Oddity Shop
This podcast examines the oddities of the world...Cryptids to Conspiracies, Cults to Curiosities, Myths to Mysteries, and so much more! Stop by the shop, where the bizarre is always on sale... Each week your curators, Kara Perakovic and Zach Palmer will be opening the shop and sharing stories with you.
Oddity Shop
Oddball Guests: Dacre Stoker on Bram's Legacy and The Dracula!
Welcome to a Very Special Episode of The Oddity Shop! Its Halloween, so you know Kara and Zach have a very special episode for you, with a Fantastic Guest: Dacre Stoker!!!
Get ready for a spine-tingling celebration as we welcome the Halloween season with none other than Dacre Stoker, the great-grandnephew of Bram Stoker himself. Discover the fascinating legacy of the man behind "Dracula" through Dacre's captivating stories, insights, and a touch of family lore. As we mark our two-year anniversary, this episode promises a host of exclusive treats, including the launch of our Patreon and the chance to uncover some of Dracula’s lesser-known secrets.
Ever wondered how Bram Stoker managed to make "Dracula" feel so real? We’ll take you on a journey through the meticulous research and creative genius that brought this legendary vampire tale to life. Dive into Bram’s intriguing connections to the supernatural and the historical context that may have inspired his Gothic masterpieces.
As Dacre shares his own adventures in preserving and expanding the Dracula legacy, learn about the innovative "Stokerverse" and an exciting new comic series that adds fresh twists to the classic tale.
With heartfelt gratitude to our listeners, we invite you to join us for a Halloween celebration filled with mystery, history, and spine-chilling excitement.
Dacres Info:
- www.bramstoker.org
- www.bramstokerestate.com
- www.stokerverse.com
- https://www.amazon.com/Dracula-Annotated-125th-Anniversary-Stoker/dp/1953905374
- https://www.facebook.com/@DacreCStoker/
Shop MI Mystical Forest on Etsy – where spirit meets craftsmanship.
For a limited time, enter code “oddball” at checkout to receive 10% off plus a free pendulum. Or simply Click Here
Each Week at the Oddity Shop, Your Curators Kara and Zach will bring you Creepy, Strange, Weird Bizarre Stories from around the globe!
The Shop's phone lines are open! Give us a call and leave a voicemail (Or two!) with your creepy personal tale/oddity, and it could be featured on a future episode!
616.320.4935
JOIN US ON PATREON: Click Here!
Join the Oddity Shop on Patreon for Day Early Access to Episodes and tons of bonus content!!!
Visit our Website to learn more!
Email Us at: oddityshoppodcast.com
www.OddityShopPodcast.com
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. Affiliate programs are designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to the partner site.
I want to dance with the Maltman At the Irish shop, baked in the moonlight At the Irish shop. Creep through the graveyard To the Irish shop. The door's always open At the Irish shop shop. The door's always open at the Oddity Shop. What's up? Oddballs? Welcome into the Oddity Shop.
Speaker 2:The podcast where we tell you happy, freaking Halloween, but we also tell you creepy, odd, weird, strange stories from around the world. But it is our favorite fucking day of the year. How the hell are you?
Speaker 1:I am great. This is the place where the bazaar is always on sale. I am fabulous because it is fucking Halloween.
Speaker 2:This is Halloween. We got so excited we didn't even introduce ourselves. You are Curator Kira and I am Curator Zach here at the Oddity Shop. Hey, okay, so we got a really short intro for you today, but we're just going to go over the important details.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and one of the main important things is that you should call us at 616-320-4935.
Speaker 2:Leave us your spooky little tales and you might be featured on a future episode which we've been talking about for a couple weeks now. That's new, but we have something even newer, more exciting. Um, probably not that profound as a podcast, but to our friends, to our listeners, we have been bringing you this show for two years now. Actually, today is also the two-year anniversary. Basically, shit we did originally a five day countdown, so we started oh my God.
Speaker 2:Two years, we are finally ready to open up the doors and invite y'all to join our Patreon, if you choose. There is no pressure to do so. No pressure. There are some extra little bonuses and fun and things we're going to do for you, though, so we definitely want to make sure that it adds some value back to you, gets you some extras. But go ahead, check that out. Help, support us, yes, please. We would love to continue bringing you shows and, you know, doing things better and upgrading our gear and all that kind of fun stuff, so we would love it if you choose to support us. If you don't, we still freaking love you, we do. But, yeah, check us out. That's Oddity Shop Podcast on Patreon. It will be linked down below if you'd like to join and do you have anything else?
Speaker 1:Kara Well, the first how many Patreon?
Speaker 2:Oh, oh, my gosh. I almost forgot.
Speaker 3:The first five.
Speaker 2:I am trying to skip right over it. The first five Patreon subscribers, that's the most important part. We have a giveaway for you of like crazy fun handmade gifts. So the first five to sign up, we will be sending you a little care package. Us, us, only. Yes, the first five in the US to show up. We would love to send to our other listeners, but shipping gets a little expensive.
Speaker 1:Listen, we don't have the budget for that.
Speaker 2:If enough of you sign up for patreon, the next giveaway will be worldwide.
Speaker 1:There we go well, don't say that, because we don't know. Hopefully. So okay. Well, why are we so excited?
Speaker 2:we are so freaking, excited today because we have a very special guest to announce here. So, in the shop, joining us today is the international bestselling author, researcher and great-grandnephew of Bram Stoker, who's kept the legacy of his historic relative alive in his own way, dacre Stoker. Dacre, how are you doing?
Speaker 3:today, zach, I'm doing great. This is my time of the year. This is the Halloween season. I'm so excited to be with you guys and all the other cool festivities. The weather's cooling off. Even down here in South Carolina, the pumpkins are out, the spirits are getting close, the veil is almost being lifted. That's that time of the year for us. Baby Fantastic. Yep, that veil.
Speaker 2:You know that's that time of the year for us baby Fantastic, yep, that veil being thinner, that little bit of, like you know, coolness in the air. It's our favorite time too, so I guess we should start too. Happy Halloween, man. Yeah, thank you for being here with us on our favorite holiday. I would imagine it's probably on your top list too, there, right? No?
Speaker 3:question. I mean, I get such a kick out about how people celebrate. You know six months to Halloween, you know five months, four months, you know it's almost Halloween and they get really upset. You know when the Christmas decorations start making their way out before the Halloween ones do, which you know certain outlets will do. But no, I do love this time of the year. It is the coolest. I love the color change. Cool is I love the color change, uh, and I love summer because it's outdoors but you know it's pretty darn hot and you can get out more, do things and not like sweat the second you step out the door I am so with you on that one putting on layers.
Speaker 3:It's just, it's so nice and there's something also zach about this that that really unique smell of decomposing leaves and when there's water mixed in a little rain on it it's really something special. You know it's the end of, you know, the season, the end of the life. The corn stalks, the oats, the things, it's like things are settling down. You know it's kind of hunkering down for the winter, that in-between kind of season. It's just so cool and so mystical as well. It just gets you motivated to read good kind of spooky books and drink hot cider by the fireplace, that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:I'm so with you on that, especially the Halloween decorations. I actually was giving one of my coworkers some crap here because they had their Christmas tree up already.
Speaker 3:I'm like you cannot skip over our favorite time of the year here. You know what I love. I love seeing Halloween decorations on Christmas trees and I am guilty of that. I've made that move. I've even seen some of these little trees. It's a Halloween Christmas tree for Halloween. But I found oh, I love that idea. I found cool things, which is I found a bat. It's you know christmas decoration bat. I found an irish leprechaun dressed as a vampire, so I and I got a couple of those. Oh, that's perfect, yeah, for the stoker's tree. So I'm always looking for those unique little tie-ins that extends the season of halloween into into christ no, we're right there with you, man.
Speaker 2:If we could keep the Halloween going right through Christmas, we would, but for our listeners who might not know why Halloween is your favorite, why don't you give us a little bit about yourself, dacre, and tell our listeners why you're here with us today? Sure?
Speaker 3:So first of all, my name is Dacre Stoker. I'm the great-grandnephew of Bram Stoker, the author of Dragon. So in the whole continuum of their life, the Stoker family. There were seven children in Bram's family. His youngest brother, george, is my great-grandfather. So of the seven kids a little unusual for these Irish families, they were a Protestant Irish family there was only three that had offspring and only two that had offspring that are still alive today.
Speaker 3:So Bram's lineage. Bram had a son, a son had a daughter. The daughter actually married twice during World War II, but both husbands were shot down in airplanes during World War II. But in the meantime she had a chance to have three boys. So Anne ended up having to raise these three boys and it was her father, grandson Noel, that raised them. So, living today, only two of those three are still living, one in the 70s and the other in the 80s. They are the closest connection to Bram Stoker, being raised by Bram's son, the grandfather.
Speaker 3:So they do have cool stories and plenty of ephemera in boxes and things in England. So they're alive and well and supply me with lots of information. Technically they're the Bram Stoker estate own Bram's intellectual property. Dracula and his other books that were published are now public domain because after 50 years in England your works go public domain. So 1962, it all went public domain.
Speaker 3:So nobody gets royalty checks in the family. I was never getting them anyway because I'm not a direct descendant. What I have done that brings me royalty checks is with the help of my cousins. They've've directed me to places libraries, museums, private collections because I got this interest about 12 years ago to follow Graham's legacy and help people understand his life, his research of writing a Dracula from a family perspective, which we don't have a whole lot to gain. I mean, I didn't write a biography, I write lots of other things, but I did find his notes and typescript and journal. So I've written with co-authors a prequel to Dracula and a sequel to Dracula and I have to say they're both become international bestsellers and I am picking up some nice royalty checks for most things. I'm like my cousins who are coming back. Well, baker, what are you going to help us out a little bit?
Speaker 2:That's hilarious. Well congratulations on that and very well deserved.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 2:With all that, right? So you've been researching him, You've been doing all the writing and everything, which is a lot more fun, right? I've done 23andMe and I've only found out. You know, I got some people popping over in Nova Scotia. It's about the most interesting of my history. But how did you get started going down that road? Was it, you know, just interest in Bram as your ancestor, or how did that look?
Speaker 3:Well, it really started trying to figure out who my great-grandfather was. So, as I said, of the seven not too many family trees active, my dad passed away when I was young. He had a brother, uncle Patty, good Irish name, patrick. He was sort of the keeper of the letters, keeper of all the stuff in our generations. So sad but good storyteller.
Speaker 3:On Halloween he was diagnosed with congenital heart failure and said dacre, I've got about a year to live, oh, wow, and. And he was in his 80s and he thought I better pass on this stuff to you, you and your wife, my wife's, from south carolina where I'm now living, very interested in genealogy and constantly asking him questions. So he would, he would listen to, dating, he would fax us. You know, found this fax, this fax, this fax, this. Finally, we said, okay, we've got to fly up to Montreal, canada, where I was born and raised, where we live, brought my scanner, brought my laptop. He sent us to his storage facility where we opened up trunks and we found, guys, some of the coolest stuff Letters from Paul Kane, the famous author, good friend of Bram's, who Draco was dedicated to, henry Irving, letters, found, articles. Wow, really cool stuff. That just got me thinking.
Speaker 3:That's incredible, yeah, it is about George Stoker and what else is out there. What a treasure I know. And you get a letter that's in a trunk and it hasn't been shown to any of the. There's been like five biographies of Bram. None of those guys have seen it. This is privileged info and it's like, what else is there? You know, what am I learning from this? So you learn the relationship between these two people and the letter and so on, but it just it got me going thinking. There's probably more to Uncle Graham and my Uncle George. How was their relationship? And I figured that out as well, which is really quite interesting.
Speaker 3:His older brother was another doctor, so he got three doctors in the family. My great-grandfather invented ozone therapy, but he was a doctor in the Irish medical services, much like the Red Cross. They were on loan to different wars, if you can believe it. So they were on the Turkish side of the Turko-Russian War of late 1900s, 1980, excuse me, 1889. And so they go off to these wars to help take care of the soldiers. He went to the Zulu Wars. That's where he learned about properties of ozone. So all these things started like coming Wars. That's where he learned about properties of ozone. So all these things started coming together and it's like, okay, I really got to focus on George and Bram. And then I understand about Thornley Stoker, a famous doctor, the older brother that helped Bram write Dracula, and all the medical parts of the novel Blood transfusions.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's cool.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, look when you guys read about Lucy getting the blood transfusions, that's just not Bran making up this stuff. It's Thornley, who is a serious medical doctor, the head of the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland, telling his brother exactly how to do it In the novel, Chapter 21,. It was actually brain surgery done on Renfield. It doesn't make many movies, so only people who have read the book know this. Renfield gets beat up by Count Dracula because he was telling the band of heroes who Dracula was and where he was. Dracula morphed into dust and came into the cell that Renfield was in in the asylum and he banged him around, banged his head in the ground.
Speaker 3:He had one of these brain hemorrhages. And so Van Helsing and Seward said well, we must take care of this poor guy, you know this mental health guy, we've got to take care of him. Showing pity and mercy, they did the exact surgery on Renfield that Thornley gave his brother notes on on the surgery he'd done three times to real people.
Speaker 2:In the exact same fashion. That's so cool Because, yeah, in a book, right, vampirism, you're going to get into medical stuff just with blood anyway. But the surgery and stuff. That's so cool that you have, you know, not only such an accomplished author, ancestor, but all the doctors and everything else to pull in that information from. And now you're sitting on all those notes that nobody else has seen. That's incredible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I do think it's really amazing that in the time that he wrote this, like how much he really like dove into his research, because it's not like us where we can just Google stuff and unfortunately, even the people that can Google stuff now to write their books, there are poor writers, right, poor authors like stuff still not well researched. But it's incredible in that time, what was it 18, when did he write?
Speaker 3:1897. Okay.
Speaker 1:So it's incredible in that time that he did so much research even to get down to like the blood transfusions and things like that where I'm sure he could have kind of made it up.
Speaker 3:but he easily could have got away with it, right, he could have got away with it as just a good gothic story. But let me just digress and tell you a little bit about Uncle Bram here, and it'll make you understand why.
Speaker 3:Cara and your listeners. He was that kind of guy, so try to keep this brief. He was one of these people that I believe had kind of like split brain between detail oriented type guy. He was a clerk of the petty sessions legal department in Dublin castle that's the British seat of power in Ireland and he was a clerk but he did such a good job of it. He became the inspector of all the clerks and these are the guys that dished out the minor penalties, not exciting stuff like murder and so on. But it was such a crock of minutiae that you would think a creative guy like Graham would get bored to death with. But his detailed brain was engaged. He found so many irregularities he got so upset with it that he told his boss and his boss said we'll do something about it. Mr Stroker, he wrote a manual. He got so upset with it that he told his boss and his boss said we'll do something about it.
Speaker 3:Mr Stroker, he wrote a manual. He wrote a manual about the duties of the clerks and petty sections. That's amazing. This was in 1879. And it was in use in the Irish legal system until 1962. Oh wow, this manual. So that's the detail side of Bram's brain. He was also the theater manager that arranged for all the suitcases, all the sets to go on trains, to go on ships, all the legalities of moving things around the world. Think Jonathan Harker for a moment. Right, the legal guy that had to manage all this stuff to consummate the retail excuse me, the real estate transaction of the count of all these properties in London. That's Bram, that's that solicitor legal guy. But then the creative side of his brain. He started drawing, he started writing poetry. I found his journal in my cousin's attic.
Speaker 2:Oh man, and that's so cool.
Speaker 3:And it shows all the sort of romantic, creative stuff that he was thinking about. He was also, at college, a founding member of the Dublin Painting and Sketching Club. So that's why I say there is the creative guy that's coming up with these cool ideas. But that detail side is they have to be based in something. And so, kara, he was set out on making a story that appeared to be real, which I love. That that's so awesome and that's where all the research backed that up. He went to the London Library, the Whitby Library. I've seen the books in these libraries. I've seen them with marks in the margins. I know exactly what he looked at and they all talked about people believing in vampires, superstition, folklore in countries that Bran never went to Romania, but at least there were six books in the library that did detailed maps and everything. So he was set on using that detail side of his mind, perfectly connected with that Gothic creative side, to make the people in England believe that this book when it came out in 1897, was real. And he succeeded.
Speaker 2:How cool is that, though, from the historical standpoint, because we don't have nearly the rich history that Europe does, but you can now go and retrace the steps and go to the same libraries and touch the same books that bram did your great uh, grand uncle right like that is.
Speaker 3:That is so interesting, that's got to feel such like an indescribable feeling when you're there looking like he was here, looking at this exact book well, I'm glad you guys brought that up, because some, some people you know, especially people in the paranormal world, wonder have you ever felt his presence? Have you thought that maybe he's directing you? How did you find this? And in some cases, guys, and I'm going to tell you one of them, I'm going to tell it right now because it's giving me the back of the neck hair thing.
Speaker 2:Oh, same here, so we're excited.
Speaker 1:I already have goosebumps, so I'm ready.
Speaker 3:All right. Marsha's Library in Dublin, ireland. You've got to look that up. It is such a cool library. It's like 500 years old. It is really neat. It's the library you might have seen photos of that have cages to keep when the people go to research. You've got to go into a cage. Yes, the books do not leave the library. They were very, very expensive in those days. They know what table Bram Stoker did his research on. They know what books he checked out, because there was never a fire in that library. There was never bombing, like some of the other libraries that Bram went to and lost records.
Speaker 3:They have the papers that say on July 16, 1866, bram Stoker came in and he asked he called up is what they were calling those? He called up these books, so they got them written down and then you see this line across them, meaning he handed them back in. So we know the books Now. They made a display there, them back in. So we know the books Now. They made a display there the year that JD Barker and I went on our world tour when Dracula came out in 2018. That's a prequel to Dracula and part of its base in Dublin and we had a scene in Marsh's library. So they found and had an exhibit Bram Stoker's visit to Marsh's library, all the books out and one of those books literally had a reference it's called Cosmography by Peter Holland, reference to Dracula and his brother Gladius. So it's strange to think Graham didn't start writing Dracula until he was in London 1890. He finished in 1897. But in 1866, he stumbled upon the name Dracula. Did it stick in his mind? It didn't make it into his notebook but it might have.
Speaker 3:But I went in to do a lecture one of my Stoker and Stoker research and writing Dracula lectures with my laptop and I went earlier in the day lecture was at night to test all the IT hookups and everything. I'd been to the place before I hookups and everything. I've been to the place before. I knew my way around. I went to the front. Oh, nice to nice to see you, dacre. You know you want to just go downstairs. There'll be, you know, mrs so-and-so coming to meet you. Yeah, I know my way down, I'll just head down now.
Speaker 3:So I walk through the library and I gotta go down the spiral staircase and take me to the bottom and they have those series of lights that are activated by sensors, so when you walk into a room the light goes on. It's good for energy efficiency and so on. So I get to the bottom of the stairs, pause, no light. Kind of wave my hand. Okay, light comes on. Okay, cool. So I start walking through. I go to the next place, open the door, hall. No light comes in. So it's like, okay, I can't see, because where there's no windows I'm below ground. Now it's like pitch old bookcases, the best smell of old books, as you can imagine.
Speaker 3:Yes, creepy so okay what so okay, what do I do to jack the door open? So I try to jack the door open and it's like, okay, push it open and walk into. Maybe sensor? Nope, sensor doesn't go off and I don't crash into the door and smash myself. But I get to the next door, open that door and the light goes off. So I'm going now through three doors and I finally in the last one. The light goes on and I'm now in the room where I'm going to give the lecture and I sort of get my bearings looking. Okay, that's got to be okay. I see the desk, I see the little hookups and plugs and so on over at the laptop and I look up that little thing at the top the battery's dead oh what the heck.
Speaker 3:I was on it 20 minutes earlier, plugged in in my, in my hotel room, doing my last minute adjustments and I had taken the charger with me. But well, thankfully. But yeah, the thing was like what's that? So I now have to just wait patiently and think, okay, I've got to get the adapter out of my backpack, I can't find a darn thing. But finally it's there and I'm good, you know, just getting a little. And finally, after a little bit too long, the lady comes in who's supposed to set me up and she goes oh, you found everything. Okay. You say, well, it's been sort of weird. I'm a little embarrassed, but first of all, the lights didn't come on at the beginning. She's left. You never do that.
Speaker 3:And I said and I got to plug in the computer for this test Can we get an extension cord? And I said, because the computer's dead. And she said, oh, that happens occasionally. You know of the daughter of the Archbishop Marsh, who the library's named after haunts the place, who the library is named after haunts the place, because she did not want to marry the person that her father had arranged for her to marry. She took off somewhere for like six or eight months with the guy she loved. He wouldn't be dishonorable and marry her because obviously her father's an archbishop and marry her because obviously her father's an archbishop. So he came back with a tail between the legs and father accepted her back but punished her in a way that she was sort of locked in somewhere, not in the library, but her revenge has been to haunt the library. And the lady looked at me as Pliny's day oh yeah, that's, and I forget her name, right, that's so-and-so. She messes with the guests a little bit.
Speaker 3:She says you know, a lot of the cameras don't work at the beginning. A lot of the lights don't turn on. It's okay, she's harmless, not a problem. And, my God, the hair is in the back.
Speaker 1:I'm looking her up.
Speaker 3:Especially. Yeah, look up Marsh's library haunting up, Okay. And then there has been times, Cara, when I am sitting down at one of these locations either the desk Bram worked at, or in the Rosenbach Museum in Philadelphia where the notes from Dracula are, or the Paul Allen Estate in Seattle where the typescript is, and I get these ideas that pop into my head. And yeah, we all get ideas, and I'm not saying it's Bram Stoker standing right over my shoulder. But I wonder I know I do and I wonder if.
Speaker 3:I've gained his trust to the point where he's saying I'm sure you have hey Dacre, look over here. Yeah, you know you need to look at this. Why I find certain things the way I do? Maybe because I'm thorough and I'm detail-oriented and I've got a bit of a creative side like him. I think I think a lot like him from everything I've studied. Yeah, that's cool. I don't write anything like him. I get co-authors to help me, but I feel Kara and Zach, he's there somewhere and maybe it's his spirit. Or maybe I've just studied about him so damn hard that I have I understand him so darn well that the spirit lives on that way.
Speaker 2:I think that's too. There's something to be said about that spirit world with, first of all, familial ties are also so strong and powerful right. So one of those ways I think about it is like you don't have to have, like the you know a full body apparition of Bram to know it's Bram, but if those messages are kind of coming to you in those synchronicities and that clarity, right, there is a power in that, whether you can prove it or not, knowing for yourself where that came from, I think there's strong family ties, all that kind of stuff yeah.
Speaker 1:This is so funny that you touched on the synchronicities. The synchronicities that Zach and I have experienced in getting you here, or like with you being here now, are wild. We interviewed a guest last week, lauren Helgson. I think you met her at Paracon, but she was like just jumps on and just naturally starts talking about you and how incredible it was to meet you. And we're like, oh my God, well, we're interviewing him next week. Like just those types of stuff. Like when I got back from Paracon my mom was like oh my God, so this is wild. I just was reading this thing about Bram Stoker's relative and I said I just met him yesterday.
Speaker 1:Like, like it's just so wild how it's like the synchronicities even in that type of stuff, where it's like we needed to talk to you, like we just had to talk to you, and it's like just so cool. So I think I think bram's kind of in every one of us right, like let's talk more, talk more about me, like share, like I just think it's so cool.
Speaker 3:I don't know I just put that in there. Well, I I think, if I may sort of sum it up with this quote from the novel that I honestly believe sums up Ram and me to a certain extent, you guys should comment on how you feel about it there are mysteries which men can only guess at, which, age by age, they may solve only in part. That's obviously Van Helsing explaining to Dr Seward what's going on. Seward is a scientist and wants proof of everything. Van Helsing is going to say no, you can't have physical proof. There are mysteries, and I believe that's Bram Stoker.
Speaker 3:I believe Bram had a great understanding and respect for spiritualism, as did his good friend Arthur Conan Doyle. His professor, edward Dowden Dowden, had a daughter who was very well respected, wrote a book about connecting with the spirit of Oscar Wilde. So you know there was a lot of this going on. I discovered. I didn't discover it, but I found a lady who was a university student doing research on Stoker and spiritualism. She found 22 letters that Bram had written to people who were known, as they say, occultist, before and after Bram's writing of Dracula. So it wasn't just the research and writing of Dracula that made Bram think of spiritualism, mesmerism, other fringe science. At the time I think he was very like I am an open-minded person that does not need physical proof to believe that there's possibly other stuff going on that we just don't can't sense completely yet yeah, I, we agree it's preaching to the choir, I know, but I I want your, your listeners, to know.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, uncle bram didn't just do this stuff conveniently. It came from his heart, I believe, and I'm going to tell you this. So here's a freebie to your listeners, okay? Bramstokerorg is a free website that a university professor, paul McAuliffe, has created. He asked us if it's cool and I say yes, it's all public domain, so it's free.
Speaker 3:Go read the short story, the Seer as in Second Sight. This was a big thing in Bram Stoker's life. He went to Cruden Bay, scotland, where he spent 11 summers after going to Whitby. The Highlands and Islands of Northern Scotland have a great history of people that experience believe in apparitions in second sight. One of the books in Bram's library that was discovered I didn't discover it again. I discover all the other work people have done I put it together but when in 1914, two years after he died, and his widow sold all his books, there was an inventory in the auction house of what was there and what she got rid of. The cousins I talked to at the beginning of the show they actually have the books that weren't sold. But one of the books that was sold that Bram had was a book about second sight in the highlands and islands of Scotland. Interesting Islands and Islands of Scotland.
Speaker 3:Interesting the book that Bram wrote, mystery of the Sea. That he wrote about a spiritualistic situation not vampires but ghosts and so on in Scotland. Yeah, the first two chapters was this short story that he first wrote, called the Seer, about a lady with second sight. Wow, I found that. But I also found a newspaper article from 1937.
Speaker 3:It took that long for a writer, journalist, to write about his encounter with Bram Stoker at a party in Glasgow, Scotland, when he and Irving were there doing the Lyceum Theatre bit, where this writer said I went there to meet Irving but Bram Stoker was far more interesting. That's so cool. Meet Irving, but Bram Stoker was far more interesting, that's so cool. He talked about two situations where he experienced personally second sight while he was in Scotland and I'll just quickly tell you one of them. He went off at a shooting party for pheasants with the Earl of Arrol. This is the guy that lived in Slane's Castle. Slane's castle was a beautiful castle in Cootin Bay. It is no doubt the castle that Bram used the internal layout for his fictional castle Dracula.
Speaker 3:So, on the shooting party. He's given a loader. We would call him a guide ourselves. But back in those days he loads the gun, walks you along, and they're all walking along in the forest or the big fields, a pheasant comes up and boom, you shoot it, hand the gun to the loader, he hands you another one and you try to shoot. Well, you have a good rapport with the shooter, just like you would a fishing guide or anybody else.
Speaker 3:And Bran was said well, how is the Earl doing? And the ghillie said ah, he's not doing. Well, the sheet is high Now. The sheet is high Now. The sheet is high means the sheet that's pulled over your head when you die is getting higher. So he's saying he's close to death. Okay, so the hunt is over. The Earl is fine, the holiday is fine. Bram goes back to London with the family they come back the next year and he's wondering, wondering. Oh, that loader was wrong, I'd love to see him again. He gets invited to another shooting party, he asks for the same loader and he goes. Well, young man, how are you, how was your year? And so on. I have to say I kept track of what you said. The Earl is just fine, he goes oh no, the sheet is a lot higher. Oh wow. And Bran goes what, what do you mean? Is he being diagnosed with? No, not at all. So the hunt is over and they all go back. They have port, they have. You know what they do after these hunts eat lots of food.
Speaker 2:Two days later, the earl dies undiagnosed brain aneurysm wow, oh, my goodness, which, yeah, how would anybody know? You wouldn't know that's wild, but the man with second sight.
Speaker 1:Knew.
Speaker 3:He knew, or he sensed it, or he had a feeling. So Graham was confident enough in that story to illustrate that in front of a group of people at a social engagement, and the journalist recorded the whole thing.
Speaker 1:That's incredible, that's amazing.
Speaker 3:That's my bit about Graham. He believed it, he recounted it, he did a review of the book I mentioned by McRae in the newspaper. So it's something that it's within him, not just an interesting little side that he just writes to make some money on.
Speaker 2:Exactly More than just the writer of the monsters. He really internalizes and believes in those things.
Speaker 1:So I was going to ask. So you know he's from Ireland. He becomes this author right that we love and know, Like how did he come from Ireland to then get into this occult stuff, to then be queen? I know you talked about how he's like creative and stuff like that. Was it just something that he kind of just like stumbled into because of his creativity? But like, how did? How did we get here?
Speaker 3:Ah well, you gotta. You gotta go back to a little bit of the Gothic history, a little bit of.
Speaker 2:Irish folklore and superstition.
Speaker 3:Yes, listen, this is where Halloween was was invented. They I mean lots of cultures have it. You know, you've got Scandinavia, germany, valkyrgiusnacht, where the you know where all the evil things will have full sway. The witches come out. Well, ireland has. They pronounce it Samhain, although it's written S-A-H-M-A-I-N In English we'd say Samhain, but it is the celebration of the changing of the seasons, when the days get longer and where the veil is lifted temporarily between the living and the undead. And this is where people put on costumes to hide themselves from the bad guys. They put out candles, they put up they didn't have pumpkins in Ireland, but they had turnips that they cut open and they told stories. They had feast celebrations because it's harvest, you know, so on. So this is the culture Bram Stoker grew up in.
Speaker 3:If I said to you and your listeners banshees, fairies, pukas these are not leprechauns like our own Lucky Charms, or the Notre Dame, you know, fighting the mascot. These are, you know, the fairies, the vampires, the werewolves, everything in Irish folklore that makes you think twice. And it's all about man wanting to understand what goes bump at the night, or superstitions we can't explain, or things that religion can't explain. And we go beyond. We go to the realm beyond that people. You know, the mystical ones, the Druids, the Celts that they go into. Now, kara, that's what Bram was brought up in A wide, open-minded thinker. He was told these stories while he was a young boy and ill for seven years. Makes sense, but he combined that this is what's really interesting to what we said at the top of the show. You've got a man with a fertile sense of imagination that was actually made more fertile by seven years of illness and being stuck in his room being told stories and so on.
Speaker 3:But he's also into research to do things right. So he's now living in London. He moves to London to work as a theater manager for Henry Irving who becomes the first actor ever knighted. So now he works as the business manager and theater manager detailed side of the brain in a very creative escapism world of the theater, so that two sides of his brain is working. And you know what? Frankenstein has come out. Carmilla has already come out.
Speaker 3:He's not the first one to write about a vampire or anything gothic, but he had a plan and he went into the Whitby Library on his one holiday in 1890 and came across this book about Vlad Dracula being known as the devil. Here is where the occult lightbulb went off. It's the devil incarnate. He's looking for the ultimate evil. And then it connects that to Vlad Dracula, known as the devil incarnate. He's looking for the ultimate evil. And then it connects that to vlad dracula, known as the devil, and the other books. Just put everything together. He finds a book that says volcanoes were known to be the home of subterranean gods, these evil subterranean gods. It was also a metaphor for hell. So it it was the perfect storm.
Speaker 3:His research, his background, the fact that there had been other Gothic stories written, and it was like the world was aching for the perfect, realistic, supernatural Gothic thriller. Bram Stoker had all the component parts and put it together Good timing, good story, great research, and people laughed it up. As a matter of fact, some of the original reviews were kind of sketchy. How can this Bram Stoker be writing this book? It's too. You know. They use the word sensational. Now we might use that as oh man, it's really freaking good, it's sensational, Sensational.
Speaker 1:Now we might use that as oh man it's really good, sensational In those days.
Speaker 3:Sensational was hey, this is too much to sense, too much, almost like the original satanic panic. Hey, they weren't all bad. I mean, most of them were good, 80% were good, but it was how could this man, who you come to know as Bram Stoker, the great manager of the great Henry Irving, write such a thing? But in a way, henry Irving I'm convinced of this played the role of Mephistopheles in the play Faust the devil. This was his devil incarnate, connected with his lad the impaler to make his Count Dracula. Bram is living this every day, every night, watching the rehearsals, watching the plays, and he's influenced by his good friend and boss, who is his devil. And he now finds a way to connect him with a real historical person, lad Dracula, with a real history, to make the story seem like a real devil come to life.
Speaker 2:Wow, you know, the interesting thing in that right is the way he stumbled upon things in the library.
Speaker 2:Almost kind of reminds me of how you did too, and it's almost like not only were you being led by Bram right, it's almost like this character was either fated or through synchronicities, or somehow has through libraries and your family has almost helped create itself in a self-fulfilling way. Just all the little tiny bits and pieces that have come together, for him to come through and then for you to be able to find that and share that with everyone is pretty incredible everyone is pretty.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm so, I'm so proud when I get to give my lectures in libraries, because I say you're right off the bat to the head, librarian hats off to you and your people, people that came before you, because without libraries we would never have had this research not just dracula, but all the other people that do the research.
Speaker 3:And even if you look at it nowadays, ai is just grabbing all this information from books that have been digitized, books that have become e-books. So it's the library of the future, is AI. It's just making it accessible to us quicker and as more and more books get digitized, researchers like myself and my good friend John Edgar Browning and other guys find really cool things about Bram that nobody knew about. Because they are, I'll tell you folks. They're sitting in boxes all around the world in newspapers and it just takes time for people low paying jobs, interns to come in and spend hours to scan all of these articles, these stories, and they get, you know, gets connected to the rest of the world via the internet and until then, guys like me got to go to Marsha's library, Rippy's library and all these other places and dig through the real things yourself and get spooked out by weird ghosts in real cool places.
Speaker 2:Honestly though, that sounds like a good time to me, but it's incredible to think about how many more of those, like the treasure troves that you found up in Canada, must be sitting out there, for not only you know, bran, but all sorts of these characters of the past that are just waiting to have their stories told.
Speaker 3:Let me tell you both this and I can't tell you the name I'm under NDA At Halloween. There is another story that recently got discovered that will be made public by two different authors. That's a story by brand that was published at one point, so it's public domain, but nobody that I know of knew about it. But it's going to be made public, so that's something to think about for Halloween. When is some new stuff? It's a short story new stuff coming?
Speaker 1:out.
Speaker 3:That's exciting, okay, and yeah, that's. That's the stuff I kind of you know, that that you sort of like hold your breath for, and what I do with these things, guys, is I don't make the all the discoveries myself I am the one that discovered the journal and had my friend elizabeth miller, who's no longer living, help to transcribe it, publish it.
Speaker 3:But I look at I'm one of the few people that has access to all of these things the Dracula typescript, and what chapters are missing from Dracula that were originally intended? The journal, the notes and so on. So I look back and I see this discovery and go, okay, how does this fit in with the big picture? It's like a big puzzle. When did Bran write it? What was he doing at the time of his writing it? What was going on in his family? What job did he have? Where was he traveling to? And so I can add those other bits to these really cool discoveries that these guys make and then bring that together and help kind of round out what I call sort of a life-size jigsaw puzzle that puts everything together. Do you remember I don't know which Indiana Jones Temple of Doom, when those different heads, the busts of aliens, when they came together they all shine. Is that the movie I'm thinking?
Speaker 2:of Gosh. It's been so long since I've seen it, but I think you're right, it sounds so familiar, gosh.
Speaker 1:It's been so long since I've seen it, but I think you're right, it sounds so familiar.
Speaker 3:Okay, it's that idea that when these things are in close proximity, the story is better told? Yeah, and that was depicted in one of the Indiana.
Speaker 1:Jones movies.
Speaker 3:But that's kind of how I operate. I put things on bramstokerestatecom Okay Along with my books, but Paul McAuliffe puts stuff that's public domain on bramstokerorg. So those are two cool places to look at for your listeners if you want to find more stuff.
Speaker 2:Oh, good to know, and we'll make sure that both of those are linked in the show notes. Anyone who wants to go check them out, just go scroll a little bit further down and the links will be right there for you.
Speaker 3:And also as we're plugging shamelessly plugging Stokerversecom. The Stokerverse is an effort with myself and Chris McCauley he's an Irish guy living in Alberta, canada. We have taken some of the things from these notes and the journal and the typescript that didn't make it into the novel and we use those leftover things like I did with Ian Holt and JD Barker for my two novels, dracul and Dracul and Dead. We use these things in video games. We've got a handheld game coming out. We've got a card game coming out. We've got an RPG game already out. We have comics coming out with Scratch Comics. So Iconic Games has got some of these card games coming out Incubate. We've got a retro handheld game coming out Nightfall Games. It's an RPG game. So all of these things, what we're trying to do in the Stokerverse is sort of modernize our range of pure kind of pure Bram Stoker original thoughts and ideas from his notes, journal and so on, but round up the stories ourselves and bring them to the public in a different manner that he didn't have available.
Speaker 1:That's so fun.
Speaker 2:I love it. I would say, yeah, I picked up a copy of the comic and we've read through that. It's really cool, right, to see something as iconic as Dracula being breathe that modern life or the new life into it through you, right, and you can see some of those differences in the storytelling, but it's I don't think there's anybody else who could do it the same amount of justice and care, with that family tie that pulls you to.
Speaker 3:So, zach, I gotta ask you something. Yes, sort of a favor, but I got something in return. I got to ask you something yes, sort of a favor, but I got something in return. I was supposed to have been able to bring Paracon a stack of the second edition of the Confluence, but they got hung up in US Customs coming for me and I was really ticked off. I've got them now, perfect, and I'm going to send you one. Oh, please do. But here's what I want you to do is I want you to actually analyze it, okay, and actually look at it and tell me what you think about the artwork and if you like it or if you don't like it bring it on one of your shows.
Speaker 3:Bring it one and two, because number three, it's a three-part series of continuing Dracula right after the massive volcano erupts. Continuing Dracula right after the massive volcano erupts. Now, that is critical because I found in the typescript that Bran had originally planned a volcano to erupt right after Count Dracula was stabbed by the Bowie knife. It was deleted from the typescript.
Speaker 1:I think didn't I buy the. I bought a bunch of pages.
Speaker 3:I think you got one of those pages. I think I do.
Speaker 1:I'm looking right next to me. I think I've got that page, but I couldn't remember because I was of pages. I think you got one of those pages, I think I do. I'm looking right next to me. I think I've got that page, but I couldn't remember because I was so excited I didn't know which ones to pick.
Speaker 3:That was the proof of why we did the comic that Zach got. So the whole idea is what do you do with this idea that a volcano goes up? Where does Dracula go, and who caused the volcano? If he's not killed by a wooden stake and he's only stabbed with a knife and he crumbles into dust, does he go up in the dust and into the volcano and cause interruption to try to get rid of his pursuers? Or is there a higher being and Zach now knows the answer is there a higher being down there that controls Dracula? And is that the answer? How Dracula is able to come back later? Because there was no wooden stake, just in the night.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm so excited. No, I love the first one. I will absolutely give you feedback on the second one, but yeah, it's just so cool because Dracula's I mean it's everyone's favorite vampire hands down. Maybe there's some Nostradamus out there, right, but they're. They're wrong, but it's like I love the fact that such an iconic character is just still getting to evolve and go on, uh, so thank you for that yeah, so you just got to make sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah, send me an email with your mailing address and I'll shoot it up tomorrow before I go off of my perfect we have a little something for you too, so you need to respond with yours.
Speaker 2:Fair enough. So I know you know it's one of those things right where you've been doing all this research and traveling around to keep that, that memory, alive and keep his legacy going. So what's like the best adventure you've gone on, dracula or or or some of the the the most incredible journeys you've had?
Speaker 3:Before I say this we can't leave Tara out of this. I got to figure out something cool to send you either.
Speaker 1:Some more notes or something, but anyway, you being here is the coolest thing for me. I'm still.
Speaker 3:I got to get two sets of addresses, okay, two addresses, and now I'm going to tell you this. I'm going to try to keep this short. My son and I, a guide and three of my friends from Romania have been on this quest. I discovered, based on Bram notes, the lines of longitude and latitude, where Bram planned to have his fictional castle Dracula. Okay, it is about 400 miles northeast of where Bram Castle, also known as Dracula's Castle, where I will be celebrating Halloween with a stoker wine launch party. Amazing, that's so cool. That is the castle he used for the exterior of his description. The Castle of Dracula. Slain's is the interior, but he moved the location 400 miles northeast, incidentally, into a mountain range which is volcanic. Mount Isveral is an old volcano that blew its top about 100,000 years ago and is exposed to massive deposits of sulfur. Sulfur, when burns, burns blue. If you have read Dracula or see movies where there's a blue flame in the Borgo Pass when Jonathan Harker is in the carriage en route to the castle, you'll know now why the blue flame.
Speaker 3:We went in search of what it looks like where these lines of longitude and latitude connect. We had a regular tour with paying customers. My son and I, we took them all to cool places. Tour was over the people get in their flights and go home with paying customers my son and I, we took them all to cool places. Tours over the people getting their flights and go home. We have two days to go with a buddy of mine to drive six hours to the north of Transylvania and one day to hike this mountain, which is, you know, it's only about a three and a half hour hike up. It turns out we didn't go the easiest way.
Speaker 3:But that's another story. But the weather and this was this was in july wasn't very good up in those high mountains. It kind of closed in on us. So this is where it gets weird. We have fog roll in now. Think the demeter and fog we have. We hear the distance thunder, we see flashes of lightning, it begins to drizzle.
Speaker 3:We have no cell phones up there, of course, so we don't have GPS, but we did have our maps and we did have sorry, we had GPS, we didn't have the phones. We knew the spot because we put in the coordinates into the GPS thing that was run by satellite Bottom line. We got up to the top, we found the location, we left messages under this rock care and took photos and the weather got bad and it got. It got so bad that we said you know what we've got to seek shelter. And luckily our guide had been a high mountain weather guide before. He was a mountain guide and knew where there was a high mountain weather station. But we had to walk instead of back down the hill, which would have been three hours down the hill, very slippery when wet, and it was an old, it had been logged, so you had all these sharp stops.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's a no from me on that. That's a big no, for all of us, and I had to make the decision.
Speaker 3:We're not. You know, more people get injured going down mountains than going up Truly.
Speaker 3:So we decided we had to walk all the way around the comb, the caldera of the mountain, which was not steep, but it was all these juniper branches and no trail. We just knew we had to not fall down the Dan Caldera, got around to the mountain station where, when our guide went and knocked on the door because he knew there was that's man, the guide came out. He was sort of a guy in his 30s. He was really upset that we were there, oh, and really upset that this Romanian guide was putting us in danger. Like, what are you doing with these clients? This is so stupid, this is so bad.
Speaker 2:That really builds a lot of confidence. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean we stuck with some madman or whatever, but luckily. And so I'm huddled with the guys. Okay, guys, like other things, in some countries it might take a bribe. So how much money do you have? Gathering our resources, money, yeah, I'm collecting. And so it's like no, no, no problem, guys, come on, come on, come on, come on. So we go in and it's like is it okay to take off our soaking wet raincoats and our rain pants and let them drip here? Yes, but you can't spend the night. I have no room, you know, with all this stuff. So it gets better, it gets better, so we at least can sit down. He's got one of those little electric, you know stoves that will warm up the room.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, and this is all translated from our guy Alex. He says you guys are lucky because a friend of mine is coming up to bring me some supplies pretty soon I think you'll be able to take you down. So about 15 minutes of very awkward kind of sitting around. We don't want to piss off this guy any more than we have like I don't know if he's he's like such a like remote hermit, because that's what high mountain weather guys are. They just report the weather on their you know why their satellite phone, um, and don't get many visitors.
Speaker 3:So 20 minutes later this kind of old international harvester kind of jeep thing shows up, huge tires, because the road is not a road, it's a, it's a trail with bumpy rocks and partially deflated tires, you know. So they don't get punctured. And he comes in with these grocery bags full of water, bottles, full of polenka which is the plum brandy that they make and bread, cheese, smoked fat. So he comes in, he looks at us like what the hell are we doing here? And the Romanian starts to fly, fly. None of them speak english. And our guide keeps looking at us. Oh, my gosh. So I can hear him saying stoker and dracula. Oh, and with that this guy's eyes open up like oh no, he's hit the jackpot and he becomes the friend.
Speaker 3:He opens up all the food that he was going to give to the high mountain.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, what a guy.
Speaker 3:Pulls out this Crocodile Dundee style knife and starts cutting the bread, cutting the smoked pork fat, cutting the cheese.
Speaker 1:That's amazing.
Speaker 3:Pouring the palinka into these plastic Dixie cups, oh my gosh and it's like you know, we've got a toast, We've got a shots and all this. Well, the guide won't take any because he's driving and they take this stuff really seriously in. Romania, Like point one over.
Speaker 1:you lose your license for life, oh wow, and my other?
Speaker 3:buddy who's got the car? So it's my son and myself and the other guide. We've got to like take it for my son and myself and the other guy. We've got to like take it for the team and start taking the shots. And anybody listening? Polinka, and you'll know this, in Michigan, I'm from Canada it's like drinking freaking antifreeze.
Speaker 1:The stuff rips your throat going down.
Speaker 3:It's brutal, oh God. And we're pretty hammered by about our fifth shot, oh wow, trying to shove down our mouths. Enough bread to soak it up, right right. But the pork fat that's smoked is like making us kind of almost throw up because it's so gross. The cheese is good, and so I'm thinking what am I doing here in the name of research, of Bram Stoker and his castle?
Speaker 1:That is so wild, that is amazing and the thunder and lightning are now happening, and we're like Jonathan Harker and the freaking castle. So, zach, you asked the weirdest thing that takes the cake. Zach knows I would not do well in that scenario Any of that.
Speaker 2:I don't think either of us would do well, at least until the shot started flowing. We would probably chill it too, but how insane is that?
Speaker 3:Like how many people get to tell a story of having a party up in the mountains. Okay, one more little PS to it. Yes, it's now time to leave. We're still a little bit drunk. The storm has stopped. We've been there for about two hours. We have to now figure out how to get in this two-seater with the back. There's five of us and one of him, there's six people and we all squeeze in the back.
Speaker 3:Our guide is the biggest guy, so he got the front seat. So now four of us with all of his crap build up in the back and we all squeeze in and then he closes the door. Door and the handle's broken so you can't get out from the inside. It's like a horror movie. And, cara, I am a claustrophobic, oh no, but I didn't realize how claustrophobic and that the palenka didn't override the claustrophobia. I'm now in here like this, without the door being able to open, and we start going down the bumpy road.
Speaker 1:Oh, I would be losing my mind.
Speaker 3:I'm going pale, I'm sweating, I'm talking like my son's saying Daddy, are you okay? I'm going, parker, we got to keep talking, got to keep talking and finally I'm literally ready to either pass out or throw up or something. I say stop the freaking truck, I got to get talking.
Speaker 1:Finally, I'm literally ready to either pass out or throw up, or something.
Speaker 3:I say stop the freaking truck, I got to get out, I have to get out. I mean I don't care, I mean it's a 10 mile walk this way. And so I think, okay, I'm going to admit this to the Romanian guy who now thinks I'm the top of the world, being Bram Stoker's great-grandnephew, that I'm a weenie with claustrophobia. So I end up sitting on the lap of this big 250-pound mountain guide with my head partly out the window of the passenger seat, so I can handle the hour and a half drive down the road. I'm okay If you've got claustrophobia, you guys know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1:All you need to know is there's a way out. I don't care if it's dangerous or if I kill myself on the fall.
Speaker 3:There's a way. Oh my god, now that here endeth the story. That's how it all ended.
Speaker 2:That's the weirdest, freaking story I love that because you go from best-selling horror author right to what? Golden retriever lapdog coming down the aisle.
Speaker 3:And I lived the horror. I lived it. It wasn't just I write about it. Right right, I lived it.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, that is amazing. That's hilarious.
Speaker 3:So my son has that over me. He's now married. He's having a child's on the way, but like I, got some stuff over me.
Speaker 1:He's now married. He's having a child's on the way, but like I got some stuff over him.
Speaker 3:Parker's got that over you. When we have a few drinks, it begins to flow and anybody around us hears this story again.
Speaker 1:I love that. That's great.
Speaker 3:I'm going to send you guys a photo.
Speaker 1:I was going to say do you have a photo of this?
Speaker 3:Well, not, not, I didn't have the presence to take that, but the next day, the guy that saved us love you, who has become our good friend. He owns a bed and breakfast. This is the. This is the end of the story. We get down below and we're getting to our cars. We take a group photo, like we survived, and he says in romanian you idiots, if you just stayed at my bed and breakfast, there's a much easier walk in and out than the way you came, you idiot.
Speaker 2:I love that. Oh my God, I love it.
Speaker 3:I have been to his bed and breakfast now twice with different groups. And he's a cool guy. We did go there the next day to say thank you as we're headed to the airport, and he produced more polenka, which we had to drink a little bit, and this is the context of the picture I'm going to send you.
Speaker 3:He had us put on these authentic Romanian mountain sheep herders, sheep vests long down below our knees, the sheepskin on the outside, the fur on the outside and these tall black hats that they wear in Romania. I love it. We had a picture we had each had a staff in our hand and my buddy took the picture. I looked at my phone and I thought, oh my God, that's spies like us. That's the cover photo of do you remember that dan akroyd and chevy chase and spies like us that are dressed up like those idiots somewhere in the middle of that's me and parker.
Speaker 3:We're the idiots, oh my god, that was the family christmas card that year that is oh, it has to be oh, my god that is.
Speaker 2:I'm going to send that to you both.
Speaker 3:Oh, please do so. You now understand why that picture happened to wake you.
Speaker 1:That's so cool. I mean that's a wild story to not be able to tell. That is a weird one.
Speaker 2:Hey, and you've got a really good I Survive story. And you know those are always good icebreakers, oh my.
Speaker 3:God.
Speaker 1:They are. No survive story and you know those are always good icebreakers?
Speaker 3:they are. No, definitely are. Holy cannoli, yeah, oh, all right, what do you guys got? I've given you everything for me.
Speaker 1:What do you got?
Speaker 3:what? What is, what is big for you guys in your world around halloween, because obviously this is our time of the year. You've heard mine. What's yours?
Speaker 2:I know, I know you well. You're kind of going into your busy season. We work a little bit ahead, so we're wrapping up, but so we we've done some kind of spooky stories. We dropped a bonus episode this week. We're starting to work more with guests. Uh, we're gonna be. I guess we're now this. Today is the 31st, so we just finished up hanging out at mid michigan paratons we've got some stuff planned.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's our favorite. We've just been so busy. I don't even know if we're gonna get to really dress up this year.
Speaker 2:Just sad it's okay we did for the first day of fall, knowing that, um yeah, nice nice, nice, nice.
Speaker 3:Yes, now I find it interesting. You know people's traditions are you know things you do in the family or things you do with friends, if there's certain things? And and of course, you know I can see zach and I are sporting our shirts and, cara, I did notice the little mouth on your. I love that, yeah that's cool.
Speaker 1:I know I wore it just for you.
Speaker 3:Very nice.
Speaker 2:I picked one of my button-ups because I knew I remember that from meeting you at Paragon. Every day we're like, okay, what do you got on today?
Speaker 3:I know you came by with some pretty cool shirts, yeah, for sure, yeah in me, man, I had to get the game strong. Well, this is my pure Halloween one for today, so I got.
Speaker 1:I know I saw that I love it. It's so good.
Speaker 3:I've got a bunch yeah.
Speaker 1:I just have to say that we are just so over the moon that you are here and that you were like you wanted to talk to us, and what I have to say is that you are such an incredible person. You are so down to earth. You were just so sweet when we met you, Just like you can really tell that. You're just so passionate about this and you're not doing it for a cash grab. You're like truly doing it for you know your uncle and like your family, and it's just. It was just so awesome meeting you.
Speaker 1:Even the first time that we walked by your booth at Michigan Paracon and we met you, we were like, well, we got to go back and we got to talk to him some more because you were just so inviting and just I think Aaron said it great, aaron Sager said it perfect that, like inspecting to meet you is not what he thought you were going to be like and you just wouldn't. But that's the best part about we call our listeners oddballs. That's the best part about oddballs is that they come in all shapes, sizes, whatever, and like I don't, I just can't thank you enough for just being so genuine and just so sweet to us and you just made us feel so. You just made us feel so great and we're just I can't get over how you're here. I still I'm going to go to, I'm not going to go to bed. Good, they're just going to be so spoiled with this and I'm just, I'm just so thankful.
Speaker 3:Well, I appreciate that because I take it pretty seriously. When I wrote the first book with Ian Holt Dracula the undead there were some and look, I don't care what authors say, we do look at reviews. We just don't do it all the time. And it was hurtful because I was new at the game when I saw some people say, oh, this sucks. You know he's just doing as you say, he's just doing cash grab, he's trying to capitalize on the name, and it was like I have never freaking done that in my life, all my life as an athlete, as a coach, as a teacher. It's all about you are what you do for yourself. You know you don't expect anybody else to stopwatch. You know that tells the story right Now. It's funny With Drakthion Dead. You know it got some not great reviews.
Speaker 3:Now, the people that have got to know me and have read the book and don't have their backs up, it's now up to like four and a half stars because people are like, oh, this is good after all. You know like I need to give it a chance and I think the more I get to tell the story and the more I share with people interested people like YouTube and your listeners that want to know, without all the glitz. You know the sort of the stuff, the extra stuff. Just get right down the truth and tell you what I know, what I don't know and cool stories that have happened, share with you those notes, like I brought to people. You know I love bringing those things and Bram's story around the world and having people that have read the book or watched the movie one of the many go ah, that's cool, that's something a little bit different that I didn't previously know.
Speaker 3:Thank you, you have just made my day, or, you know, as a teacher, you have influenced my life in some small way. You've made things better, and that's what I like to do and it fulfills me if I can do that for others. So I appreciate you saying that and on my trips that we'll be following soon and all over the world, I just hope I can spread some of that joy about Bram and some of the interesting stories about him as a person. Because, last thing is, he didn't promote himself throughout his life. He was promoting Henry Irving and all the other actors. He never wrote about a biography, he was all about other people and I just feel it's right and it's fair to talk about him and my great-granduncle, who invented ozone therapy, my great-grandfather and those others that didn't have a chance to get in the spotlight a little bit and share that make people's lives better for learning about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, incredible. That's amazing and I think you're doing a fantastic job of that Because, like I said, we came out with so much more knowledge of just in the first talk, where we just saw you talk right about you and the family and everything else. So it's a it's incredible and we are. We're just so thrilled that you were able to spend halloween with us and be able to gift this to our listeners. So appreciate you being here, daker, you're welcome, do you?
Speaker 2:have anything else you you want to add before we close the shop up for the day?
Speaker 1:is there anything that you want to shout out, or where can people find you?
Speaker 3:well, I will shout. I'll shout out one thing because it really is a cool thing to share and and I don't think I got a copy of it nearby because I ran out of the copies at Paracon and it is Well, that's good. Yeah, it was good, but it's Dracula. Oh, you hear this Dracula annotated for the 125th anniversary. Here's the cover. Okay, oh, wow. Now this is available on Amazon for 20 bucks paperback. This has all the goods that I've been talking about. Okay, paul Allen bought Bram Stoker's Dracula TypeScript for just under a million dollars.
Speaker 3:I'm one of six people that looked and analyzed the TypeScript. My co author, robert 18, was saying he was also no longer living. He finished this a couple of years ago. He was one of the other six researchers that got to research the typescript. We weren't allowed to take photographs, we were allowed to write down stuff. We wrote down everything we remembered that was taken out of the typescript, just like Kara, your page that has the lines for the ending.
Speaker 3:Well, there was 102 pages taken out of the typescript, oh my gosh. And we have identified through cross-referencing the typescript and what was left in it that was crossed out and the Dracula notes. So, for instance, one of the short stories that I told you guys you could get for free on Dracula. Excuse me, bram Stoker State dot org. Dracula's Guest was chapter two of Dracula and I've got proof of it because there were six different, six different sentences crossed out of the typescript that had things happening that happened, or referring to things that happened in Dracula's Guest. I've also found the references for chapter one and three, so they are put back in here, not in my writing, but they were put back in as Bram Stoker noted them and all the references that he noted them.
Speaker 2:Oh, that is so beyond cool.
Speaker 3:I didn't have the guts to create my own chapter one and three. I might do that one day, yeah, but I wanted to put it as Bram left it and we discovered it. What we also did.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's cool If you look at this. He was asked by his editor publisher. You see that one section that's grayscaled. Yeah, to take out of Dracula from 1897, 30,000 words, to make the first paperback edition what I have here and it's not the one that he used, but I'm holding up the first edition for you from 1897. It's probably worth about $5,000. Yeah, at least my cousins loaned me Bram's copy that he used a pencil to cross out 30,000 words.
Speaker 3:I took pictures of every single page and Robert and I designated them with the crossout grayscale in this book. Oh cool, so that you could see all the things that were taken out of Dracula, but still here so you could read it. To make the first paperback edition.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a good idea, so you get to see oh, what was taken out.
Speaker 3:We write footnotes about, maybe, why it was taken out and you get to see all the things crossed out and put back in again.
Speaker 2:That is incredible At the.
Speaker 3:TypeScript level.
Speaker 1:That's cool. Yeah, I'm going to buy that.
Speaker 3:So that is like a heck of a resource, along with 1100 footnotes for people that want to know. You know the full, complete story. So that's my shout out to end this show on Halloween. So, guys, do yourself a favor.
Speaker 1:I love that. That's a good shout out.
Speaker 2:We'll make sure to link that in the show notes below too. So if you are interested in that, I know I am going to pick up my copy, the second we hang up here. Yeah, no, please click on that. That'll be down below too Dacre. If people want to find you on social medias, what's the best way to follow you?
Speaker 3:Facebook Instagram Dacre Stoker. Author. Author. Okay, that's my, that's my author page. That's all the really good stuff. The other page, dacre C Stoker, was hacked at one point. Oh no, and I can't get rid of it. It's inactive, but people still go to it, but I have no control over it. Okay, so, author so.
Speaker 3:Dacre Stoker author Got it. And then stokerversecom I do the Instagram Dacre Stoker author as well, and dacrestokercom has ways to get a hold of me. That shows you all my trips. But I appreciate that. And don't forget to send me your mailing address, because now that you just said you're going to buy this book, I better send you some of my book plates to sign and stick in the book.
Speaker 1:Okay, there you go. Yes, yes.
Speaker 2:Our last guest was actually just talking about that because you had given her one that Lauren Hawn said. She said that is the greatest idea ever, in case, you don't get the book.
Speaker 1:At the time she was like blown away by that. She thinks you're the coolest. We always ask what emoji would you like our listeners to comment? If they made it all the way to the end, I would think that you would want a vampire, but if you want to give the listeners an emoji to leave, I would say the bat.
Speaker 3:Oh, okay, I like the little bat, the little bat, the little black bat.
Speaker 1:All right, you heard it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the little bat, the little black bat. That's a cool one, perfect Well.
Speaker 1:I mean we could talk forever, but we know everyone. We got to go to bed. It's late.
Speaker 3:While we're recording, I know Well, let's just have another. We'll have another podcast. We'll chat about some of some of the adventures we'll come to speed.
Speaker 2:Oh, we'd love to have you back thank you again all right, dacre. Well, hey, travel safely too, man. You got a lot coming up.
Speaker 1:I'll do my best be safe on all your travels. Well, thanks everybody for listening. I hope that you absolutely love this. Please go visit dacre on all of the things that he just said and all his adventures. We, we love you, we appreciate you, our listeners, and Dacre you too. So thank you guys for listening, and the most important thing you can do is creep a real yard balls.
Speaker 2:Goodbye, thank you. Outro Music.
