S01E16 - In Search of Dracula: VLADdendum

Listener Justin Mullis hipped us to some groovy 1970s additional context behind the Season 1 episode In Search Of: Dracula.  Much of it is based on an unmentioned book, In Search of Dracula by Raymond McNally and Radu Florescu.  We also correct a mistake about the source of the idea that the fictional vampire Dracula might have been Vlad Dracula (aka Vlad Tepes).

Mentioned in this addendum:

Emily Gerard's 1885 article Transylvanian Superstitions and 1888 book The Land Beyond the Forest: Facts, Figures, and Fancies from Transylvania.

According to researcher Jim Steinmeyer, Stoker never read about Vlad from Gerard..

Stoker got his Vlad references (and mistaken ideas about the meaning of "dracula") from William Wilkinson's 1820 book An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia: With Various Political Observations Relating to Them.

Scholar Hans Corneel de Roos thinks Stoker is offering contradictory background info on Dracula to give him historical context but not tie him historically to any particular person.

McNally and Florescu's theory was challenged by Elizabeth Miller which led to a consensus that Dracula is not Vlad Dracula. But the idea is embedded in popular culture now.

1975 documentary (with Christopher Lee) based on In Search of Dracula by Florescu and McNally. 

Dan Curtis & Richard Matheson teamed up to make a version of Dracula with Jack Palance.  The Jack Palance version of Dracula inspired the look of Marvel Comics' Morbius.