YOU’LL find this hard to believe. Back in the 1970s Whitby ignored its Dracula connection. I remarked on this myself but the situation was most succinctly put by the town’s then Rector, Canon Joe Penniston. “People in Whitby know of Bram Stoker and Dracula but no-one bothers about them,” he observed in 1976.

So there was no Dracula Experience on the harbourside. No Dracula Trail. No plaque on No 6, Royal Crescent, where Stoker stayed during the visit that inspired him to write probably the world’s most famous horror tale.

Nor was there a commemorative seat to Stoker up on Spion Kop, facing the East Side beach where the Count’s ship foundered and he leapt ashore in the form of a large black dog. And, of course, there was no Goth Weekend.

The mere prospect of the first of these, 21 years ago, filled Whitby with foreboding. The black-clad, corpse-faced, death-cult fans were bound to bring trouble. And they would frighten off other tourists. But the fears proved groundless. The inaugural weekend was summed up by one newspaper as “about as bloodthirsty as a Tupperware party for vegetarian pacifists.”

The Goths turned out to be what most still are - rather gentle souls. Like train spotters they pursue an interest that might seem strange to some without harming anybody. They even benefit not a few. Actually drawing in other visitors, always some from abroad, Whitby’s twice-yearly Goth weekends pump more than £1m into the town.

How prophetic was the secretary of the Dracula Society who said in 1977: “Overseas Whitby is most famous for Dracula. Concentrating on Dracula would make the town the centre of attraction for Dracula fans worldwide.”

It was a visit that year by around 40 members of the Dracula Society that set the Count on course to edge out Captain Cook as the most famous figure, albeit fictional, associated with the port. But the journey wasn’t straightforward. In 1993, Canon Penniston’s successor, the Rev Ben Hopkinson, protested that Whitby needed Dracula “like its beaches need raw sewage”. Four years later the then Bishop of Whitby, the Rt Rev Gordon Bates, chipped in: “I want to try to get rid of this silly Dracula thing which has nothing to do with Whitby and is pure myth.”

Meanwhile, the parish church had threatened an injunction to stop a Dracula procession through the cliff top churchyard. Aimed at Dracula fans seeking the grave in which he is said to have concealed himself, the church also produced a leaflet pointing out that there never was one. Culturally significant as the first-known, and perhaps still the only, example of an anti-tourism leaflet, this had some success. At least one disappointed Dracula pilgrim left the town immediately.

Yet by 1995 a member of the Dracula Society pronounced confidently on TV: “Whitby is Dracula.” The Count’s triumph was more or less complete. But not quite. That moment surely came with last weekend’s Goths visit, which saw the abbey illuminated in red.

Wasn’t that a step too far? The abbey is a potent symbol of Christianity. If illuminating it is a good idea, let the colours be all those of the rainbow – except blood red. Come to think of it, white would be best: Christian purity rising above, hopefully overcoming, the dark deeds down below.