Despite Castle Dracula being a fictional place, the question of which castle inspired Castle Dracula holds a surprising amount of contention.

While Bran Castle claims to be the inspiration for the site and markets itself as such, it’s hard to say which castle is the closest contender for the title. Though located within Transylvania–a region inside modern-day Romania–the castle also stands more than 200 miles away from the only real directions offered within Bram Stoker’s novel, meaning that while it may have served visual inspiration, it couldn’t possibly bear anything more.

Borgo Pass is the clearest clue provided in the actual text of the book. The place refers to Tihuța Pass, located in the Eastern Carpathian mountains. There were two castles in the region, but Bistrita castle was in ruins long before Dracula was a twinkle in Stoker’s eye. Aside from location, there’s little to tie the castle to the Dracula myth; it was built and occupied by John Hunyadi–a contemporary of Vlad the Impaler, who is well known as a source of inspiration for Dracula–but that connection is weak and tangential at best.

Though Poenari Castle is often held as a contender for the “real” Castle Dracula, it’s even farther from Tihuța Pass than Bran Castle, and its only claim to Dracula fame is that it was home to Vlad III. Weaker still is the claim that Corvin Castle served as the inspiration, latching on to the story of Vlad III’s imprisonment as a way to somehow connect the castle to the Dracula tale.

And of course, we can’t forget Orava Castle, which isn’t even in Romania, but Slovakia. Regardless of where Castle Dracula was supposed to be, Orava Castle was the site of filming for Nosferatu, creating a visual that sticks with vampires to this day.

It is possible to delve deeper, however, and discover that Stoker’s own hand-penned research notes indicated the castle was meant to be situated in the Călimani Mountains, on a very particular mountaintop. Considering that Tihuța Pass was mentioned at all indicates that the placement of the castle was what was most important, meaning the best claim to Castle Dracula is simply looking at the peak of Izvorul Calimanului and imagining what could be.

Though vampires are commonly linked to coffins, that wasn’t always the case.  The association of vampires and coffins is actually a more recent addition to folklore; simply put, it was born out of the fact that vampires are dead, and by the time vampires became a media staple and not just a folk story, most people were buried in coffins.

Prior to the 18th century, most dead were simply wrapped in burial shrouds, if they were covered at all. Though a casket for burial was in use in Europe as far back as 700 A.D., only the wealthy could afford them, and most were stone–not the wood we typically associate with vampires today. Unsurprisingly, some of the burial practices prior to the common use of coffins likely gave rise to other vampire superstitions, such as killing them with a stake through the heart.

The biggest change occurred between the late 1600s and early 1700s, when vampire panic famously swept Europe. By this point, the dead were commonly buried in coffins, and it wasn’t unusual for the dead to have their clothing–or even their limbs–nailed to the wooden interiors in order to restrain them, should they rise from the dead.

Despite this initial link, early literary vampires did not come with coffins. Geraldine and Lord Ruthven had no casket mentioned; Carmilla lacked a coffin, but was found resting in her crypt. Crypts, tombs, and other methods of interment were mentioned alongside the living dead. Even Dracula and his brides had their resting places described only as tombs, and the importance was placed on a vampire needing to rest on native soil, not a coffin.

That shift occurred with the advent of Dracula in film. The 1931 rendition of Dracula replaced the concept of plain stone tombs with coffins, and later films merged Dracula’s boxes of native soil with a coffin partially filled with earth. As vampire lore gradually lost the attachment to native soil, the coffin remained alone, providing a dark sanctuary for a vampire to sleep, safely hidden away from sunlight. But, really, any dark place will do.

Though challenged by storytellers in recent years, garlic has long been perceived as a way to ward off vampires. It’s actually been a part of vampire mythology for so long that when you stop to think about it, you might wonder what actually brought the two to be linked in the first place. Though there are more reasons, here are 5 that turned up most frequently in my study of vampire lore.

In many cultures, garlic is believed to ward off evil.
This one pops up all over the place. In a number of ancient cultures, a clove of garlic was carried in the pocket for good luck and protection from evil, but more noteworthy are the burials in Europe where the mouth of the deceased was stuffed with garlic for the purpose of protecting them from spirits. Since some cultures believed a vampire was an empty husk that rose from the grave and still others believed vampires were evil spirits that could possess the empty body of the dead, the garlic’s ability to ward off evil was employed to prevent them from rising from the grave.

Vampires might have just been people with rabies.
Modern researchers have found a number of connections between the feared behaviors of vampires and the way both people and animals behave when rabid. One noteworthy finding was that rabies can trigger hypersensitivity–causing the afflicted to avoid bright lights and particularly strong smells, such as garlic.

Many vampire stories are a parallel for blood-sucking insects.
Mosquitoes are a common annoyance, and they’re one of the only real-life vampires. Not only do they spread disease, as early Europeans feared from their folklore equivalent, but they can be repelled by garlic, too.

Even now, we recognize garlic as a powerful antibiotic.
But as recently as a few centuries ago, garlic was considered a panacea–and maybe even magic. While we recognize its medicinal and health benefits with a more educated eye now, it was thought to have power over many things, including illness and disease. Particularly noteworthy, since one of the most famous cases of vampire hysteria in history stemmed from the case of Mercy Brown, who–along with many other members of her family–died of tuberculosis.

Although reclassified in recent years, garlic was once classified as a lily.
Lilies have long been a part of religious iconography,  representing purity and associated with holiness. Considering the effect of the crucifix and holy water on the undead, it makes sense that the holy affiliation of the lily would likewise repel vampires.

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