We love to hear about your Whitby visits. Here's an account of one of our readers' visits to our favourite place.
Vampires & Chocolate Fudge, an American's visit to Whitby. A guest post by Vicki Spindler.
Ah, the vampire years. All teenagers have them. For me, it was watching Dark Shadows in my mother's living room in New York. Two decades later, a new era of sparkly teenage vampires had risen, but my daughter mercifully opted for the classic rendition of the undead.
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On a dreary Saturday morning in West Yorkshire, where we were now living, having recently crossed the pond, my daughter sat with Bram Stoker's Dracula sprawled across her lap and demanded her rightful pilgrimage to Whitby.
Whitby Jet, the dark allure of Whitby
My husband agreed. Geology-obsessed, he had his own agenda that was all about the rock: Whitby jet, unique to the area. Born of compressed wood from the Monkey Puzzle tree, a Jurassic period relic, this gemstone was mined for centuries and fashioned into jewellery. Yet not until the death of Prince Albert in 1861 did its popularity explode. The mourning Queen Victoria needed black jewels to match her outfits, and suddenly, an industry was born! Whitby erupted in artisan factories and workshops, many still thriving to this day.
“It's hideous!” I cried out, telling my husband there was no way I'd be caught dead in the storefront necklace he was pointing out. “I like shiny, glittery things. That looks like polished coal.”
“I know,” he replied dreamily, pulling out his wallet and buying it for my daughter instead. My daughter immediately lost to the dark allure of Whitby- a perfect haven for teenage angst, eagerly reached out to accept.
Visiting Whitby for its connection to Bram Stoker's Dracula
Having just finished reading Dracula, my daughter couldn't get to Whitby fast enough. I delighted in her intellectual pursuits, hot on the Bram Stoker trail, much like the hordes of literary pilgrims dashing off to Shakespeare's birthplace at Stratford upon Avon. Or Haworth, West Yorkshire, to visit the parsonage that had been the home to the Bronte sisters, not to mention the apothecary in town where their brother Branwell bought his opium.
Whitby has been overrun by vampires. What had once been a quiet fishing village was now Undead Central, thanks entirely to one man and his book. I hadn't counted on how much Whitby had been consumed by Dracula Fever, with every shop, restaurant, hotel, building, and man and his dog claiming a Stoker connection. It's uncanny what one man's holiday to a quiet seaside resort a hundred years before could do.
As best as I can tell, nothing in Bram Stocker's background suggested he would be the creative genius behind one of the world's greatest horror stories. A math major from Trinity College in Dublin? A civil servant at Dublin Castle? The business manager for the actor Sir Henry Irving?
Not exactly the résume one would expect for the evil and supernatural writings Stoker would fabricate- unless one considered the writing genre in vogue at the time. The vampire craze spread across Europe like the plague, gothic horrors being all the rage—Goethe's Bride of Corinth and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
Like many others, Bram Stoker was inspired by Whitby
In 1890, Stoker took his family on a three-week holiday to Whitby, where he appeared to have spent much of his time in the library doing research, a “working holiday” responsible for setting the stage for what would soon become his famous novel.
Delving into a book detailing the experiences of a former British consul to Bucharest, Stoker read about the atrocities committed by a 15th-century prince named Vlad Tepes, who was known for impaling his enemies. Tepes, also known as Dracula, or “devil” in Wallachian.
When not in the library, Stoker was seen wandering around the seaside resort, talking to the locals. Fishermen regaled him with stories of the past, specifically the shipwreck of a Russian ship called Dmitry, which Stoker renamed Demeter in his book.
Stoker was not the first to be inspired by Whitby's coast. These were the same turbulent waters J.M.W. Turner had painted seventy years prior, with a schooner and skiffs thrashing about, the top of the skiff's mast pointing towards the abbey on the cliff above.
The same waters that decades later saw the shipwreck of the Demeter, a Russian schooner caught in a violent storm and run aground, everyone on board either dead or missing. Except for the black dog seen leaping from the battered vessel and running ashore, ascending the 199 steps leading up the cliff to Whitby Abbey and St. Mary's church standing alongside. The dog, one of the many life forms vampires are capable of assuming. The dog, aka, Count Dracula.
The influence of Bram Stoker's Dracula today
I'm sure Stoker had no idea of the festivals that would be held honoring his creation, attracting Goth's from near and far. The Bram Stoker International Film Festival, the Whitby Goth Weekend, the Steam Punk and Goth Event, the biannual Dracula Festival. Nor could he have imagined the revenue generated by these events; the biennial Whitby Goth Weekend alone being credited with raising £1,000,000, according to BBC News.
Certainly, my thirteen-year-old goth wannabe daughter was doing her part to contribute to their bottom line. Popping in and out of shops on what she now proclaimed was the best family trip ever, emerging with fashion accessories that suddenly had me very worried: pentagram rings and bracelets, lacey chokers with stones and chains, skulls and sword studs.
I ditched my family to see Whitby Abbey and her ghosts
Deciding to ditch my family, I headed towards the cliff and the steps for the reason I'd been wanting to visit Whitby: to see its abbey and her ghosts.
Built in 657, the abbey was destroyed two hundred years later by Danish invaders, only to be rebuilt after the Conquest when it became one of the wealthiest abbeys in Yorkshire. A stunning Gothic masterpiece, it went on to survive another five hundred years before being gutted and destroyed during the Dissolution. What makes Whitby Abbey so special is its location. Sitting on a cliff overlooking the North Sea, from the right angle one has the impression it could just slide off and disappear.
The first ghost I was hoping to meet was St Hilda, the abbess, who was even been spotted by Dracula, peering down from one of the highest windows of the abbey.
The second ghost was Constance de Beverly, a nun who broke her chastity vows and was sealed inside the abbey's walls as punishment. Begging and screaming to be released, her hands bloodied from trying to claw her way out, Constance's apparition has reportedly been seen roaming the abbey and town along with other notable Whitby ghosts.
The onto St. Mary's Church and graveyard
Unfortunately, the phantoms were a no-show, so I backtracked across the abbey grounds to St. Mary's Church and graveyard. I wanted to sit on Stoker's favorite seat and look out at the sea, the same bench where Lucy, Dracula's first victim, was found with fang marks on her neck. I wanted to inspect the headstones like Bram Stoker once did, collecting names for Dracula's victims. And I wanted to see the old, withered tombstones embellished with skulls and crosses, thought to have belonged to pirates.
Eventually I made my way back to the steps and looked out at the town and the harbor and the incoming fog. Not much had changed since Stoker's visit, the vista which provided so much inspiration for his novel remains relatively the same. Cobblestone streets with quaint stone cottages and shops. Even the 199 steps had been in place for five hundred years the day Count Dracula arrived.
And then suddenly I had a thought. What if Stoker had chosen to vacation in Scotland, would Dracula ever been written? Or would Nellie, the Loch Ness monster, been somehow morphed into a vampire, terrorizing the villagers of Inverness instead?
I was trying hard to work through this conundrum but couldn't, something to do, no doubt, with the steady onslaught of Girl Guides marching past, each of them counting as they climbed the steps. Out loud. Confirming that there were indeed 199 steps, that one hadn't gone missing.
Christmas Fudge!
Caught up in the middle of this parade I saw my husband and daughter marching past, munching on something that looked divine.
“Christmas fudge,” my daughter called out, as she approached with a tiny, white paper sack.
“I hate them, they're driving me crazy,” I said of the counting hordes.
“Well, somebody's a cranky mother. I'm going up to the abbey with daddy, he wants to get a picture of us there for a Christmas card. You coming?
“In a minute,” I told her, continuing to stare out at the view.
And that's when I saw him, as I turned to leave. A shadow at first, slithering out from behind a weathered tombstone. Approaching slowly, I fell to my knees, called out softly, beckoning him to come. Holding out my hand with a piece of Christmas fudge, the black dog gobbled it up, then sprinted down the 199 steps to the sea.
A guest post by Vicki Spindler.
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