Dracula/Talk

Hello? "a secret fraternal order of knights called the Order of the Dragon, founded by King Sigismund of Hungary (who became the Holy Roman Emperor in 1410) to uphold Christianity and defend the Empire against the Ottoman Turks"?

Call me a running dog lackey of the evil rationalist zombies, but whenever I see something like this my Conspiracy theory alert goes off. Anybody have anything to back this up?

(I'm not calling anybody names here, I just want to know where this came from.)

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If I had time, I'd want to compare this article to [1] and other sources. --LMS

Thanks, Larry. Page says that the info there "was taken from The Vampire Book, The Encyclopedia of the Undead by J. Gordon Melton""

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"Dracula is the most famous (fictional, or mythical) vampire."

This would be as opposed to "real, non-mythical" vampire?

Well, we don't want five-year-olds reading this and finding out that, according to the encyclopedia, it seems that Dracula actually exists or existed! :-) I'm not sure how best to word this. --LMS

I gave it a shot. :-)

But Carmilla is definitely the most interesting... sjc

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There is no evidence that Stoker ever read anything about Vlad Drakul/Vlad? the Impaler while doing research for his book. See "Dracula: Sense and Nonsense" by Elizabeth Miller. --corvus13

Oh dear, Elizabeth Miller really does have you wound up, doesn't she? Her viewpoint is kind of unique amongst scholars.... It is just a theory; there are many other arguments against her point of view. There are 3 threads to the source of Dracula: 1. Irish folk-myth (some of the Sidhe were thought to drink human blood; 2. Carmilla by Sheridan le Fanu and 3. (and problematically from Ms Miller's viewpoint) [Vlad Tepes]?. 1 and 2 are not disputed by Ms Miller. Her argument definitely substantiates Carmilla as a source. But. Her arguments are based upon a number of assumptions, and while they are intellectually coherent, many of them are circumstantial. We will never know for sure. sjc