How Count Dracula has roots in Airdrie

Upon realising his host and his three ‘brides’ are vampires Harker escapes to England, only to be followed by the eponymous Count.

It’s a story that has been told and re-told on dozens of occasions down the years, but few are familiar with its Scottish inspiration.

Emily Gerard was born on 7 May 1849 to a well-to-do family in the Borders, growing up at Rochsoles House in North Lanarkshire.

At the age of 14 she moved with her family to Vienna, Austria, where she would later a Polish cavalry officer in the Austro-Hungarian army, Mieczysław Łaszowski.

Her husband, 20 years her senior, was stationed in the cities of Sibiu and Brașov – then known as Hermanstadt and Kronstadt - in Transylvania, and Gerard immersed herself in the local folklore.

In her essay Transylvanian Superstitions Gerard wrote that the region was “the land of superstition” and asserted “nowhere else does this curious crooked plant of delusion flourish as persistently and in such bewildering variety”.

Dracula author Bram Stoker (Image: Historic Scotland)

Among the Carpathian mountains she found a landscape where “it would almost seem as though the whole species of demons, pixies, witches, and hobgoblins, driven from the rest of Europe by the wand of science, had taken refuge within this mountain rampart, well aware that here they would find secure lurking-places, whence they might defy their persecutors yet awhile.”

Fascinated by the myths and legends of a land “within a formidable rampart of snow-tipped mountains, and shielded by heavy curtains of shrouding forests against the noise and turmoil of the outer world” she began to note down the myriad legends derived, in her view, ‘indigenous superstition’, ‘old German customs and beliefs brought hither seven hundred years ago’ and ‘the wandering superstition of the gypsy tribes, themselves a race of fortune-tellers and witches’.

Her 1888 book, The Land Beyond the Forest: Facts, Figures, and Fancies from Transylvania was owned by Stoker and introduced the author to the word nosferatu, an archaic Romanian word for vampire.

The London Library lists it among 25 books that the author used for reference while creating his seminal work.

Of the dreaded vampire Gerard wrote: “More decidedly evil, however, is the vampire, or nosferatu, in whom every Roumenian (sic) peasant believes as firmly as he does in heaven or hell. There are two sorts of vampires—living and dead. The living vampire is in general the illegitimate offspring of two illegitimate persons, but even a flawless pedigree will not ensure anyone against the intrusion of a vampire into his family vault, since every person killed by a nosferatu becomes likewise a vampire after death, and will continue to suck the blood of other innocent people till the spirit has been exorcised, either by opening the grave of the person suspected and driving a stake through the corpse, or firing a pistol shot into the coffin.

Nosferatu, which turns 100 this year (Image: Screenshot)

“In very obstinate cases it is further recommended to cut off the head and replace it in the coffin with the mouth filled with garlic, or to extract the heart and burn it, strewing the ashes over the grave.

“That such remedies are often resorted to, even in our enlightened days, is a well-attested fact, and there are probably few Roumenian villages where such has not taken place within the memory of the inhabitants.”

Stoker’s novel would set the basic blueprint for the vampire as a popular culture phenomenon that endures today. The lack of reflection, weakness in sunlight and aversion to religious imagery are staples of the genre, be it Barlow in Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot or Kiefer Sutherland’s David in The Lost Boys.

Christopher Lee as Dracula (Image: Screenshot)

Dracula himself has been portrayed on the silver and small screen, in musicals and plays, operas and ballets. One of the most famous films starring the Count, Nosferatu, was released 100 years ago and has been referred to as “the template for the horror film”. Other famous film adaptations starred Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee, and the BBC released a modern adaptation by Doctor Who writers Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss in 2020. Outside of novel adaptations the character has appeared in Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and was staked by the title character in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Emily Gerard died in Vienna in 1905, but a number of her relatives are buried in St Joseph’s Cemetery in Airdrie where, as far as anyone knows, they remain resolutely dead and permanently ensconced in their coffins.