker 2: How would you grade that book?

49
00:02:59,760 --> 00:03:03,560
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, it's certainly the scariest book I've

50
00:03:03,600 --> 00:03:08,240
Speaker 3: ever read. It's hard to put yourself back into a

51
00:03:08,280 --> 00:03:11,440
Speaker 3: place of being scared. But I read it in college,

52
00:03:11,960 --> 00:03:16,040
Speaker 3: and I read it at a time when I thought

53
00:03:16,040 --> 00:03:18,600
Speaker 3: I ought to read it. I was an English major.

54
00:03:18,880 --> 00:03:21,000
Speaker 3: It seemed like something I ought to be familiar with.

55
00:03:21,400 --> 00:03:23,600
Speaker 3: And then I discovered how scary it was. But you

56
00:03:23,680 --> 00:03:26,919
Speaker 3: have to put yourself back into this mood of forgetting

57
00:03:26,960 --> 00:03:31,480
Speaker 3: the movies, forgetting everything, because you find yourself yelling at

58
00:03:31,480 --> 00:03:35,720
Speaker 3: these people halfway through the book. It's a vampire, you dummies,

59
00:03:36,160 --> 00:03:38,760
Speaker 3: you know, why don't they get it?

60
00:03:40,040 --> 00:03:43,560
Speaker 2: How did Hollywood transform these books?

61
00:03:44,080 --> 00:03:48,360
Speaker 3: Oh? My? Well, the love affair between film and vampires

62
00:03:48,440 --> 00:03:52,480
Speaker 3: began very early in the nineteen twenties, almost with the

63
00:03:52,520 --> 00:03:58,800
Speaker 3: beginnings of films. There were many versions of Dracula. The

64
00:03:58,840 --> 00:04:02,360
Speaker 3: first great one was the wonderful film that you can

65
00:04:02,400 --> 00:04:06,920
Speaker 3: still find on YouTube and all over the internet. No Saratu, now,

66
00:04:07,600 --> 00:04:12,040
Speaker 3: No Seratu was essentially a ripoff of Dracula.

67
00:04:11,760 --> 00:04:13,280
Speaker 2: With that ugly little vampire.

68
00:04:13,440 --> 00:04:18,480
Speaker 3: Right, that's right, that's right. Max Shrek was the actor

69
00:04:18,520 --> 00:04:23,159
Speaker 3: who played the vampire. And this was a far cry

70
00:04:23,279 --> 00:04:27,560
Speaker 3: from our modern image of the vampire. This was long

71
00:04:27,640 --> 00:04:31,560
Speaker 3: before Belle Lugosi took the stage as Dracula, and so

72
00:04:31,760 --> 00:04:37,440
Speaker 3: the the vampire is a rap light looking creature, really horrifying, scary,

73
00:04:37,520 --> 00:04:44,400
Speaker 3: scary creature. How scary was he less Well, I mean

74
00:04:44,440 --> 00:04:48,400
Speaker 3: he's pretty terrifying. There's there's been modern versions. The film

75
00:04:48,560 --> 00:04:54,480
Speaker 3: was remade later by by I think Vim vendors, and

76
00:04:54,800 --> 00:04:58,760
Speaker 3: in a sort of undersen film that came out a

77
00:04:58,839 --> 00:05:03,320
Speaker 3: couple of years ago called Voyage of the Demeter. There's

78
00:05:03,360 --> 00:05:06,520
Speaker 3: a wonderful scene in it that's lifted right out of

79
00:05:06,760 --> 00:05:09,480
Speaker 3: a Speratu of the vampire on the brow of the ship.

80
00:05:10,480 --> 00:05:15,040
Speaker 3: It's a it's a scary character. This is not you're

81
00:05:15,120 --> 00:05:18,360
Speaker 3: the sort of what I called the lounge lizard Dracula.

82
00:05:18,520 --> 00:05:20,760
Speaker 3: With the version that we have with lugosia, the slip

83
00:05:20,839 --> 00:05:26,080
Speaker 3: back hair, dark good looks, seductive of women. This is

84
00:05:26,120 --> 00:05:30,000
Speaker 3: a This is, as I said, rat like looking creature

85
00:05:31,279 --> 00:05:36,720
Speaker 3: with long teeth, and nothing romantic or attractive about it whatsoever.

86
00:05:37,440 --> 00:05:40,880
Speaker 2: You've written a series and edited a series of annotated books.

87
00:05:41,080 --> 00:05:44,679
Speaker 2: Annotated means, of course there are comments and notes left behind.

88
00:05:44,839 --> 00:05:45,640
Speaker 2: Tell me about that.

89
00:05:46,800 --> 00:05:52,560
Speaker 3: Well, this bad habit started, according to my wife, when

90
00:05:52,600 --> 00:05:54,960
Speaker 3: we went to the movies and I found myself talking

91
00:05:55,000 --> 00:05:58,560
Speaker 3: to the screen. You know, I don't know if you're

92
00:05:58,600 --> 00:06:00,480
Speaker 3: one of those, but I'm one of the people who

93
00:06:00,480 --> 00:06:03,200
Speaker 3: sits there in the audience says to what's this? This

94
00:06:03,279 --> 00:06:07,160
Speaker 3: is really good? This reminds me of that that the

95
00:06:07,800 --> 00:06:10,720
Speaker 3: person the director must have met this and so on,

96
00:06:11,160 --> 00:06:18,360
Speaker 3: and that habit translates into dropping footnotes all over texts.

97
00:06:18,920 --> 00:06:21,640
Speaker 3: Once you get started, it's hard to stop. It's kind

98
00:06:21,680 --> 00:06:23,640
Speaker 3: of a disease, George, I becked.

99
00:06:23,680 --> 00:06:25,280
Speaker 4: And I know you're gonna want some them after hearing this.

100
00:06:25,279 --> 00:06:26,360
Speaker 4: This is an amazing story.

101
00:06:26,440 --> 00:06:30,960
Speaker 5: We've got Stephen and Malachi Gregory in Nelson, New Zealand.

102
00:06:31,000 --> 00:06:33,640
Speaker 4: Now I understand that Malachi, who is eight almost nine

103
00:06:33,720 --> 00:06:37,120
Speaker 4: years old now, was suffering with not just one or

104
00:06:37,200 --> 00:06:39,919
Speaker 4: two warts, but I mean as significant outbreak of warts

105
00:06:39,960 --> 00:06:42,640
Speaker 4: all over his body, so significant it impacted his ability

106
00:06:42,680 --> 00:06:43,960
Speaker 4: to really function.

107
00:06:44,480 --> 00:06:44,760
Speaker 3: Yeah.

108
00:06:44,880 --> 00:06:47,280
Speaker 5: Yeah, he was having trouble even holding a pencil to

109
00:06:47,360 --> 00:06:48,880
Speaker 5: right of TI's book.

110
00:06:48,880 --> 00:06:51,599
Speaker 1: Actually, that got me thinking about it. I'm not surprised.

111
00:06:51,760 --> 00:06:54,760
Speaker 3: It is an amazing immuno modulator, and so I can

112
00:06:54,800 --> 00:06:55,799
Speaker 3: see that it would work.

113
00:06:56,480 --> 00:06:59,040
Speaker 4: And so at what point did you see that there

114
00:06:59,120 --> 00:07:01,360
Speaker 4: was actually improved is really going to work?

115
00:07:01,560 --> 00:07:04,120
Speaker 5: Well, we really started to notice it around twelve weeks.

116
00:07:04,800 --> 00:07:08,440
Speaker 5: You can see these things actually getting smaller and smaller

117
00:07:08,480 --> 00:07:11,440
Speaker 5: and then going down to the with just little red marks.

118
00:07:11,480 --> 00:07:13,720
Speaker 5: The whole things are gone, and we're talking about what's

119
00:07:13,760 --> 00:07:15,040
Speaker 5: you know one the size of the warner.

120
00:07:15,160 --> 00:07:15,840
Speaker 1: I thought, no.

121
00:07:15,880 --> 00:07:19,440
Speaker 5: Way, that's gonna Wow. That's just been miraculous to see

122
00:07:19,480 --> 00:07:20,760
Speaker 5: them get into a pair of shoes.

123
00:07:21,040 --> 00:07:22,960
Speaker 4: Yes, how wonderful.

124
00:07:23,120 --> 00:07:24,760
Speaker 5: It's great to see him so happy and.

125
00:07:24,800 --> 00:07:26,840
Speaker 4: Yes, compident, absolutely wonderful.

126
00:07:27,160 --> 00:07:29,440
Speaker 5: Friends that have seen it, that is blown away, Ti,

127
00:07:29,560 --> 00:07:30,360
Speaker 5: this is awesome.

128
00:07:30,440 --> 00:07:31,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is awesome.

129
00:07:31,480 --> 00:07:35,360
Speaker 6: Another amazing story. Why we're talking about carnivora call them

130
00:07:35,360 --> 00:07:38,440
Speaker 6: to awaken your immune system and protect yourself now called

131
00:07:38,440 --> 00:07:41,720
Speaker 6: one eight sixty six eight three six eighty seven thirty five.

132
00:07:42,040 --> 00:07:45,000
Speaker 6: That's one eight six six eight three six eighty seven

133
00:07:45,080 --> 00:07:48,800
Speaker 6: thirty five. Or visit Carnivora dot com c A r

134
00:07:49,000 --> 00:07:53,400
Speaker 6: niv O r A carnivora dot com.

135
00:07:53,520 --> 00:07:56,440
Speaker 2: We're gonna get back to a vampires and Dracula in

136
00:07:56,440 --> 00:07:59,200
Speaker 2: the moment. But you've got the great annotated book on

137
00:07:59,280 --> 00:08:01,120
Speaker 2: Sherlock Corn. How did that happen?

138
00:08:02,320 --> 00:08:05,720
Speaker 3: When I was in law school, I got a magnificent gift,

139
00:08:06,240 --> 00:08:08,760
Speaker 3: a gift of a book called The Annotated Sherlock Holmes

140
00:08:09,240 --> 00:08:13,960
Speaker 3: by william S. Bereng Gould, and I was hooked. I

141
00:08:14,000 --> 00:08:15,920
Speaker 3: was hooked by the footnotes. I was hooked by the

142
00:08:15,960 --> 00:08:22,080
Speaker 3: idea of footnotes, and I discovered the cult of Sherlock Holmes.

143
00:08:22,480 --> 00:08:26,400
Speaker 3: That became a fascination for me for many, many years.

144
00:08:26,920 --> 00:08:30,680
Speaker 3: And then sometime in my more mature years, when my

145
00:08:30,760 --> 00:08:33,440
Speaker 3: career was sort of well in hand my kids were older,

146
00:08:34,360 --> 00:08:37,040
Speaker 3: my wife said to me, you have all those books

147
00:08:37,120 --> 00:08:40,080
Speaker 3: on Sherlock Holmes, why didn't you write something? And I

148
00:08:40,120 --> 00:08:42,200
Speaker 3: thought about it, and there had been a long tradition

149
00:08:42,240 --> 00:08:46,320
Speaker 3: of amateur scholarship about Holmes, so I did. I started

150
00:08:46,320 --> 00:08:50,280
Speaker 3: doing it. It met with some success, and then to

151
00:08:50,400 --> 00:08:55,559
Speaker 3: my great joy. I was approached by Bob Wilde, the

152
00:08:55,600 --> 00:08:59,440
Speaker 3: senior editor at w W. Norton, and asked to edit

153
00:08:59,520 --> 00:09:03,000
Speaker 3: a new edition of the Bearing Gooul work that I

154
00:09:03,040 --> 00:09:06,480
Speaker 3: had so admired back in the in the late sixties.

155
00:09:07,280 --> 00:09:10,000
Speaker 2: Now, Sherlock Holmes was a fictional character, though he was

156
00:09:10,040 --> 00:09:10,720
Speaker 2: not real.

157
00:09:10,679 --> 00:09:14,600
Speaker 3: Was he well? I lecture about Holmes all the time,

158
00:09:14,840 --> 00:09:18,520
Speaker 3: and after I discuss his life and the life of

159
00:09:18,559 --> 00:09:22,000
Speaker 3: doctor Watson, I'm usually asked that that question, was Sherlock

160
00:09:22,040 --> 00:09:27,320
Speaker 3: Holmes real or fictional? And I always say the same thing, yes, yes,

161
00:09:27,440 --> 00:09:35,679
Speaker 3: what he was real or fictional? Yes, there's there's the

162
00:09:36,160 --> 00:09:41,000
Speaker 3: Sherlockians of the world, and there are thousands play what

163
00:09:41,040 --> 00:09:44,160
Speaker 3: we call the game. The game is that Holmes and

164
00:09:44,200 --> 00:09:49,079
Speaker 3: Watson really lived. The stories are true. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,

165
00:09:49,120 --> 00:09:53,280
Speaker 3: a brilliant writer, is known as the literary Agent. He

166
00:09:53,280 --> 00:09:57,680
Speaker 3: helped doctor Watson get these stories published. And in the

167
00:09:57,679 --> 00:10:01,560
Speaker 3: words of Dorothy Sayers, we put our tongues firmly in

168
00:10:01,679 --> 00:10:07,280
Speaker 3: our cheeks and pursue this sort of slightly mad study

169
00:10:07,840 --> 00:10:08,640
Speaker 3: of the stories.

170
00:10:09,360 --> 00:10:11,360
Speaker 2: What did you like about Sherlock Holmes?

171
00:10:11,480 --> 00:10:17,959
Speaker 3: List? Well, many things, but I like that Holmes is

172
00:10:18,120 --> 00:10:23,640
Speaker 3: a superhero that somehow, if we just work hard enough,

173
00:10:23,720 --> 00:10:25,360
Speaker 3: we could be like that. We don't have to be

174
00:10:25,440 --> 00:10:29,080
Speaker 3: bitten by a spider, we don't have to be born

175
00:10:29,120 --> 00:10:32,760
Speaker 3: on another planet. If we just really study hard and

176
00:10:32,960 --> 00:10:37,640
Speaker 3: learn everything, we could be like him. And that seemed

177
00:10:37,640 --> 00:10:44,840
Speaker 3: to be that's appealing. But he's just such a fascinating figure,

178
00:10:45,360 --> 00:10:50,600
Speaker 3: always on the side of right, right and justice, and

179
00:10:50,679 --> 00:10:57,200
Speaker 3: he's got this wonderful, warm friendship with doctor Watson. You know,

180
00:10:57,240 --> 00:10:59,560
Speaker 3: I think if you ask Sherlockians, would we like to

181
00:10:59,600 --> 00:11:02,120
Speaker 3: be your Lock Holmes? I think the truth is he's

182
00:11:02,200 --> 00:11:05,480
Speaker 3: kind of an uncomfortable figure sometimes. Would we like to

183
00:11:05,480 --> 00:11:10,439
Speaker 3: be Dr Watson? Absolutely to hang around with this genius

184
00:11:10,840 --> 00:11:14,760
Speaker 3: and sort of basking his light and basking his friendship.

185
00:11:15,480 --> 00:11:18,160
Speaker 2: What a great Holmes was the brilliant one, wasn't he?

186
00:11:18,679 --> 00:11:22,680
Speaker 3: Yes? Yes, And you know too many of the movies

187
00:11:22,720 --> 00:11:26,839
Speaker 3: depicted Watson as this fool, But he wasn't a fool.

188
00:11:26,840 --> 00:11:29,400
Speaker 3: He was a stout fellow. He was a smart guy.

189
00:11:29,440 --> 00:11:31,600
Speaker 3: He was a doctor. He had he had obtained his

190
00:11:31,640 --> 00:11:36,319
Speaker 3: medical degree, and he kind of allowed himself to play

191
00:11:36,480 --> 00:11:41,040
Speaker 3: the pool a bit to make Holmes look better. And

192
00:11:41,120 --> 00:11:45,280
Speaker 3: he did he did, uh, he did make homes look good.

193
00:11:45,320 --> 00:11:48,120
Speaker 3: He stayed out of the spotlight himself. Dr Watson did

194
00:11:48,640 --> 00:11:51,200
Speaker 3: uh and and always shown it on his friend, his

195
00:11:51,400 --> 00:11:57,200
Speaker 3: brilliant friend. And so we have these wonderful adventures, and

196
00:11:57,360 --> 00:12:00,000
Speaker 3: we can we can travel along with them and take

197
00:12:00,000 --> 00:12:02,640
Speaker 3: make ourselves back to what seems to be maybe a

198
00:12:02,760 --> 00:12:07,400
Speaker 3: simpler time, a time when things are a little more

199
00:12:07,400 --> 00:12:10,360
Speaker 3: black and white. We know who the good people are

200
00:12:10,400 --> 00:12:13,120
Speaker 3: and who the bad people are, and we can stand

201
00:12:13,200 --> 00:12:15,199
Speaker 3: up for right injustice.

202
00:12:15,480 --> 00:12:20,319
Speaker 2: Less what in Holmes line, elementary my dear Watson come from.

203
00:12:20,200 --> 00:12:22,480
Speaker 3: Well, it came from the movies. That doesn't appear in

204
00:12:22,480 --> 00:12:25,800
Speaker 3: any of the stories. He says elementary he talks about

205
00:12:25,800 --> 00:12:29,600
Speaker 3: my dear Watson. He never says that exact phrase anywhere

206
00:12:29,600 --> 00:12:33,160
Speaker 3: in the stories, but he comes close. Now.

207
00:12:33,160 --> 00:12:37,040
Speaker 2: When you flipped over the Dracula, anything unusual there.

208
00:12:39,040 --> 00:12:43,920
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, lots of the usual. First of all, as

209
00:12:43,960 --> 00:12:48,720
Speaker 3: I said, as I studied the book, it's the date

210
00:12:48,960 --> 00:12:52,400
Speaker 3: of the events. Not very many people want to treat

211
00:12:52,400 --> 00:12:54,960
Speaker 3: it like Sherlock Holmes. But I played the game a

212
00:12:55,040 --> 00:13:00,000
Speaker 3: bit with the Dracula the novel and treated it seriously

213
00:13:00,120 --> 00:13:03,679
Speaker 3: as if what if those events had really occurred? And

214
00:13:04,240 --> 00:13:07,560
Speaker 3: when we date the events. They take place in the

215
00:13:07,679 --> 00:13:13,840
Speaker 3: late eighteen eighties, possibly eighteen ninety three, but certainly at

216
00:13:13,840 --> 00:13:16,679
Speaker 3: a time when Sharlckhlms was very active in London, and

217
00:13:17,360 --> 00:13:22,319
Speaker 3: we can imagine this shrouded figure walking the streets of London,

218
00:13:22,600 --> 00:13:25,680
Speaker 3: maybe with Holmes actually on the case trying to track

219
00:13:25,760 --> 00:13:30,320
Speaker 3: him down. But people ask me what was the scariest

220
00:13:30,320 --> 00:13:34,280
Speaker 3: thing that I found about Dracula. The scariest thing I

221
00:13:34,360 --> 00:13:38,880
Speaker 3: found was a British magazine called Bite Me. That's content.

222
00:13:39,120 --> 00:13:40,760
Speaker 3: I'm not sure if it's still in print. It was

223
00:13:40,800 --> 00:13:43,080
Speaker 3: in print at the time that I was doing this book,

224
00:13:43,400 --> 00:13:46,800
Speaker 3: back in the two thousands. This is the Journal of

225
00:13:46,920 --> 00:13:52,360
Speaker 3: Consensual Vampirism. These are people who enjoy sharing blood and

226
00:13:53,280 --> 00:13:58,599
Speaker 3: dressing like a vampire. They get their teeth cap to

227
00:13:58,760 --> 00:14:02,520
Speaker 3: look pointy and long, they wear red contact lenses, and

228
00:14:02,559 --> 00:14:03,720
Speaker 3: they share blood.

229
00:14:05,559 --> 00:14:06,440
Speaker 2: Big time too.

230
00:14:07,400 --> 00:14:09,480
Speaker 3: Yeah, that scared me more than anything.

231
00:14:10,920 --> 00:14:14,120
Speaker 2: When you edited these books, they were written by the

232
00:14:14,160 --> 00:14:17,359
Speaker 2: original authors. You just added to it, right.

233
00:14:17,360 --> 00:14:20,880
Speaker 3: Right right. I always say that these books didn't need

234
00:14:20,960 --> 00:14:24,400
Speaker 3: less clingor to be great books. They are wonderful books.

235
00:14:24,440 --> 00:14:26,920
Speaker 3: And if you've never read the book, please don't read

236
00:14:26,920 --> 00:14:32,040
Speaker 3: my footnotes first, because inevitably, I had to spoil things

237
00:14:32,120 --> 00:14:36,440
Speaker 3: because I want to talk about the endings earlier in

238
00:14:36,480 --> 00:14:38,400
Speaker 3: the stories, so that you can sort of see how

239
00:14:38,440 --> 00:14:42,520
Speaker 3: it builds up to those endings. But I think of

240
00:14:42,600 --> 00:14:46,640
Speaker 3: my footnotes as kind of like the director's track. It's

241
00:14:46,680 --> 00:14:50,320
Speaker 3: a way to enhance your enjoyment of the stories, maybe

242
00:14:50,400 --> 00:14:52,720
Speaker 3: find things in them that you didn't know were there,

243
00:14:54,400 --> 00:14:56,280
Speaker 3: and look at things in a fresh way.

244
00:14:57,360 --> 00:15:00,520
Speaker 2: Wellus, I was always told that Dracula was and after

245
00:15:01,000 --> 00:15:04,840
Speaker 2: lad the Impaler, a real person. Is that true?

246
00:15:04,960 --> 00:15:10,520
Speaker 3: Well, no, it's probably not. What we do know is this.

247
00:15:11,760 --> 00:15:17,280
Speaker 3: Stoker did some research into his work, into the work

248
00:15:17,320 --> 00:15:21,000
Speaker 3: and putting together the work, and in the course of

249
00:15:21,040 --> 00:15:27,240
Speaker 3: his preparation he came across some accounts of Transylvania. Transylvania

250
00:15:27,680 --> 00:15:34,320
Speaker 3: was a kingdom of a principality of a far away place,

251
00:15:34,720 --> 00:15:37,520
Speaker 3: not yet the nation of Romania, but a far away place,

252
00:15:38,000 --> 00:15:44,920
Speaker 3: and beyond the Carpathian Mountains, little visited by English speaking travelers,

253
00:15:45,640 --> 00:15:48,520
Speaker 3: very little written about it. So it was an ideal

254
00:15:48,600 --> 00:15:53,440
Speaker 3: location to place his tale because it was like the

255
00:15:53,560 --> 00:15:56,320
Speaker 3: dark side of the moon. Nobody knew much about it.

256
00:15:56,360 --> 00:16:00,000
Speaker 3: You could say all kinds of strange things happened there now. Interestingly,

257
00:16:00,800 --> 00:16:03,400
Speaker 3: Transvania doesn't have much in the way of a tradition

258
00:16:03,600 --> 00:16:08,360
Speaker 3: of vampires or vampire literature. There's a lot of Eastern

259
00:16:08,440 --> 00:16:12,880
Speaker 3: European vampires, but not so much of there. But along

260
00:16:12,920 --> 00:16:18,720
Speaker 3: the way Stoker discovered a prince, Vlad the Impaler, who

261
00:16:18,840 --> 00:16:24,560
Speaker 3: was a prince who fought against the Turks and was

262
00:16:24,600 --> 00:16:27,240
Speaker 3: a great hero to his people. There was never a

263
00:16:27,240 --> 00:16:30,960
Speaker 3: suggestion that he was a vampire. He was a bloody warrior,

264
00:16:31,280 --> 00:16:33,720
Speaker 3: but he was never suggested that he had any sort

265
00:16:33,760 --> 00:16:37,560
Speaker 3: of supernatural bill. Because it was like the dark side

266
00:16:37,560 --> 00:16:40,160
Speaker 3: of the moon, nobody knew much about it. You could

267
00:16:40,160 --> 00:16:43,520
Speaker 3: say all kinds of strange things happen there now. Interestingly,

268
00:16:44,280 --> 00:16:46,880
Speaker 3: Transvania doesn't have much in the way of a tradition

269
00:16:47,080 --> 00:16:51,840
Speaker 3: of vampires or vampire literature. There's a lot of Eastern

270
00:16:51,920 --> 00:16:56,360
Speaker 3: European vampires, but not so much of there. But along

271
00:16:56,400 --> 00:17:02,200
Speaker 3: the way Stoker discovered a prince, Glad the Impaler, who

272
00:17:02,320 --> 00:17:08,040
Speaker 3: was a prince who fought against the Turks and was

273
00:17:08,080 --> 00:17:10,679
Speaker 3: a great hero to his people. There was never a

274
00:17:10,720 --> 00:17:14,480
Speaker 3: suggestion that he was a vampire. He was a bloody warrior,

275
00:17:14,760 --> 00:17:17,200
Speaker 3: but he was never suggested that he had any sort

276
00:17:17,240 --> 00:17:22,639
Speaker 3: of supernatural abilities. He did impale on a stake his

277
00:17:23,119 --> 00:17:27,479
Speaker 3: victims from time to time, and he had a nasty

278
00:17:27,560 --> 00:17:30,439
Speaker 3: reputation as an enemy because of that, but there was

279
00:17:30,480 --> 00:17:33,880
Speaker 3: never a hint of him being a vamplier. But what

280
00:17:34,080 --> 00:17:37,440
Speaker 3: Stoker discovered he had already written the book by the way,

281
00:17:37,560 --> 00:17:39,639
Speaker 3: he had written the book, and he was calling the

282
00:17:39,720 --> 00:17:46,400
Speaker 3: lead character Count Wampier, not a very fetching name, but

283
00:17:46,480 --> 00:17:48,960
Speaker 3: that was that was kind of the placeholder that he had.

284
00:17:49,440 --> 00:17:54,480
Speaker 3: And he came across the name Drakul, solicitor in London,

285
00:17:55,040 --> 00:18:01,600
Speaker 3: and he gets hired. His boss is hired by Dracula

286
00:18:01,680 --> 00:18:06,280
Speaker 3: to help him buy some real estate in London, and Harker,

287
00:18:07,119 --> 00:18:13,520
Speaker 3: who is newly engaged to a woman named Mina, is

288
00:18:13,840 --> 00:18:17,439
Speaker 3: shipped off to Transylvania with the closing documents, as we

289
00:18:17,480 --> 00:18:20,800
Speaker 3: would say, to get them all signed and sealed and

290
00:18:21,600 --> 00:18:25,080
Speaker 3: complete the real estate purchase. So he's sent to Transylvania

291
00:18:25,640 --> 00:18:28,080
Speaker 3: on this journey that you know, it was like, as

292
00:18:28,119 --> 00:18:30,359
Speaker 3: I said, a journey to the dark side of the moon.

293
00:18:31,320 --> 00:18:38,359
Speaker 3: He travels across Europe and passes through Vienna and gets

294
00:18:38,400 --> 00:18:41,720
Speaker 3: to the streets and finally goes to Dracula's castle where

295
00:18:41,760 --> 00:18:47,840
Speaker 3: he meets Count Dracula, where he is promptly imprisoned. Dracula

296
00:18:48,880 --> 00:18:53,760
Speaker 3: takes all the papers, locks Barker in his castle and

297
00:18:54,119 --> 00:18:55,200
Speaker 3: takes off for England.

298
00:18:56,800 --> 00:19:02,000
Speaker 2: Was Jonathan Harker perhaps based on a real per.

299
00:19:01,200 --> 00:19:03,119
Speaker 3: Well as I say, I think he's loosely based on

300
00:19:03,160 --> 00:19:09,720
Speaker 3: Stoker himself. He Stoker himself was a solicitor. I like

301
00:19:09,840 --> 00:19:12,639
Speaker 3: to pretend that the two of them met while they

302
00:19:12,680 --> 00:19:17,800
Speaker 3: were studying to pass the bar examinations there, but there's

303
00:19:17,840 --> 00:19:21,720
Speaker 3: no there's no basis for that evidence other than my

304
00:19:21,840 --> 00:19:23,280
Speaker 3: wild fever dreams.

305
00:19:24,000 --> 00:19:27,080
Speaker 2: LUs. Do you think the vampires of that day scared people?

306
00:19:27,880 --> 00:19:33,400
Speaker 3: Oh yes, oh yes. The vampires were not seen as

307
00:19:33,640 --> 00:19:41,200
Speaker 3: as seductors said the word seducers. They were seen as revenance.

308
00:19:42,520 --> 00:19:47,840
Speaker 3: The dead returned, and they were they were feared. In

309
00:19:47,880 --> 00:19:52,200
Speaker 3: some cases, the vampire might be a relative. It might

310
00:19:52,240 --> 00:19:57,040
Speaker 3: be Uncle George who had changed into a vampire because

311
00:19:57,040 --> 00:19:59,520
Speaker 3: of bad things he had done during his lifetime and

312
00:19:59,680 --> 00:20:02,680
Speaker 3: came back from the fact you had just buried him,

313
00:20:02,720 --> 00:20:05,760
Speaker 3: and sure enough he's back in the village. And in

314
00:20:05,800 --> 00:20:09,359
Speaker 3: the early days of vampire recordings, which is to go

315
00:20:09,480 --> 00:20:13,240
Speaker 3: back to like the fifteenth century. In England sixteenth century,

316
00:20:14,400 --> 00:20:18,560
Speaker 3: it was often a village that was suffering predation by

317
00:20:18,920 --> 00:20:23,640
Speaker 3: the local vampire. The villagers would go down to the

318
00:20:23,680 --> 00:20:27,520
Speaker 3: graveyard and they'd dig up Uncle George and they'd see

319
00:20:27,640 --> 00:20:31,399
Speaker 3: evidence that Uncle George was a vampire. The evidence was

320
00:20:31,440 --> 00:20:34,719
Speaker 3: typically things like, well, there might be foam on his

321
00:20:34,920 --> 00:20:38,719
Speaker 3: lips or blood on his lips in the coffin, the

322
00:20:38,760 --> 00:20:42,840
Speaker 3: body had moved in the coffin, the fingernails had continued

323
00:20:42,880 --> 00:20:46,800
Speaker 3: to grow, the hair had continued to grow, so this

324
00:20:46,960 --> 00:20:50,800
Speaker 3: being positive proof that Uncle George was the vampire and

325
00:20:50,920 --> 00:20:53,919
Speaker 3: had gotten up out of the grave and walked around.

326
00:20:54,160 --> 00:20:57,240
Speaker 3: They would then sort of staple him into the grave

327
00:20:57,760 --> 00:21:01,600
Speaker 3: with an iron steak to make sure he didn't bother

328
00:21:01,720 --> 00:21:04,919
Speaker 3: the village anymore. And when things went back to normal,

329
00:21:05,040 --> 00:21:09,480
Speaker 3: the horses stopped dying, the crops got better. That was

330
00:21:09,600 --> 00:21:11,480
Speaker 3: clear proof that they had done the right thing.

331
00:21:11,880 --> 00:21:15,120
Speaker 1: Listen to more Coast to Coast am every weeknight at

332
00:21:15,160 --> 00:21:18,400
Speaker 1: one am Eastern and go to Coast to coastam dot

333
00:21:18,440 --> 00:21:19,200
Speaker 1: com for more