Deidre shoved Dracula into my school bag as we were leaving. She put her finger to her lips and I knew it was one of those books. A secret.
I read in bed by torchlight. It was dull at first,
In the population of Transylvania there are four distinct nationalities: Saxons in the south, and mixed with them the Wallachs, who are the descendants if the Dacians…..
Oh blah, blah, blah, but I knew these old fashioned books often started with a lot of pompous facts and then suddenly, before you were ready, a howling spectre or a rotting corpse appeared. In this case, the creepiness built up slowly. In the next paragraph Jonathan Harker speaks about ‘queer dreams’ and ‘a dog howling all night under my window’ and ‘a continuous knocking on the door.’
And soon his coach is assailed by a pack of wolves as he ascends the mountain. I was tossing from side to side, biting my finger nails. I heard my father go to bed and I sneaked down the hall to the pantry to get another torch battery. I must read the whole book, what was going to happen to Jonathan? The horrors of that book, the insane man who ate rats, poor Lucy with all her blood drained away.
I read on into the night. I heard Bruce Dillon come home on his motor bike, I heard grandma get up to the toilet three times, then as I came to the last pages I heard the birds start up, and then our lazy rooster. Count Dracula, why did he have to die? How weak Jonathan Harker was compared with the Count who could walk down the walls of his castle in impeccable evening dress. If I could choose who I’d be in the story I’d be the Count.
Can you remember the first time you read Dracula or saw the film? Did it affect you?
I almost got expelled from school after reading it.
It is etched on my brain
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Gert Loveday's Fun with Books 
I confess to never having read it. Love your description of the first reading . . . .
Made a great impression at the time.
I never managed to like horror stories. Maybe got enough of them with the Bible and the Catholic saints . . .
Probably I wouldn’t manage now. I shrink from any accounts of human suffering ( except in the medical area.) But in my youth I was eager to expand my knowledge if the world. The nuns didn’t hold back from describing the tortures of the damned, either.
How old were you? I imagine by that time you had had quite a lot of the nuns’ stories, and were more prepared for horror . . . .
I was fourteen when I first read Dracula.
Goodness! Like Teri, I have to confess to never having read it, despite my fondness for the Bela Lugosi film. I should remedy that one day…
The moment may have passed for you Jacqui. It is very melodramatic.
I read Dracula just a few years ago while I was going through the change. I discovered I was anemic.
Leslie
Nothing to do with vampires I hope.
Nope, just the change…
lol Leslie. I guess he wouldn’t have been interested in your blood then.
I also never read it, but think I may have watched the Bram Stoker version with Gary Oldman. I can’t believe they could expell you from school because of your choice of reading material, Gert. Unless, you were reading it, while you were supposed to be doing something else?
I have read Frankenstein and Picture of Dorian Gray, with my grade 12 students, both of which I, and they, enjoyed.
The expulsion from school was a longer story; more to do with being ‘a bad influence’ for recounting the story to my fellow students at boarding school.
I have a copy of a recent-ish edition to read: I read Dracula so long ago – yes, doubtless when I was a brain-dead youth – that apart from the basic premise and feeling uneasy that I skipped the boring bits I remember virtually nowt apart from what I gleaned from watching Nosferatu the Vampyre at the cinema four decades ago. You inspire me to jump in …
Yes it’s a strange combination of boring and gruesome.
A gore-some brew, perhaps?
Ghastly.