The iron maiden has a checkered history. Almost every source will promptly confess that it is essentially a 19th century invention before plunging into its supposed medieval past (rather in the manner of a ghost story told like so: “Now, there is no record of a woman dying in the room; in fact, no woman has ever lived in the house at all. But they say that on cold, October nights you can see her roam the halls…”). The truth of the matter is that yes, the iron maiden, or iron

A little known secret about me is that I take great guilty pleasure – and unapologetic enjoyment – in reading about historical conspiracy theories. Not harmful ones that put the blame of the nation’s woes on people groups or deny the existence of undisputable facts (Alex Jones, Sean Hannity, Carson Tucker: I’m looking at you schmucks), nor do I have the patience for baloney ideas about chemtrails, fluoride in the water, or former presidents’ birth certificates. But give me a

Bram Stoker’s name has become synonymous with horror and the macabre, and with good reason. Frequently associated with nothing more than Count Dracula, Stoker wrote some half a dozen masterpieces of short horror fiction, and another dozen-and-a-half which contribute respectably to the genre. The Bram Stoker Award was created in honor of his short fiction as much as for “Dracula.” Stephen King admired him so profoundly that – when describing Stoker’s contributions to English h

Most famous for his monumental vampire novel, Dracula, Bram Stoker was hardly a one hit wonder: he was responsible for two other supernatural novels and around two dozen short stories and poems. Largely inspired by the gothic aesthetics of Edgar Allan Poe, E. T. A. Hoffmann, J. Sheridan Le Fanu, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, his stories are at times melancholy, mystical, gory, and gruesome, but always strange and haunting. In our annotated and illustrated edition of Stoker's short

Excerpted from the Introduction to our best-selling title: BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA: ANNOTATED AND ILLUSTRATED (Available HERE) DRACULA IN FILM: THE TOP 9 CINEMATIC COUNTS. Perhaps just as important to the study of Dracula, the Gothic novel, are the dozens of cinematic adaptations which have been responsible for the book’s longevity and popular appeal. While Dracula has appeared as a character in an astounding 404 films (ca. 2014), for our purposes, we will filter the best gems