Bram Stoker went home from Whitby with the bones of a monster. So how did they become the most famous vampire in the world?

In Part Two here, we follow the seven years it took Stoker to write Dracula, and the disastrous stage reading at the Lyceum Theatre in 1897. We look at what the novel was really saying about Victorian Britain: its fear of the “New Woman”, who was independent, outspoken and sexual, and its terror of syphilis, the disease that passed through the blood and haunted the age.

Then we follow the Count’s strange afterlife: Florence Stoker’s court battle against Nosferatu, Bela Lugosi being buried in his cape, Christopher Lee’s years with Hammer, and Francis Ford Coppola’s Oscar-winning film.

We finish back where it all started, in Whitby, where the Goth Weekend has brought thousands of people in black to the town since 1994.

Missed Part One? Start there for the holiday that started it all.

Huge thanks to my researcher, Lauren, for her invaluable input: Website: laurenburles.com

IG: yogabylauren Substack: laurenburles.subtack.com

Follow Bad Mad and Northern so you never miss an episode, and if you enjoyed it, 5* a rating really helps new listeners find the show.

Thanks lads!

****

About the show About the show Bad, Mad & Northern is a history and true crime podcast about the villains, eccentrics and extraordinary stories of the North: murderers and body snatchers, kings and rebels, drowned villages and Cold War secrets. Released very Wednesday and Saturday, each new episode is carefully researched and told with honesty about the sources, and a healthy dose of northern sarcasm.

Meet your host I'm Lucy Sheridan: author, speaker, and proud northerner, recording from an armchair in the Peak District. I've always been drawn to the darker corners of our history, and this show is where I get to share them with you. Pull up a chair.

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Website: www.badandmad.com

Newsletter 'The Landlady' join for BTS and case report extras at www.badandmad.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/badandmadpod/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@badandmadlucy

Got a story suggestion, feedback or a correction? Email hello@badandmad.com

Why did a man on holiday in Whitby go home with a monster in his pocket?

In the summer of 1890, Bram Stoker, a Dublin civil servant turned manager of London’s Lyceum Theatre, took a break in Whitby. He arrived with a few pages of notes and a villain called Count Wampyr. He went home with the bones of a novel.

In Part One of this two-part story, we follow Stoker from a sickly childhood in Clontarf to his life-changing dinner with the actor Henry Irving, and then on to Whitby itself, from the founding of its abbey in 657 to the town he found in 1890.

We visit the library where he came across the word Dracula, hear about the 1885 wreck of the Russian ship Dmitry that became the Demeter in the novel, and climb the 199 steps to St Mary’s churchyard, where he copied names from the headstones.

Part Two follows what he did with it all, and the unhinged making of the legend!

Huge thanks to my researcher, Lauren, for her invaluable input: Website: laurenburles.com

IG: yogabylauren Substack: laurenburles.subtack.com

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Follow Bad Mad and Northern on your podcast app now, so you never miss an episode, and if you enjoyed it, 5* a rating really helps new listeners find the show.

Thanks lads!

****

About the show Bad, Mad & Northern is a history and true crime podcast about the villains, eccentrics and extraordinary stories of the North: murderers and body snatchers, kings and rebels, drowned villages and Cold War secrets. Released every Wednesday and Saturday, each new episode is carefully researched and told with honesty about the sources, and a healthy dose of northern sarcasm.

Meet your host I'm Lucy Sheridan: author, speaker, and proud northerner, recording from an armchair in the Peak District. I've always been drawn to the darker corners of our history, and this show is where I get to share them with you. Pull up a chair.

****

Website: www.badandmad.com

Newsletter 'The Landlady' join for BTS and case report extras at www.badandmad.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/badandmadpod/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@badandmadlucy

Got a story suggestion, feedback or a correction? Email hello@badandmad.com

What would you do if you were told your village had to disappear so a city could have water?

(Content note: this episode includes a fatal explosion and the exhumation of graves.)

In the first half of the twentieth century, three northern valleys were flooded to make reservoirs. This episode tells the story of each of them. Mardale Green in the Lake District was drowned beneath Haweswater to supply Manchester. Fernilee in the Goyt Valley, near Buxton, was home to a gunpowder works that lost three men in the 1909 explosion before the water came. At Derwent in Derbyshire, the graves were dug up and moved before Ladybower filled, and the church spire was left standing above the water until it was dynamited in 1947.

This is a gripping story about loss, progress, and who pays the price for both. In a dry summer, all three places still come back.

Please follow Bad Mad and Northern so you never miss an episode, and if you enjoyed it, 5* a rating really helps new listeners find the show.

Thanks lads! Lucy x

****

About the show

Bad, Mad & Northern is a history and true crime podcast about the villains, eccentrics and extraordinary stories of the North: murderers and body snatchers, kings and rebels, drowned villages and Cold War secrets. Each episode is carefully researched and told with honesty about the sources, and a healthy dose of northern sarcasm.

Meet your host

I'm Lucy Sheridan: author, speaker, and proud northerner, recording from an armchair in the Peak District. I've always been drawn to the darker corners of our history, and this show is where I get to share them with you. Pull up a chair.

Website: www.badandmad.com

Newsletter 'The Landlady' join for BTS and case report extras at www.badandmad.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/badandmadpod/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@badandmadlucy

Got a story suggestion, feedback or a correction? Email hello@badandmad.com