McNally & Florescu – In Search Of Dracula

Raymond T. McNally & Radu Florescu – In Search Of Dracula: A True History Of Dracula And Vampire Legends (Nel-Mentor, 1975)

illustrated Back cover blurb ” — there are such things as vampires; some of us have evidence that they exist.” So wrote Bram Stoker in his now famous horror novel Dracula. This was the first work of fiction to pick up on the centuries-old legends of vampires and transform that incarnate Prince of Evil, Count Dracula, into a ‘hero’ of novels, plays and particularly, films. The two researchers, McNally and Florescu, have delved through the layers of legend and myth to the origins of the legend, to Vlad Dracul, a 15th century nobleman of Wallachia, nicknamed ‘the Impaler because of his delight in impaling his enemies, alive, on wooden stakes. The authors trace the intertwined reality and myth to the twentieth century cult, revealing much that is fascinating, much that is truly horrific. The source for many horror novels (notably Peter Tremayne’s Dracula Unborn), this is a well regarded study of Vlad the Impaler, the ‘real’ Dracula, which includes translations of several 15th Century documents and purports to tell the story of Vlad the Impaler. Also includes a 16 page photo spread and handy checklist of Countess Bathory, Stoker and Dracula in film and literature.

Raymond T. McNally – A Clutch of Vampires

Raymond T. McNally (ed.) – A Clutch of Vampires (NEL, 1974)

Introduction – Raymond T. McNally

Phlegon of Tralles – Philinnion
Philostratus – Menippus And Apollonius
Jan Jacob Maria de Groot – A Chinese Vampire
Walter Map – Vampire In A Knight’s Household
William Of Newburgh – Two Twelfth Century Vampires
Henry More – Sixteenth Century Vampire In Silisia
Erasmus Franciscus – Seventeenth-Century Vampire In An Austrian Province
Augustin Calmet – An Eighteenth-Century Look At Vampires
Letter by an Austrian Imperial Army Officer – Hungarian Antidote Against Vampires
John Polidori – The Vampyre
J. S. Le Fanu – Carmilla
Augustus Hare – Croglin Grange Vampire
New york World – Vampires In And Near Newport, Rhode Island
William Seabrook – Vampire From Brooklyn, N.Y.
Montague Summers – Vampires In Modern Greece
W. R. S. Ralston – A Russian Vampire
Madame Blavatsky – Another Russian Vampire
Ion Creanga & The Institute of Folklore, Bucharest – Five Romanian Vampires
Lawrence Durrell – Vampire In Venice
Robert Bloch – The Living Dead
Stephen Grendon (August Derleth) – The Drifting Snow
Richard Matheson – Drink My Red Blood
Bram Stoker – Dracula’s Guest
Montague Summers – are Vampires Less Frequent Today?
Raymond T. McNally – A Contemporary Romanian Vampire

An unusual collection spanning fact, “fact”, folklore and out and out fiction, with many of the stories familiar from Peter Haining’s The Midnight People rubbing shoulders with Henry More, Augustin Calmet, Montague Summers and Philostratus.

It concludes with McNally telling us of his recent visit to Romania and an episode he witnessed at the funeral of a young girl who’d died by her own hand …