“I feel like I’m in heaven surrounded by all these people who love Dracula,” Prof. Elizabeth Miller, baroness of the House of Dracula, said with an impish grin.
When she’s not in the Carpathian Mountains, pursuing her vampiric passion, Miller is professor of English literature at Memorial University in St. John’s, Newfoundland.
The Transylvanian Society of Dracula invited her to help set up the World’s First International Dracula Congress. Delegates came from all over the world to debate the historical and literary roots of one of popular culture’s favorite villains.
In the company of 250 vampire buffs Miller delivered an academic paper, “The Genesis of Dracula,” and exchanged insights with members of Dracula societies from as far away as Japan.
“I became interested in vampires through studying 19th Century Gothic fiction,” she said. “I started with Mary Shelley’s `Frankenstein,’ and once I discovered Bram Stoker’s `Dracula’ novel, I was bitten. I’ve been there ever since, a prisoner of the castle.
“I was at a time in my career where I had got into a bit of a rut. I’d written two books of Newfoundland biography, and I needed something totally different. Dracula came along at the right time. Maybe if it’d happened 10 years earlier, I wouldn’t have been as enthralled with it as I was.
“The thing about Dracula is that it’s so interdisciplinary. It’s not just literary scholars who are interested, it’s historians, folklorists, sociologists and anthropologists.”
The week-long conference in late May and early June followed a year of organizing for Miller–a year of faxes and phone calls to Dracula buffs around the world.
“I get some very odd mail,” Miller said, describing envelopes with blood red ink dripping from the stamp. “It just goes with the territory. There’s also the perk of the extra elbow room I’m always given on a plane when I’m reading about Dracula. It’s interesting how people react.”
Miller’s academic credentials and good humor attracted an impressive list of speakers to the conference, including delegates from the Sorbonne and the London School of Economics and professors from Canada and the United States.
Raymond McNally, a historian from Boston College, infamous for lecturing from an upturned coffin, gave a paper on the influence of Dracula on American literature and cinematography. His colleague, Romanian-born Radu Florescu, spoke eloquently and controversially about the need for an annual horror movie festival in Bucharest and a Dracula theme park.
The Romanian delegates were at pains to stress the distinction between the Western Dracula, with his sharp canines, and their historical Vlad “The Impaler” Tepes, who is believed to be the inspiration for the literary villain. According to historical records, the Romanian leader was honored with the title Prince Dracul, meaning son of the dragon as well as son of the devil, for fighting off Turkish invaders.
A clutch of experts in Romanian military history lectured on such themes as “The Psychological Component in Vlad the Impaler’s Warfare” and described his practice of spiking his enemies alive on giant stakes and dining among their writhing bodies as a Machiavellian strategy for terrifying his own country and his enemies into submission.
“Our Vlad Tepes has nothing to do with the Western Dracula,” insisted Capt. Bogdan-Alexandru Halic, a military historian. “He was a brilliant strategist who led many successful crusades against the infidel.”
Miller was confident that the conference was the first step toward reconciling the Eastern and Western perspectives.
“It’s an opportunity for the first time for Romanians and people in the West to bring the two Draculas together,” she said. “There’s the Dracula that we know, who’s been everything from Bela Lugosi to the Count on Sesame Street.
“If you ask average people in Bucharest who Dracula was, they’ll scratch their heads and say Vlad Tepes, the 15th Century prince they remember from their history books.
“If you say vampire to them, they won’t know what you mean, and some get angry because they see our vampire as a Western appropriation of their history.”
One aspect of Dracula studies that particularly surprised the Romanians was the work of sociologists such as Eileen Barker, who drew parallels between some Dracula devotees and religious believers.
“This is a new myth, a new way of exploring reality that is both safe and has a shiver of excitement and fear, a way to cross boundaries into the unknown,” said Barker, professor of sociology at the London School of Economics.
Her paper, “Dracula in the Age of Aquarius: A Quest for the Count, the New Age and the Loch Ness Monster,” explained how “Dracula” offers the comfort of religious belief in a secular world.
“Dracula performs many functions which alternative religions are performing in a modern society,” Barker said. “It gives one permission to explore things like sexuality, immortality and reincarnation, to remystify the world.
“This is serious fun, where people are confronting and perhaps overcoming some of the problems of death and evil, exploring emotions they can’t otherwise explore. It will continue to attract pilgrims to Transylvania.”
Another new religion watcher and cult expert was Gordon Melton, director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion in Santa Barbara, Calif., and author of “The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead.”
“The Dracula and vampires offer a kind of immortality to a secular culture,” he said. “It’s not heaven and it’s not hell, but it allows you to continue long enough at least to see whether you’re going to be bored with eternity.
“I see it as the underbelly of the New Age movement, which hit us with brightness and light, and goodness and wholesomeness. It’s very unrealistic. It’s not the whole part of life. The vampire presents the underbelly of that world and gives to the New Age a fitting contrast of the dark side of life.”
Miller agreed that reading vampire literature can be a transcendental experience.
“In Stoker the supernatural isn’t explained, so it’s a chance for the reader to dabble with the supernatural without any real danger. That’s why a lot of people like reading this stuff, getting the thrill and excitement of the occult without risking themselves or going over the edge.”
In between the papers, there was time for some of that “serious fun,” including the crowning of Miller as baroness of the House of Dracula, making her the first person outside of Romania to be recognized with the title.
The investiture ceremony took place after dark on the penultimate night of the conference in the Castle Dracula Hotel on the Borgo Pass, the location of the fictional Dracula’s castle in the Bram Stoker novel.
“Other organizations might thank someone for their work with a plaque or something,” Miller said. “This is much more in keeping with the subject of Dracula.”
Miller returned home with a Transylvanian crown and a medallion, and an oil portrait of her hangs in the Castle Dracula Hotel.
“The pendant is in the shape of a stylized `D’ made up a dragon with a sword going through it, an icon of the Crusaders fighting the infidel with overtones of St. George and the dragon — very appropriate,” Miller said.
“I’m sure Stoker would flip over in his grave if he knew — well he can’t because he was cremated,” Miller said gleefully. “But he would be amazed that scholars are sitting around almost a hundred years later applying all these things to his book. “But I think that it’s fun to do it. And who wants to be doing dry research all the time? There can’t be many people who are lucky enough to work on something that can be serious and fun, both at the same time.”
