It has often been suggested that Stoker’s Dracula was inspired by a real person. In 1972 two Boston history professors, Raymond McNally and Radu Florescu, published a best-selling study In Search of Dracula, in which they linked Stoker’s Dracula to Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia (1431-1476).

Yet, Vlad III had no association with vampires, and he was not a count. He was a Christian Romanian prince. (Wallachia is one of the three Romanian provinces.) Vlad surnamed himself Dracula (“Son of Dracul”), a reference to the fact that he was the son of Vlad Dracul, a member of the Order of the Dragon (dracul is Romanian for dragon). The Order of the Dragon was a semi-military, religious society of knights, created in 1378 by the Holy Roman Emperor. Their official dress was a black cape over a red garment. (In most horror films vampires wear black capes with red lining.)

Vlad III was notorious for the atrocities he inflicted on his enemies. He had people skinned, burned, nailed or buried alive. His favourite execution technique was impaling his enemies on long wooden pointed stakes. Legend has it that he once impaled 20,000 Turkish prisoners in concentric circles outside his capital of Tirgoviste.

To Romanians, however, Vlad is something of a national hero, who defended his country and religion and defeated the Turks in 1462. They do not call him Dracula, because of the western association with vampirism, which they regard as an affront to their history. Instead, they refer to the Prince as Vlad Tepes (pronounced tsep-pesh) alias Vlad the Impaler, a nickname given to him by the Turks.

Some scholars question the link between Stoker’s Dracula and Vlad Tepes. Professor Elizabeth Miller, a leading authority on Dracula, states that Stoker new little more than the name Dracula and that he was not really familiar with the Vlad Tepes stories. The only thing that is for sure is that Stoker came across the name Dracula in a footnote in a history book written by William Wilkinson and that he linked the association with “devil”.

Why vampires don’t have a reflection

The idea that vampires have no reflection is based on a superstition that a mirror reflects a person’s soul. As vampires are “un-dead” and therefore have no soul, no reflection appears.