Freda Warrington’s vampire novels make for lush, intense dramas involving angst-haunted, fierce undead–lovers, enemies, family members, friends, despots, sometimes religious fanatics or raving lunatics. Her latest The Dark Arts of Blood certainly is no exception. More, her tales explore that strange dangerous moments and relationships inherent when the world of humanity blends with that of…
Tag: vampire story
Fleur de Feu
Some spoilers follow. I am a huge fan of British author Tanith Lee. Her Tales of the Flat Earth for example make for one of the most original epic fantasies (if you can call them that) ever. Likewise her books about the vampiric family the Scarabae as well as an undead re-telling of Snow White…
Did Anonymously Written Story Inspire Bram Stoker’s Dracula?
Long before Bram Stoker’s legendary novel Dracula (1897) there was The Mysterious Stranger, a short story penned by an anonymous author. This vampire tale was translated from German to English and published in Odd and Ends magazine in 1860 – over thirty years before the famed Dracula. Why is this worth noting? Because the two…
Do It Yourself Hammer Horror
Be honest–don’t you wish there were more Hammer vampire films? Well, at least in your mind’s eye, you can create your own from the elements we already know. The rules are simple. Get yourself a single six-sided die (the singular of dice). Now roll your die to make each decision along the way. Ready? Let…
Four Wooden Stakes
Whatever could that titled be referring too? A story of course. Four Wooden Stakes is a little-known short story that first appeared in 1925 in Weird Tales. Written by Victor Rowan the story, well, it didn’t do too well when it first came out. Critics argued that the tale was too conventional and predictable. However,…
Théophile Gautier’s ‘La Morte Amoureuse’
Théophile Gautier was a noted French writer, poet and critic during the 1800s. Born 1811, Gautier grew into a highly influential figure in French literature and was the author of the well-known novels Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835) and Le Capitaine Fracasse (1863). His interest in the supernatural eventually led him to write the captivating vampire…
Dracula’s Guest: The Deleted Chapter of Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Dracula’s Guest is a deleted chapter from Bram Stoker’s legendary novel Dracula which was written with the rest of the story but omitted from the final version published in 1897. Even though it was left out of the book, Dracula’s Guest was eventually published in 1914 in Dracula’s Guest and Other Weird Tales. While it’s…
True Story of a Vampire
“True Story of a Vampire” is actually a short story written by Count Eric Stanislaus Stenbock. The story was published in London in 1894 in “Studies of Death,” a collection of stories which received favorable comment by H. P. Lovecraft himself. In all honesty, “True Story of a Vampire is a horribly written story (seriously,…
The Heartbreaking Tale of Gabrielle de Launay
While reading a book on vampires I came across a name I had never heard of before – Gabrielle de Launay. The book tells of her romantic, yet sad, story of love, life and death. While fascinating, her story, which went to trial in Paris in 1760, didn’t bring “vampire” to mind, yet here it…
The Vampire of Croglin Grange
I’ve got quite the tale for you today Dear Readers, a supposedly true case of vampirism! The Vampire of Croglin Grange is one of the most extraordinary and famous cases of undead attack, mainly due to its conceivable circumstances and its original appearance in the memoirs of Augustus Hare (The Story of My Life, 1896)…