The Quick 10: 10 Unexpected Horror Writers. Here is an interesting article I ran across at Mentalfloss.com. I would never have suspected most of these of ever having even an interest in horror. Stacey Conradt wrote the article in 2009.
Herman Webster Mudgett a.k.a. H.H. Holmes. From Wikipedia.
I am having troubling sleeping tonight and thought I would continue with our tour of the world’s horror locales. [I am not having nightmares about H.H. Holmes, if that is what you are thinking or even about any other horror topic.]
One of America’s first and most prolific serial killers was Herman Webster Mudgett, who went by his now better known alias of H.H. Holmes (1861-1896). Although his life has been recently documented in a few films and books, Holmes is still perhaps one of America’s lesser known serial killers. Most of the following information is taken from the Wikipedia article on Holmes, which supports my previous readings on Holmes in several sources. Please go to Wikipedia for more details than my brief synopsis provides. It is a well-written article and I rely on it here, only because I wish to provide a brief introduction to Holmes to support the photos and visual record I am providing.
Holmes started his criminal career while attending the University of Michigan Medical School, where he would steal cadavers from the laboratory, disfigure them, and then try to collect on insurance policies he had taken out on them after claiming they had been killed in accidents. After graduation, Mudgett moved to Chicago to pursue a career in pharmaceuticals, but also began conducting many shady business deals while being a bigamist and philanderer in his private life.
After moving to Chicago in 1886, Holmes took a job at Dr. Elizabeth Holton’s drugstore. After her husband’s death, Holmes
Holmes’s Castle from Wikipedia
bought the business and the lot across the street at 601-603 West 63rd Street. [I had not noticed this before, but if one takes the first digit in each number of the address and combines them, the result is 666.] In the lot he built what would become known as his murder castle.
Wikipedia provides a nice synopsis of what happened there:
“Holmes purchased a lot across from the drugstore where he built his three-story, block-long “castle” as it was dubbed by those in the neighborhood. The address of the Castle was 601-603 W. 63rd St.[16] It was called the World’s Fair Hotel and opened as a hostelry for the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, with part of the structure devoted to commercial space. The ground floor of the Castle contained Holmes’ own relocated drugstore and various shops, while the upper two floors contained his personal office and a maze of over 100 windowless rooms with doorways opening to brick walls, oddly-angled hallways, stairways to nowhere, doors openable only from the outside, and a host of other strange and labyrinthine constructions. Holmes repeatedly changed builders during the construction of the Castle, so only he fully understood the design of the house.[3]
A diagram of Holmes’s Castle from weirdchicago.com (originally from the Chicago Tribune)
“During the period of building construction in 1889, Holmes met Benjamin Pitezel, a carpenter with a past of lawbreaking, whom Holmes exploited as a stooge for his criminal schemes. A district attorney later described Pitezel as Holmes’ “tool… his creature.”[17]
“After the completion of the hotel, Holmes selected mostly female victims from among his employees (many of whom were required as a condition of employment to take out life insurance policies, for which Holmes would pay the premiums but was also the beneficiary), as well as his lovers and hotel guests, whom he would later kill.[14] Some were locked in soundproof bedrooms fitted with gas lines that let him asphyxiate them at any time. Other victims were locked in a huge soundproof bank vault near his office, where they were left to suffocate.[8] The victims’ bodies were dropped by secret chute to the basement,[3] where some were meticulously dissected, stripped of flesh, crafted into skeleton models, and then sold to medical schools. Holmes also cremated some of the bodies or placed them in lime pits for destruction. Holmes had two giant furnaces as well as pits of acid, bottles of various poisons, and even a stretching rack.[3] Through the connections he had gained in medical school, he sold skeletons and organs with little difficulty.”
After the World’s Columbian Exposition ended, Holmes moved out of Chicago to evade creditors and continued pursuing his
Plans of Floors 2 and 3 from steampunkchicago.com
various nefarious trades throughout the country. Eventually, he was arrested by the Pinkertons for an insurance scam. While Holmes was in prison awaiting trial, authorities interviewed the former janitor at Holmes’s castle and found out that he had never been allowed entry to the upper floors. Upon further investigation, the real purpose behind Holmes’s castle was discovered.
Estimates of the number of Holmes’s victims range from 20-200, with 27 being the only number verified by any means. Most of his victims were women, though a few were men and children. Holmes confessed to murdering thirty people in Chicago, Indianapolis, and Toronto, though some of the people he claimed to have killed were later found to still be alive.
Holmes was put on trial for the murder of his partner-in-crime, Benjamin Pitezel, in October, 1895. He was hanged in Philadelphia’s Moyamensing Prison on May 7, 1896, for Pitezel’s murder. Holmes’s castle was mysteriously gutted by fire in August, 1895, two months before his trial began. The building was finally razed in 1938.
Holmes being executed. From jesslb6.blogspot,com
The site is now the location of the US Post Office’s Englewood Branch.
I have included a few photos of the castle and the Englewood Post Office for your viewing pleasure.
By coincidence, while gathering photos for this article, I found a statement on Cragin Spring’s Flickr page that a movie on Holmes called “Devil in the White City” was due out in 2013 and was to star Leonardo DiCaprio. A Wikipedia article on it states that it is based on a 2003 book by Erik Larson and Leonardo DiCaprio bought the film rights in 2010. Imdb states only that it is in development.
The Englewood post office now at the site of Holmes’s Castle, November 5, 2011. Photo by Malcolm Logan from myamericanodyssey.com
Please respect any copyrights pertaining to this cover.
One of the best gifts I received this Christmas was Best New Horror 25 (for the year 2013) edited by Stephen Jones. I consider this book a must-have for any serious horror aficionado.
In addition to having 21 stories by such icons as Clive Barker, Ramsey Campbell, and Neil Gaiman (among others), Mr. Jones provides a ninety page synopsis of horror in 2013, a “necrology” (list of those having died) in 2013, and a list of useful addresses for the horrorphile of small press publishers, websites, organizations, and magazines.
I had not heard of Mr. Jones before receiving this book, but the biography the book provides shows him to a well-respected editor of horror in many genres and a recipient of many awards, some a few times over, including the Bram Stoker Award, Horror Guild awards, British Fantasy awards, and other. For those desiring more background on Mr. Jones, please visit his website at http://www.stephenjoneseditor.com.
Of course, I have not had the time in the past two days to start reading this volume in any depth, but I have skimmed through it and found it to be very informative. As you who follow my blog can guess, I love the ninety-page intro, because it gives a thorough overview of what happened in 2013 from something of a historian’s viewpoint.
The only downside I have found, so far, is that the Necrology includes several non-horror entertainers and figures, which are superfluous to the work’s theme. For example, Mr. Jones mentions the death of Annette Funicello, who, so far as I know, was never in a horror film. If anyone knows of a horror film she was in, please let me know so that I can post an apology to Mr. Jones.
This 592-page volume is a welcome addition to my horror library and I look forward to exploring it in great depth as it will help me catch up on the current state of affairs in horror (which some of you no doubt know that I seriously need as I tend to focus on classic horror of the 20th and 19th centuries). I recommend this book to anyone else who has a serious desire to survey the current state of the art.
The first thing you learn about the historical Castle Dracula is that it is a fictional location from Bram Stoker’s imagination. The Wikipedia article does a nice job of summarizing the history of the fictional abode and of analyzing the novel for clues to its supposed locale. The most precise it comes to identifying the spot of Dracula’s Castle is:
“The site of the Vampire’s home has always been one of the greatest mysteries of the novel. The route descriptions hardly mention any recognisable landmarks, but focus on evocations of a wild and snow-covered landscape, haunted by howling wolves and lit by supernatural blue flames at night. Because of this conspicuous vagueness, the annotated Dracula editions by Leonard Wolf,[6] Clive Leatherdale[7] and Leslie Klinger[8] simply assume Bram Stoker had no specific location in mind and place the Castle in or immediately next to the Borgo Pass. As a consequence, these editions take for granted that the Count’s men, pursued by Harker, Holmwood, Morris and Seward, follow the Bistrița River all the way up to Vatra Dornei and then travel the route through the Borgo Pass already taken by Van Helsing and Mina. The same view is adopted by Andrew Connell in his Google Map mark-ups.[9] These theories ignore or misinterpret Stoker’s hint that around the 47th Parallel, the Count’s men are supposed to leave the river and cross-over to Transylvanian territory:
We took it, that somewhere about the 47th degree, north latitude, would be the place chosen for crossing the country between the river and the Carpathians. (Chapter 26, Jonathan Harker’s Journal, Entry for 30 October)[10]
“Only recently, the Dutch author Hans Corneel de Roos discovered the site the Irish novelist really had in mind while shaping his narrative: an empty mountain top in the Transylvanian Kelemen Alps near the former border with Moldavia, ca. 20 miles south-east of the Borgo Pass.[11] De Roos also explains why Stoker chose to obscure this location in his novel and compares the vampire’s fortress to the Grail Castle as its anti-Christian antipole: It cannot be found on purpose, only by guidance. Harker is brought there by the Count himself, while Van Helsing and Mina – equally nodding off – rely on the instinct of their horses and the mounted men arrive there by following the Gypsies.”
If you have read the book and have seen at least the original film version of Dracula with Bela Lugosi, you know at least one place they have in common is Borgo Pass. This is where Jonathan Harker disembarks from a coach to wait in an inn for the Count’s own carriage to come and fetch him and the village people try unsuccessfully to warn him away.
Aerial view of the Hotel Castel Dracula in the Borgo Pass from Google Earth
What you will learn from a few places on the Internet is that a hotel has been built on the spot in the Borgo Pass where Harker is supposed to have changed rides. Romanian Tourism describes it so:
Borgo Pass
(Pasul Tihuta) Where: 277 miles northwest of Bucharest / 12 miles northeast of Bistrita Note: Access by car only
Borgo Pass (Bargau in Romanian), made famous in the opening chapter of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, is an oft-trod passageway through the Carpathian Mountains in northern Transylvania. Located near the small township of Tihuta, the pass peaks at 3,840 feet.
The Bargau Valley encompasses some of the most beautiful unspoiled mountain scenery in the Carpathians with picturesque traditional villages located in valleys and on hillsides, ideal bases for hiking, riding or discovering their vivid tapestry of old customs, handicrafts and folklore.
Here, you will step into a realm that the fictional Mina Harker described in her diary as “a lovely county; full of beauties of all imaginable kinds, and the people are brave, and strong, and simple, and seem full of nice qualities.”
If you travel via Google Earth, if you search for “Borgo Pass”, you will find the location, but the name for it on Google Earth is “Pasul Tihuta”, the Romanian name, not the Hungarian “Borgo Pass” that Bram Stoker used. Once in Pasul Tihuta, search for Hotel Castel Dracula. That’s the spot where Harker is supposed to have changed carriages. Don’t be surprised that the modern hotel looks nothing like the quaint hamlet of the movie. The Wikipedia article on Tihuta Pass states:
The pass was made famous by Bram Stoker‘s novel Dracula, where, termed as “the Borgo Pass”, it was the gateway to the realm of Count Dracula. Stoker most likely found the name on a contemporary map. He never actually visited the area.
Today the pass is home to Hotel “Castel Dracula”. The hotel was built in 1974 and is located at an altitude of
Hotel Castel Dracula Borgo Pass, Romania
1,116 m (3,661 ft). The hotel has become quite an attraction due to its architectural style of a medieval villa, as well as the sheer beauty of the location.
That being said, the next question that arises is if there is no Castle Dracula, but there was a historical figure on which was based, where did the historical figure, Vlad the Impaler, actually live?
A woodcut of the historical Vlad Tepes from about the sixteenth century
If you read any summary of his life, you will find that Vlad the Impaler was constantly on the move, either attacking his enemies or running from them. Pinning down his abode to a single spot is difficult. A good, brief summary of the most famous can be found at Romania Tourism. You will note that most of the popular tourist sites have at best a tenuous connection to Vlad Tepes. This is probably similar to the number of places along the US east coast that claim to be where George Washington slept during his campaigns in the American Revolution.
From what I have found during my Internet searches one of the best and probably most reliable articles on the places associated with Vlad Tepes is this one entitled “Dracula’s Homepage” written by a man who has apparently conducted extensive research into Vlad Tepes and the places associated with him. The author describes for us which spots were locations where Vlad Tepes actually lived as opposed to ones that the tourism industry identifies with him, but which in fact may have little, if anything at all, to do with the bloodthirsty ruler. The two locations described in this article as where Vlad Tepes spent a significant amount of time are Tirgoviste Palace and Cetatea Poenari.
The Tirgoviste palace is actually called “Curtea Palace”, where Vlad Tepes built the Chindia Tower. If you search for “Chindia Tower” on Google Earth, you can hover just over Vlad Tepes’s Tirgoviste Palace and even go to street level to view the tower as if you were walking past it.
Tirgoviste Palace today (from Google Earth)
Chindia Tower from the street (from Google Earth)
Search Google Earth for “Cetatea Poenari” and you will be taken to a secluded mountaintop over a narrow pass. This place probably captures the eerie spirit of the novel more than any other place you will find. If you have the Google Earth 3D buildings feature on (as I do in the photo below), you will see a 3D virtual representation of the castle, though the best views of it are from the dozens of photos tourists have attached to the location via Panaramio.
Cetatea Poenari (from Google Earth)
The website “Dracula’s Homepage” mentioned previously has a beautiful description of what it must be like to travel to the castle along with some of its historically horrific background:
“If there is an edifice that can be labelled Vlad Dracula’s castle, it is the ruins of Poenari. Actually, this is a fortress (“cetate” in Romanian) rather than a castle, located at the entrance to the gorge of the Arges River, north of the town of Curtea de Arges. As you leave Curtea de Arges (itself an interesting town with fortifications dating back to the 13th century and Basarab 1), you drive over a secondary road through several little villages, proceeding up the Arges valley towards the base of the Carpathian range.The road reaches the base of a group of high, heavily wooded mountains and there on the rocky top of one of them is Cetatea Poenari – Dracula’s Castle. Even from the road below it is a forbidding sight. What strikes one is its inaccessibility, high on a mountain top and the entrance to the gorges of the river (the river, by the way, has been diverted by a hydro-electric project). Poenari was the castle fortification that Vlad Tepes forced the nobles of Tirgoviste to build. The nobles were forced to walk the distance from Tirgoviste to the Arges (quite considerable by road – probably about 60 km overland) and then drag the material up that mountain to build the castle.
“To get to the top, one has to walk up almost 1500 steps. But the effort is certainly worth it. As you approach the magnificent ruin (last 50 steps or so) the scene is totally Gothic. There is the outline of the castle perched on the top of this rock, seeming to grow out of the very mountain itself. It covers the full space at the top, has a sheer drop on three sides, and is barely accessible by a small bridge near the top of the steps.
“I have returned to this site three times, as it is one of my favorite places in Romania: not only because of the sense of history but the magnificent scenery. One particular view (looking northwest) is spectacular – just the way you might picture the landscape around Dracula’s Castle in Stoker’s novel (though Stoker knew nothing about this place).
“This is the route that, according to local legend, Vlad took in order to escape into Transylvania from the Turks in 1462. He was assisted in his efforts by the villagers of nearby Arefu, where many narratives about Vlad still live in their oral culture.
“Then there is the southern wall of the castle – a sheer drop!
“This is where, according to another local legend, Vlad Tepes’ first wife flung herself, committing suicide rather than being taken captive by the advancing Turks. This castle is where Vlad would go for refuge in the face of advancing enemies. And from its towers he had a commanding view of anyone approaching from any direction. It was practically impenetrable.”
If you like horror, I highly recommend reading up on the historical Vlad Tepes and his reign. You will find actual terrors that would make any of the ficitional Draculas look like TV’s Mr. Rogers in comparison.
If, during your virtual journeys through the worlds of the fictional Count Dracula and his historical counterpart, Vlad Tepes, encounter any fascinating places or adventures, please feel free to share them via the comments section below.
The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Volume 1. Yes, this link takes you to a collection of Poe’s works, but the reason I am mentioning it here is because the preface to this particular volume includes fascinating biographical notes and insight into the character of this master of horror that may help you understand the roots of his creative genius and how art sometimes came close to imitating life for Mr. Poe.
When you open the page, you may find yourself a little distance from the top of the article at the beginning of a section entitled “The Death of Edgar Allan Poe”. While this section is fascinating in its own right, scroll to the top for the entire preface. The works of Poe, beginning with the story of Hans Pfall, begin a bit down from “The Death…”
Detail of Madonna des Kanonikus Georg van der Paele by Jan van Eyck, 1436
Purely for your entertainment, here are 28 Totally Relatable Quotes About Books. I know I can relate to a lot of them. I’m sure you will find a few for yourself. One reason I find these interesting is because many of them show me how intensely involved readers will become with a book. As I have mentioned in previous posts, I believe that people live a vicarious existence through a story. When we write, we are not just writing a book or a story, we are creating a universe in which people will hopefully want to, not just visit, but dwell. All of the writer’s art should therefore focus on creating a virtual reality for one’s readers. To do that, we need a good grounding in, or at least a good feel for, human psychology, because we have to shape our creations to fit the human psyche. How do thoughts come into being? How do they lead from one to another? How do images form in the mind? No, I am not saying that we need Ph.D.’s in psychology to be good writers, but I think we need some sort of archetypal insight into human nature if we are to be the great writers we hope to be. Darn. I’m rambling again. 🙂
Here is an interesting bit of trivia: “8 Monsters of Literature and Folklore” at Dictionary.com – Free Online English Dictionary. You may have to wait a second or two for the slide show to pop up.
The other day I happened to find my copy of The Writer’s Home Companion (by James Charlton and Lisbeth Mark, 1987), which I had lost/forgotten some time back. I have been perusing it since and have found several anecdotes on various authors of horror, which had not captured my attention when I purchased the book, because I was not interested in writing horror at the time. I am quoting them below for your entertainment and consideration. They provide a few insights and lessons into the art and business of writing as well as into the lives of writers, if not in the art of horror specifically. If you would like to read more of the book, you can probably find a copy at your local library or half-price bookstore.
“Edgar Allan Poe opted to self-publish Tamerlane and Other Poems. He was able to sell only forty copies and made less than a dollar after expenses. Ironically, over a century later, one of his self-published copies sold at auction for over $11,000.”
Stephen King at Comicon, 2007 Photo by Penguino
“Stephen King sent his first novel to the editor of the suspense novel The Parallax View. William G. Thompson rejected that submission and several subsequent manuscripts until King sent along Carrie. Years later some of those earlier projects were published under King’s pseudonym Richard Bachmann, and one was affectionately dedicated to ‘W.G.T.'”
“Edgar Allan Poe perpetrated a successful hoax in the New York Sun with an article he wrote in the April 13, 1844 edition of the paper. He described the arrival, near Charleston, South Carolina, of a group of English ‘aeronauts’ who, as he told the story, had crossed the Atlantic in a dirigible in just seventy-five hours. Poe had cribbed most of his narrative from an account by Monck Mason of an actual balloon trip he and his companions had made from London to Germany in November 1836. Poe’s realistically detailed fabrication fooled everyone.”
Robert Louis Stevenson Portrait by Girolamo Nerli (1860-1926)
“Robert Louis Stevenson was thrashing about in his bed one night, greatly alarming his wife. She woke him up, infuriating Stevenson, who yelled, ‘I was dreaming a fine bogey tale!’ The nightmare from which he had been unwillingly extracted was the premise for the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
“Amiably discussing the validity of ghosts, Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley decided to try their poetic skills at writing the perfect horror story. While nothing came of their efforts, Shelley’s young wife, Mary Wollstonecroft, overheard the challenge and went about telling her own. It began ‘It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the Accomplishment of my toils.’ Her work was published in 1818, when she was twenty-one, and was titled Frankenstein.”
“Edgar Allan Poe was expelled from West Point in 1831 for ‘gross neglect of duty’. The explanation for his dismissal had to do with his following, to the letter, with an order to appear on the parade grounds in parade dress, which, according to the West Point rule book, consisted of ‘white belt and gloves.’ Poe reportedly arrived with his rifle, dressed in his belt and gloves–and nothing else.”
Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, First Baron Lytton Portrait by Henry William Pickersgill
“Traveling along the Italian Riviera, Lord Bulwer-Lytton, done up in an embarrassingly elaborate outfit, acknowledged the stares of passersby. Lady Lytton, amused at his vanity, suggested that it was not admiration, but ‘that ridiculous dress’ that caught people’s eyes. Lytton responded, ‘You think that people stare at my dress and not at me? I will give you the most absolute and convincing proof that your theory has no foundation.’ Keeping on only his hat and boots, Lytton removed every other article of clothing and rode in his open carriage for ten miles to prove his point.”
If you have anecdotes about your favorite authors that you would like to share, please do.
Portrait of Vlad Tepes (Vlad the Impaler) from Ambras Castle, Austria, 16th century Probably copied from a lost original. Source: Wikimedia
If you would like a look at the influence of the historical Dracula, Vlad the Impaler, upon modern literature as well as upon Bram Stoker’s novel, here is your article. The author is Gemma Norman, a first-year PhD student in Ottoman studies at the University of Birmingham.
In light of my most recent post on Dr. Polidori and The Vampyre, here is an interesting article from Live Science via Yahoo News on the discovery of a cemetery of bodies who were apparently suspected of being vampires: “Vampire” Graves Uncovered in Poland.
The Quick 10: 10 Unexpected Horror Writers. Here is an interesting article I ran across at Mentalfloss.com. I would never have suspected most of these of ever having even an interest in horror. Stacey Conradt wrote the article in 2009.
To get to the top, one has to walk up almost 1500 steps. But the effort is certainly worth it. As you approach the magnificent ruin (last 50 steps or so) the scene is totally Gothic. There is the outline of the castle perched on the top of this rock, seeming to grow out of the very mountain itself. It covers the full space at the top, has a sheer drop on three sides, and is barely accessible by a small bridge near the top of the steps.
Phil Slattery, Writer, Publisher 