Undead of Penny Dreadful

What follows is rife with many a SPOILER. You have been warned! Now that the finale of the first season of Penny Dreadful has aired, with more than a few surprises (as well as few plot twists many of us saw coming from miles away), let us consider the vampires in this series. Not least…

Vampires: The Nightmare Strangers

Someone asked why I thought vampires remained so popular and intriguing. My answer: Because the undead make such a fluid metaphor. Consider; when they first entered into the Western literature and art–with John Polidori’s “The Vampyre.” For much of the next century, vampires popped up in art and theatre as well as different stories. “Varney…

Bring the ‘Harker’ Video Game Back!

Way back in 2008 Double Helix Games teased all of us vampire-lovin’ gamers with “Harker,” a game featuring a badass vampire hunter loosely based on Jonathan Harker from Bram Stoker’s legendary novel “Dracula.” The developers waved a badass little promo in front of our bloodthirsty eyes and then they just took it all away! According…

The Curious Case of Jonathan Harker

Bram Stoker seems like a such a conservative. He pursued a career as a government clerk until a better opportunity in entertainment presented itself. As manager of a hugely successful actor and theatre, he and his primly beautiful wife reveled as they walked amid high society. His novels abound with staunchly Victorian ideas and prejudices.…

The Very Many Faces of Mina Murray

Adaptations of Bram Stoker’s most famous novel often reveal more about the adapters — and about their times — than they do about Stoker or his work. Case in point: Mina Harker, nee Murray. Looking at the novel itself, we find a character who seems very much a yin to her best friend Lucy Westenra‘s…

Vampire Tarot

Tarot cards have been a part of the occult almost since they were created. Originally, the Tarot were playing cards used for games in France and Italy, but even playing cards have been used for divinatory purposes almost since their creation. As the centuries have passed, and anything to do with magic and divination was…

Ten Things You Don’t Know About Dracula

1. He never once hints that he himself is Vlad the Impaler (although there is the suggestion that maybe he is related to that figure). For that matter, the most current scholarship into the novel indicates Stoker himself hardly knew anything more about the historical Vlad Tepes (pronounced tseh-PESH) than the name. It sounded good,…