Dracula Dinner

This past Thursday I had dinner with an extraordinary group of people.  Elizabeth Miller, the world's leading historian on all things related to Dracula and Vlad the Impaler, invited me to dine with a group of scholars and professors, all of whom were in Dublin for various Dracula-related reasons. 


Elizabeth Miller is on the left of the photo.  Next to her is David Skal, a renowned Dracula film scholar and the man responsible for discovering and re-releasing the Spanish Dracula (filmed in 1931 on the same set as the Lugosi film of the same year - the Spanish cast and crew filmed at night while the Lugosi cast and crew filmed during the day).  Skal is also a visiting teaching fellow at Trinity College and is teaching an options course on Monsters (that I am taking).  Behind the group is Clemens Ruthner, a German professor at Trinity and a participant in "Dracula 97."  Dr. Ruthner is also working with Dr. Miller on her upcoming book to be released in 2012.  The man on the right is Dacre Stoker, great great nephew to Bram.  In addition to writing the sequel to Dracula, he has been working to procure funds to erect a statue of Bram Stoker to be displayed in Dublin in 2012, the centenary of Stoker's death.  Dacre is also working with Dr. Miller to write a bibliography of Bram Stoker.  Missing from the photograph (because he was taking it) is Brian Showers, author of "Gothic Dublin."  He is quite informed about everything Stoker-related going on in the area and I have already corresponded with him several times to ensure that I don't miss out on anything while I'm here.


Conversation ranged from memories of past Dracula events and the people who were there to events related to the 2012 celebration.  They mentioned their colleagues, Radu Florescu and Raymond T. McNally casually (two researchers who were responsible for making known the atrocities of Vlad the Impaler - perhaps the two most influential men in the study of Vlad, and everyone at the table was laughing about old memories with them!)  I learned much about the Stoker family and will be attending various lectures and events in the upcoming months that I learned about over the course of dinner.  Overall, it was an incredible experience and I am thrilled to have been a part of it.