An amateur historian has discovered a long-lost short story by Bram Stoker, published just seven years before his legendary gothic novel Dracula. Brian Cleary stumbled upon the 134-year-old ghostly tale while browsing the archives of the National Library of Ireland. Gibbet Hill was originally published in a Dublin newspaper in 1890 - when the Irishman started working on Dracula - but has been undocumented ever since. Stoker biographer Paul Murray says the story sheds light on his development as an author and was a significant “station on his route to publishing Dracula”. The ghostly story tel ..read more

Abstract: "A vampire is a mythological-folkloric creature that is said to feed on the blood of the living. It is a Gothic uncanny figure. So judging by the outlook, a vampire is not a figure with whom we should fall in love with. But judging by the current trends in popular culture, it is not true so. Though vampires were once portrayed as gruesome and horrible, with the passage of time, change in trends and paradigm shift in popular culture, they have been naturalized as normal. They have even attained celebrity status. The evolution of the vampire from a gruesome Gothic figure to a superstar ..read more

Grave containing 'VAMPIRE' with a sickle around its neck to stop it 'returning from the dead' is found under stone with skull engraving at Polish church  Medieval belief in vampires became so widespread that it caused mass hysteria  Archaeologists researching a church in northern Poland have discovered a 'vampire tomb' buried underneath the floor in what they say is a first-of-its-kind discovery. The skeletal remains of a man dating from the 17th century were found in the Church of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the small village of Pączewo after archaeologists disco ..read more

Courtesy of WikiMedia and the Internet Archive, this is one of the earliest known vampire movies. (IMDB)  The House of the Devil (in French, Le Manoir du diable, lit. The Devil's manor), released in the United States as The Haunted Castle and in Britain as The Devil's Castle, is an 1896 French short silent film directed by Georges Méliès. The film, which depicts a brief pantomimed sketch in the style of a theatrical comic fantasy, tells the story of an encounter with the Devil and various attendant phantoms. It is intended to evoke amusement and wonder from its audiences, rather than fea ..read more

‘Margery of Quether’ is a vampire story by Sabine Baring-Gould, published in 1891.  It tells the story of a romance that blossoms between a young Dartmoor squire and a 17th-century witch cursed with eternal life. This book is available online below courtesy of HathiTrust and Cornell University.   ..read more

The 15th century prince who inspired the literary vampire Dracula may have had medical issues that caused him to cry tears of blood, according to researchers unearthing this ancient mystery.  The prince, who was also a military leader, was known as Vlad III, Voivode of Wallachia and as Vlad the Impaler. He was also called Vlad Drăculea, translating to “the son of the dragon," and may be the inspiration for the character Count Dracula. The theories about Vlad's medical issues come from scientific examination of his letters by a team that included Vincenzo Cunsolo, an associate professor ..read more

The grim discovery in the village of Luzino in the northeast of the country found that some of the 450 skeletons had been beheaded and their skulls placed between their legs and a coin placed in their mouths. The practice which was common in the region during the 19th century was believed to remove the ‘vampire curse’. Archaeologist Maciej Stromski said: ‘We discovered examples of belief in the dead returning from the grave, which could only be stopped by decapitation. ‘It was believed that if a member of the deceased's family died shortly after the funeral, then he or she could be a vampir ..read more

The Americas have many legendary creatures in their folklore like Bigfoot and the Mothman, but arguably its most terrifying legend is the Chupacabra. The name for the creature literally means “goat sucker,” and is derived from reported vampirism of livestock like goats. Its first sightings were reported in Puerto Rico in 1995, and it's often described as either dog-like or lizard-like in appearance. The chupacabra is also said to be the size of a small bear with a row of spines that goes from its neck to its tail. It’s definitely not a creature you want to encounter in the middle of the night ..read more

Her nearly 40 novels published over a half-century sold some 135 million copies, placing her among the most popular fantasy writers of all time. By Lisa de los Reyes for The Hollywood Reporter, December 12, 2021   Anne Rice, the famed New Orleans author whose sensational debut novel, Interview With the Vampire, sent her down a supernatural path writing about blood-suckers, witches and werewolves, died of complications from a stroke on Saturday. She was 80. Rice’s son, Christopher Rice, announced the news on social media. “She left us almost 19 years to the day my father, her husband ..read more

There is a surge in goth-lit that channels our fears and anxieties. Hephzibah Anderson explores how the genre's past and new stories delve deep into disorder and darkness. "We live in Gothic times," declared Angela Carter back in 1974. It's a theme Carlos Ruiz Zafón took up several decades later: "Ours is a time with a dark heart, ripe for the noir, the gothic and the baroque", he wrote in 2010. Both authors had good reason. The Gothic has always been about far more than heroines in Victorian nightgowns, trapped in labyrinthine ancestral homes, and along with the supernatural, its imaginings p ..read more