Transylvania, a.k.a. the land of Dracula

Being a tour guide and traveling with foreign tourists in Romania, I am always asked why Bram Stoker chose Transylvania for his novel, and not Russia or some other place? What is so special here? So before starting, pack your garlic and crucifix (required accessories!), and let’s discover together the answer to these questions.

You see, legends of vampires have existed for centuries, even millennia. The Mesopotamians, the Romans, even the Ancient Greeks all had blood-drinking entities in their culture, which can be considered the ancestors of modern vampires. Nevertheless, the image and description of these spirits/entities, as we know them today, date from the 18th century – and from nowhere else than Southeastern Europe and particularly Transylvania. During that period of time, little was known by Western Europeans regarding the culture and life in dark and far-away Eastern Europe with its profoundly religious, but also very superstitious, people.

These days in Romania and above all rural villages, the situation is more or less the same, with some elders rigorously keeping alive the old traditions and superstitions. It’s funny that some of them have long forgotten the meaning of certain habits but still keep them because “this is the custom of our ancestors.” But more about this in a future article.

There used to be several ethnic groups (also mentioned in Stoker’s novel) whose verbal traditions were recorded and later published. The word “vampire” did not exist in the local culture. Romanian vampires were known as Moroi ( from the Romanian word “mort” meaning “dead” or the Slavic word meaning “nightmare”) and Strigoi, being either living or dead. It was believed that Strigoi had the ability to send out their souls during the night to meet with others of their kind and feed themselves with the blood of livestock and neighbors.

Also, according to local superstitions, the seventh child in any family – if all of his or her previous brothers or sisters were of the same sex – was doomed to become a vampire. The same thing happened to someone born too early or someone whose mother had a black cat cross her path. Likewise, if a pregnant woman did not eat salt or was looked upon by a vampire or a witch, her child would also become a vampire. Others who were also at risk of becoming vampires died an unnatural death or died before baptism.

Did you keep the garlic close? Good, because there’s more. Do you remember Jacob, another Twilight Saga hero, the rebel Indian who can turn himself into a werewolf? There is something similar in our culture as well. Another type of Romanian vampire is the “pricolici.” These are humans born with a tail and who can control their transformation into werewolves. The list of superstitions goes on and on, and as you have no doubt noticed, our local believers gave shape to the perfect conditions for the legend of Dracula.

And if all this were not enough, Bram Stoker based the creation of his character on the life and cruelty of a real Romanian ruler, known as Vlad the Impaler (Vlad Tepes or Vlad III Romanian). And this is how we get to the next chapter…