Monsters and Gothic Horror

Dracula, Frankenstein, Nosferatu, Poe, the books and early films behind them.

Count Wampyr, a glacier scene, a widow's lawsuit and a Spanish Dracula shot at night on the same sets. These are the true stories behind the monsters, from the first drafts of Dracula and Frankenstein to the 1931 Universal films that enter the U.S. public domain on Jan 1, 2027.

Each story checks the popular version against the record and lists its sources at the end. Start with the Nosferatu lawsuit Bram Stoker's widow won, or Count Wampyr, the name Dracula almost had.

15 stories

Whitby, August 1890
Dracula Was Almost Called Count Wampyr
A seaside holiday gave Bram Stoker his villain’s name, and the shipwreck that became the Demeter.
Chamonix, July 1816
Frankenstein’s Glacier Scene
Mary Godwin (later Mary Shelley) walked on the Mer de Glace in July 1816. In her novel, so does the creature.
London, October 1831
Where Frankenstein’s Origin Story Ran First
Mary Shelley’s famous account of how the novel began appeared in the Court Journal nine days before the book.
Edinburgh, March 1818
Scott Credited the Wrong Shelley
The first edition had no author’s name. Reviewers guessed, and the most famous of them guessed wrong.
Hammer Films, 1966
Why Dracula Never Says a Word
Christopher Lee says he refused the lines. The screenwriter says there were no lines.
Universal Pictures, 1935
One Actress Played Mary Shelley and the Bride
Elsa Lanchester got a credit for Mary. For the Bride, the credits printed a question mark.
Bram Stoker born Nov 8, 1847.
Van Helsing’s First Name
Bram is short for Abraham. In Dracula, the professor who comes to hunt the Count is Abraham Van Helsing.
Nov 21, 2026
Was Sweeney Todd Real?
The demon barber of Fleet Street first appeared 180 years ago this November, in a penny weekly. Four years later his publisher printed a preface swearing "there certainly was such a man," and people have been looking for his trial ever since.
95th anniversary of the Nov 21, 1931 release (copyright Nov 16, 1931).
Frankenstein’s Casting and Cuts
The 1931 Frankenstein almost had a different director and a different monster, and the version most people saw for 50 years was missing its most shocking minute.
Dec 1, 2026
Carmilla Before Dr. Hesselius
Turn to page 434 of the December 1871 issue of a little London monthly called The Dark Blue and Carmilla begins at once, in a young woman's voice, in a castle in Styria, with no doctor and no case file in sight. That was 25 years before Dracula, and its first readers met the vampire cold.
Dec 10, 2026
Dickens’s Railway Ghost Story
On June 9, 1865, Dickens climbed out of a railway carriage left hanging off a broken bridge. The ghost story he wrote 18 months later, as a Christmas present for his readers, is his scariest, and he died five years to the day after the crash.
The Night-Shift Drácula
While Bela Lugosi slept, a second Dracula moved into his castle. Universal shot a Spanish-language version on the same sets, at night, and for 60 years almost nobody in the US could see it.
Jan 9, 2027
Jekyll and Hyde Missed Christmas
Many copies of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde carry a cover printed "1885" with the year corrected to "1886" in pen. Longmans had planned it as a Christmas book, but the bookstalls were already full, so it came out in January.
Jan 29, 2027
The Raven, by Quarles
America's most famous poem first appeared credited to "Quarles." A New York newspaper put Poe's real name on it a few days early, and the $9 he supposedly earned for it is only one of four different numbers.
Feb 12, 2027
Dracula Dodges Friday the 13th
Dracula was due to open on Broadway on Friday the 13th in February 1931, until Universal moved it up a day because its director, Tod Browning, "goes in for superstition." The Valentine's tagline everyone repeats, "the strangest love story," is harder to pin down, since the only 1931 trade-paper ad we found with those words is for a different Universal picture.

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