Dracula descendant brings journey to Salem

Sep. 30—SALEM — One of the biggest stories of honoring descendants in literature is coming to terrify Salem in October.

Dacre Stoker, great-grandnephew of Dracula author and creator Bram Stoker, will take over CinemaSalem on Tuesday, Oct. 11 for a series of presentations and film screenings covering the history and legacy of the titular vampire. This year marks the 125th anniversary of the book's first publication in 1897.

The event has a staggering amount of overlap with the present day, with Dracula's history rooted in a Victorian era obsessed with infection and fear of disease, and Dacre Stoker's decades-long mission to discover and tell the world who his distant relative was — a passion like what has brought countless researchers to Salem's public and private libraries for more than a century.

"I really didn't get into it until I was in university and was asked to write a paper about an author in an English Lit class. I decided to find out what I knew about 'Uncle Bram,'" Dacre Stoker said. Many years later, "serendipitously, I got this phone call from Ian Holt, who said, 'you're the family member who knows about your family tree? I've got a screenplay I'm trying to turn into a book.'"

The two later published Dracula the Un-dead, which leaned on Dacre's research on his relative to tap Bram's original notes and ideas, and bring the legendary author back to life in the "official" sequel to the original novel.

"That's how I really got into all this," Dacre Stoker said, "because of needing to hold my own as a co-author, needing to represent Bram Stoker in this book properly."

Famed actor Bela Lugosi would give Dracula a permanent, skin-crawling image in the novel's most famous cinematic adaptation in 1931. That presentation of the novel, along with Bram Stoker's Dracula (an R-rated adaptation from 1992), will both be played at CinemaSalem as part of the event: The 1931 film at 1 p.m., and the 1992 film at 8 p.m.

The event has also twice scheduled Dacre Stoker's keynote on his work — "Stoker on Stoker: Secrets Revealed, the Mysteries behind the Research and Writing of Dracula" — at 2:30 and 6 p.m. A VIP wine tasting is also available between the sets of movie and keynote screenings, boasting an "intimate hour with Mr. Stoker offering complimentary wine from Transylvania" to 50 VIP ticketholders.

Jennifer Emerson, a Salem actress, historical consultant and founder of Pettycoat Pages, has been tapped to provide dramatic readings for Stoker's presentation, during which she'll bring Bram Stoker's mother Catherine to life.

With that, Emerson said she has a pandemic story to tell — one that fits very well with the now three-years-old COVID-19 pandemic. That focuses on a fast-moving epidemic in an Irish seaport called Sligo where, in 1832, a devastating cholera outbreak killed 643 people, some within hours of attending services honoring others lost to the disease.

It's an event that Catherine Stoker witnessed, and one that many believe influenced Bram Stoker's work as he created the Dracula character.

"Catherine was 14 years old when that cholera epidemic started in Sligo in 1832. I can't imagine now, as a woman of 45, what that must have felt like for her with no modern medicine, no Internet, no instant rapid tests, nothing," she said. "The more you look at what Catherine is writing about, the letters she wrote to her son to tell him what it was like... some of it parallels what was happening in the early days of the pandemic, almost perfectly."

That's an eerie connection worth exploring further, according to Emerson.

"When you realize that this amazing novel that Bram created comes from something that we've now gone through, the fact that that's really part of what inspired this whole beautiful evolution of the vampire within our culture... I think that's extraordinary," she continued. "You wouldn't think that out of that is just the basic, human connection to survive. But when you take a look at the character of Count Dracula himself, that's what he wants to do — survive, live. Even though he's dead, he wants to live."

For more on the event and to buy tickets, visit bit.ly/3RnOD2D.

Contact Dustin Luca at 978-338-2523 or DLuca@salemnews.com. Follow him at facebook.com/dustinluca or on Twitter @DustinLucaSN.

Contact Dustin Luca at 978-338-2523 or DLuca@salemnews.com. Follow him at facebook.com/dustinluca or on Twitter @DustinLucaSN.