Fangs for the memory

11:04am Wednesday 31st October 2007

Paul Chapman has always been fascinated by the 'true' story of Dracula. As the Yorkshire writer's book on the legendary figure is published, he tells Ruth Campbell why he has no time for the trick-or-treating youngsters who will be knocking on our doors tonight.

PAUL Chapman has little time for the youngsters with slicked back blackened hair, whitened faces and blood-stained plastic fangs who will be roaming the streets emulating one of our best-known horror figures tonight.

The author and historian, who confesses to being fascinated by the darker side of life, is much more interested in the original Dracula and in a tale more sinister and fascinating than many of our popular, sometimes slightly comic, modern films would have us believe.

Dressed in funereal black with long, brushed back hair, a striking waxed moustache and beard, and looking as if he might well have just arrived from another century, Chapman could easily outspook any of those trick-or-treating youngsters should they ever encounter him in a dark alleyway.

Renowned for donning a top hat and long frock coat when out and about, he is wearing an ornate brooch, the double-headed eagle crest of the Hapsburg Austrian royal family. "It represents a period in Europe under the old monarchies before the First World War destroyed it all. That is the world I love," he says.

The Yorkshire-based writer has always been drawn to the brooding, Gothic atmosphere of Whitby, the setting and inspiration for Bram Stoker's classic horror novel, which was first published in 1897 and has never been out of print since.

In Birth of a Legend, Chapman examines how the book came to be written, the role Whitby played in it and why the character of Dracula has come to have such a lasting impact on our culture.

Dracula first arrives on English soil when the ship, the Demeter, carrying his coffin is grounded on the sands at Whitby in a sudden storm. The coastguards discover the ship is deserted, apart from a dead seaman lashed to the wheel.

Dracula, in the shape of a black dog, is seen running away from the boat towards the churchyard, where he claims his first victim, Lucy Westenra, and so his vampiring begins.

"It is a rattling good story but there are undercurrents of sex and death, two of our main interests as people. Stoker explores the darker side of human nature, but he does it in a very subtle way," says Chapman.

The scene where three vampire brides descend on victim Jonathan Harker is particularly eroticised, he says. "For the time it was written, it was very carefully phrased. Dracula represents safe sex in a way, sex from the neck up, without responsibilities or consequences, purely selfish. He is the anti-hero, wickedness personified."

Stoker, the Irish writer, was holidaying in Whitby when he got the idea for his vampire novel. The true story of a Russian shipwreck, the Dmitry, which occurred in 1885, five years before Stoker arrived in the Yorkshire fishing port, provided inspiration. And after he stumbled across an obscure book in the Whitby Literary and Philosophy Society Library about the 15th Century Carpethian prince Vlad the Impaler, whose family name was Dracul, believed to mean 'devil', Stoker's villain began to take shape.

'My father and grandfather loved ghost stories and I used to watch all the night Universal and Hammer Horror movies. I was brought up on that," explains Chapman. "I don't believe in ghosts, I am a sceptic. But as I got older I wanted to explore the history of it all."

Seeing the classic 1930 Bela Lugosi Dracula film as a child inspired him to read the novel. "I loved it, I was fascinated by all the background," he says. That led to an enduring interest in 19th and 20th Century horror fiction generally.

Chapman, 38, who studied history at Lancaster University and has worked as a magazine writer and a proof reader, now lives in Easingwold. For a true Dracula enthusiast like Chapman, the popularity of the films does have its drawbacks. "Most people assume Dracula is killed with a stake through the heart. He was actually killed with a knife. The story comes from the movies.

"This is one of the problems. There have been some very good films, but a lot of them have been atrocious. It has become a bit of a cultural circus."

Most of the films either cut the Whitby scenes out, or have been filmed in places like Cornwall. To a purist like Chapman, one of the best adaptations was a BBC production, made in 1977, where all the Whitby scenes were shot in the town itself.

"Not using Whitby is a big mistake. It is so photogenic, a natural stage set. The architecture helps - the Abbey, the church and the graveyard. The town has not been intruded on by the modern world too much."

Chapman has plans for a further book, with yet another murky subject matter. "I would like to do a study of the cultural legacy of Jack the Ripper," he says. "Our interest in him is bigger then ever. The mystery at the centre of it has led to all sorts of crazy theories."

His obsession with dark side of life can, he admits, get on top of him at times. Although he used to sing in a Goth band called Veil of Tears when he was a student, and would still describe himself as a Goth, he is not as active as he used to be.

He says it is hard to escape a character like Dracula. "He stands for that side of themselves people would like to let go, a rebel who does his own thing."

The Draculas many of us may see at our doors looking for treats tonight bear little resemblance to the original. "The comedy horror figure we see at Halloween, in evening-style dress, comes from the Lugosi film. In the novel, Dracula is an old man dressed in black with grey hair and a moustache, not the sort of Latin lover look of the popular image," says Chapman.

But the fact that his image endures, in whatever form, reinforces Dracula's powerful iconic status, says Chapman. "It shows the incredible strength this character has and the impact he has made. He still has a place in our popular culture more than 100 years after the book was written."

Birth of A Legend: Count Dracula, Bram Stoker and Whitby, Paul M Chapman (GH Smith £12.99).