Whitby’s Dracula hunters know the haunting power of the perfect character – Telegraph.co.uk

Count Dracula is not real. The sinister Transylvanian neck-nibbler had no corporeal existence. Nor, despite his preference for resting in boxes of earth from his native land, does he lie buried anywhere least of all in the churchyard of St Marys Church, Whitby, the Yorkshire town where Bram Stokers 1897 Gothic novel is partly set. In fact, Stokers narrative explicitly denies the undead nobleman a final resting place: after he is slain by the vampire hunters, Jonathan Harker and Quincey Morris, Draculas body crumbles to dust.

None of this has deterred the hundreds of tourists who make the pilgrimage toSt Marys in search of Draculas grave, however. Here, despite a leaflet explaining Sorry, its nothere! In fact its not anywhere because Dracula is fiction , disappointed vampire-fanciers have been venting their frustration so furiously that Father Michael Gobbett, the priest of St Marys, has written to the Whitby Gazette, pointing out that the primary purpose of a church is the worship of God. A more significant local figure, he has suggested, is St Hild, the 7th-century founder of Whitby Abbey (and patron of the earliest named English poet, Caedmon).

Anyone who loves books will be familiar with the sense sometimes so strong that it feels like a haunting that a character in whose story you have been immersed has an existence that continues somewhere beyond the final page. Lizzie Bennet, Elena Ferrantes Lenu and Lila, Harry Potter these are personalities that seem too powerful to be contained by the bounds of their fictional settings.

A lively tourist industry nurtures the longing of fans to engage with their literary heroes and heroines. Yet most of us remain capable of recognising the border between fiction and reality. Perhaps the problem with the troublesome tomb tourists of St Marys is that they are seeking the numinous in a place where it already exists if only they knew how to recognise it.

In 2010, researchers from Keele University received the coveted Ig Nobel Peace Prize for their research into the analgesic properties of swearing. I would advise people, if they hurt themselves, to swear, said Richard Stephens, one of the authors of the study. Yet a recent analysis of the sweary habits of Britons discovered that the use of expletives is in decline, while our profanities of choice have changed.

Bloody in my childhood a word of such forbidden power that I still remember the shock of hearing my gently spoken mother utter it has fallen to third place in the league table of curses.

It didnt make the cut in Nicholas Cages recent Netflix documentary on theHistory of Swear Words, which examined the culturalbackground of sixpopular profanities including the top two on thecurrent league table, f--- and s---, as well as the genteel Damn!, now so anodyne as hardly to countas a swear word.

In general, a disjunction seems to exist between our view of swearing by public figures shock and horror ifsomeone accidentally letsslip a vulgar word on ahot mic and a more relaxedattitude to what youmight call domestic profanity.

As for the analgesic effects, I still aspire to the impregnable self-control ofa friends mother who, oncatching her hand in thewhirring blades of a lawnmower, remarked only: Christmas crackers!

Read more:
Whitby's Dracula hunters know the haunting power of the perfect character - Telegraph.co.uk

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero