1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:09,600
Over a hundred years ago, Ram Stoker created a monster that's still claiming victims to

2
00:00:09,600 --> 00:00:10,600
this day.

3
00:00:10,600 --> 00:00:17,360
A ravenous hunter with an insatiable appetite for blood.

4
00:00:17,360 --> 00:00:25,880
He can transform himself into a bat, a wolf, or even disappear in a cloud of mist.

5
00:00:25,880 --> 00:00:33,800
And everyone who meets him falls under his irresistible spell.

6
00:00:33,800 --> 00:00:37,800
Count Dracula is coming to Truth or Scare, and nothing can stop it.

7
00:00:55,880 --> 00:01:17,880
In 1897, Ram Stoker wrote a horror novel about a Romanian count with a taste for human

8
00:01:17,880 --> 00:01:18,880
blood.

9
00:01:18,880 --> 00:01:24,000
It wasn't a huge success at the time, and it didn't make him rich or famous.

10
00:01:25,000 --> 00:01:29,000
Over the years, the Dracula legend has grown to epic proportions.

11
00:01:29,000 --> 00:01:33,560
What you might not know is that Stoker was inspired by some of the real people in events

12
00:01:33,560 --> 00:01:35,560
from his own life.

13
00:01:35,560 --> 00:01:38,560
I'm here to uncover the facts behind the fiction.

14
00:01:38,560 --> 00:01:48,040
And now, the real story of Count Dracula.

15
00:01:48,040 --> 00:01:50,040
Evil comes in many forms.

16
00:01:51,040 --> 00:01:56,040
But there's never been a monster more terrifying than the Count from Transylvania.

17
00:01:56,040 --> 00:02:03,960
In 1922, he came to life on the big screen in the German film Nosferatu, the first of

18
00:02:03,960 --> 00:02:05,960
many adaptations.

19
00:02:05,960 --> 00:02:09,760
Of course, the most famous will always be...

20
00:02:09,760 --> 00:02:12,760
I am Dracula.

21
00:02:12,760 --> 00:02:14,760
...Bella Lugosi.

22
00:02:15,480 --> 00:02:22,480
The novel starts off with a character named Jonathan Harker, a young British lawyer.

23
00:02:22,480 --> 00:02:27,280
He leaves his home in England to deliver some papers to a mysterious client, a count who

24
00:02:27,280 --> 00:02:31,280
lives in Eastern Europe.

25
00:02:31,280 --> 00:02:36,720
When Harker asks directions to the Castle Dracula, he gets a dramatic reaction from the local

26
00:02:36,720 --> 00:02:38,720
villagers.

27
00:02:38,720 --> 00:02:40,720
No, no, no, no, no!

28
00:02:40,720 --> 00:02:41,720
Doam nefereste!

29
00:02:41,720 --> 00:02:43,720
They beg him to turn back.

30
00:02:43,720 --> 00:02:45,680
No, no, no!

31
00:02:45,680 --> 00:02:50,680
For your mother's sake!

32
00:02:50,680 --> 00:02:53,680
It is a chilling plea.

33
00:02:53,680 --> 00:02:59,680
Harker is entering unknown territory, but he refuses to let local superstitions keep him

34
00:02:59,680 --> 00:03:01,680
from doing his job.

35
00:03:05,680 --> 00:03:08,680
The Count seems to be a considered host, at least.

36
00:03:08,680 --> 00:03:10,680
And wealthy.

37
00:03:10,680 --> 00:03:13,680
He has the carriage to bring Harker to his estate.

38
00:03:13,680 --> 00:03:16,680
How considerate.

39
00:03:18,680 --> 00:03:26,680
At the stroke of midnight, they pull up to the castle.

40
00:03:27,680 --> 00:03:31,680
Harker knocks at the door.

41
00:03:32,680 --> 00:03:38,680
And the nightmare begins.

42
00:03:42,680 --> 00:03:45,680
Welcome to my home.

43
00:03:49,680 --> 00:03:56,680
Harker can see there's something odd about his client, but he doesn't suspect the truth until...

44
00:03:57,680 --> 00:04:04,680
Exploring the castle one day, he finds his host asleep in a coffin.

45
00:04:04,680 --> 00:04:12,680
Only then does he realize Count Dracula is a vampire.

46
00:04:12,680 --> 00:04:17,680
Stories about the dead coming back to life are told all over the world.

47
00:04:17,680 --> 00:04:21,680
Some of these legends actually started from historical facts.

48
00:04:21,680 --> 00:04:25,680
Dr. Leonard Wolfe explains.

49
00:04:26,680 --> 00:04:31,680
The particular image of the vampire we have rises out of Slavic folklore.

50
00:04:31,680 --> 00:04:41,680
And it has its origins in the real lives of real people who, in an age when you could not tell when people were absolutely dead,

51
00:04:41,680 --> 00:04:46,680
sometimes buried people who were simply in a catatonic stupor.

52
00:04:46,680 --> 00:04:50,680
Sometimes the victims would wake up trapped underground.

53
00:04:50,680 --> 00:04:58,680
In desperation, they clawed at the inside of their sealed coffins, screaming for their lives.

54
00:04:58,680 --> 00:05:06,680
Later, when they were found with blood on their hands and faces, a myth was born.

55
00:05:06,680 --> 00:05:12,680
Stoker made the myth much larger than life or death.

56
00:05:12,680 --> 00:05:16,680
His fictional vampire can practically defy gravity.

57
00:05:16,680 --> 00:05:21,680
The Count is superhuman and, at the same time, a beast.

58
00:05:21,680 --> 00:05:29,680
Author David Skull says this is a reflection of the fear that people had of a strange new idea that came out in Stoker's day.

59
00:05:29,680 --> 00:05:32,680
Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

60
00:05:32,680 --> 00:05:42,680
One of the most revealing images in Dracula is that moment where Jonathan Harker looks down and sees Dracula emerge from the window

61
00:05:42,680 --> 00:05:52,680
and crawls down the face of his castle, becoming a lizard or a bat, literally going down the evolutionary scale.

62
00:05:59,680 --> 00:06:05,680
Bloodthirsty predators of the night come out to feed, and they're not fiction.

63
00:06:07,680 --> 00:06:10,680
When truth or scare continues.

64
00:06:12,680 --> 00:06:16,680
Your adventure continues when Discovery Kids comes right back after these messages.

65
00:06:16,680 --> 00:06:19,680
Are you ready for a real scare?

66
00:06:19,680 --> 00:06:26,680
Only Discovery Kids has a brand new spooky series about how reality can be stranger than fiction.

67
00:06:26,680 --> 00:06:29,680
It's a show where real kids get real scared.

68
00:06:29,680 --> 00:06:34,680
Wolves, vampires, haunted castles. Are they truth or scare?

69
00:06:34,680 --> 00:06:40,680
Watch Truth or Scare Friday nights at 8-7 central, hosted by Bucky the Vampire Slayer and Shell Dry Timber.

70
00:06:40,680 --> 00:06:45,680
If you're scared on Discovery Kids, it's your world. You're very afraid of it.

71
00:06:45,680 --> 00:06:50,680
Now stay tuned for more real adventures right here on Discovery Kids.

72
00:06:52,680 --> 00:06:56,680
One of Dracula's best tricks is turning into a bat.

73
00:06:56,680 --> 00:07:02,680
It's just one of the ways the count terrifies his victims and escapes when he needs to.

74
00:07:02,680 --> 00:07:07,680
There's something even scarier out there. Real vampire bats.

75
00:07:07,680 --> 00:07:10,680
And they drink real blood.

76
00:07:16,680 --> 00:07:20,680
Long before Dracula, bats had a fearsome reputation.

77
00:07:20,680 --> 00:07:24,680
In mythology, they would symbolize evil, the enemies of light.

78
00:07:24,680 --> 00:07:28,680
But common vampire bats don't compete with the count.

79
00:07:28,680 --> 00:07:31,680
They won't bite your neck or suck your blood.

80
00:07:31,680 --> 00:07:35,680
Instead, they feed on livestock and other animals.

81
00:07:37,680 --> 00:07:42,680
After making a quick bite, they lick up the blood as it gushes from their prey.

82
00:07:44,680 --> 00:07:49,680
Jonathan Harker is the victim of a much more dangerous kind of vampire.

83
00:07:49,680 --> 00:07:52,680
He's a prisoner in Castle Dracula.

84
00:07:55,680 --> 00:07:57,680
And confined no way out.

85
00:07:57,680 --> 00:08:00,680
There's one room that he still hasn't searched.

86
00:08:00,680 --> 00:08:03,680
A place that the count has forbidden him to enter.

87
00:08:03,680 --> 00:08:08,680
And Dracula says, whatever you do, don't go in this room. Stay out of this room.

88
00:08:08,680 --> 00:08:12,680
Of course, Jonathan immediately goes to this room to find out what's going on.

89
00:08:12,680 --> 00:08:15,680
The room seems to be empty.

90
00:08:15,680 --> 00:08:19,680
Then, Harker is suddenly overcome with sleep.

91
00:08:20,680 --> 00:08:25,680
When he wakes up, he finds three female vampires ready to make a meal of him.

92
00:08:28,680 --> 00:08:33,680
Then, at the last possible moment, it's Dracula who comes to his rescue.

93
00:08:33,680 --> 00:08:37,680
In a way, Harker should be grateful to the count.

94
00:08:37,680 --> 00:08:44,680
But he's terrified, powerless, trapped, and completely under Dracula's spell.

95
00:08:45,680 --> 00:08:48,680
Stoker may have known the feeling himself.

96
00:08:48,680 --> 00:08:54,680
For years, he worked for the famous actor Henry Irving, managing his Lyceum Theatre in London.

97
00:08:54,680 --> 00:08:59,680
Irving was a superstar in his day, and Stoker was impressed.

98
00:08:59,680 --> 00:09:04,680
He puts everything second to Irving, including his marriage to Florence Malcolm.

99
00:09:04,680 --> 00:09:08,680
When he got his job at the theatre, he was very impressed.

100
00:09:08,680 --> 00:09:12,680
David's skull sees a connection between real life and fiction.

101
00:09:12,680 --> 00:09:16,680
You can almost envision the Lyceum Theatre as kind of Castle Dracula,

102
00:09:16,680 --> 00:09:24,680
in which Stoker is trapped for decades at the beck and call of his own personal vampire in the form of Henry Irving.

103
00:09:24,680 --> 00:09:28,680
Dracula might have been the first to come to the theatre,

104
00:09:28,680 --> 00:09:32,680
but he's not the only one who's been trapped in the theatre.

105
00:09:32,680 --> 00:09:36,680
He's the first vampire in the form of Henry Irving.

106
00:09:36,680 --> 00:09:40,680
Dracula might have been partly based on Henry Irving,

107
00:09:40,680 --> 00:09:46,680
but Stoker must have also known about a certain murderous ruler from the history of Eastern Europe.

108
00:09:46,680 --> 00:09:52,680
He lived 500 years ago in Romania, Transylvania, to be exact.

109
00:09:52,680 --> 00:09:58,680
They called him the Devil, or in Romanian, Dracula.

110
00:09:58,680 --> 00:10:02,680
He was Vlad the Impaler.

111
00:10:02,680 --> 00:10:06,680
Vlad would terrorize his enemies with a uniquely cruel torture.

112
00:10:06,680 --> 00:10:14,680
He'd impale them on a wooden stake and then eat his dinner nearby, while they slowly led to death.

113
00:10:14,680 --> 00:10:20,680
This is the face of the tyrant known as Dracula.

114
00:10:20,680 --> 00:10:28,680
In Stoker's story, Castle Dracula is Jonathan Harker's prison.

115
00:10:28,680 --> 00:10:36,680
The Count leaves him there, and sails for England.

116
00:10:36,680 --> 00:10:44,680
Sleeping all day below decks, the vampire comes out of his coffin at night, feed on the sailors.

117
00:10:44,680 --> 00:10:48,680
Dracula docks the ship at the village of Whitby.

118
00:10:48,680 --> 00:10:54,680
There is where the Count finds Harker's fiance, Mina and her best friend Lucy.

119
00:10:54,680 --> 00:10:58,680
Since he's been away, Mina has barely heard from her boyfriend.

120
00:10:58,680 --> 00:11:00,680
She can only wonder what's been keeping him.

121
00:11:00,680 --> 00:11:04,680
She's about to find out.

122
00:11:04,680 --> 00:11:06,680
Mina and Lucy are very different types of girls.

123
00:11:06,680 --> 00:11:12,680
While Mina's serious and competent, Lucy's a little more... flighty.

124
00:11:12,680 --> 00:11:16,680
One week, Lucy has gotten three different marriage proposals.

125
00:11:16,680 --> 00:11:22,680
She chooses the aristocrat Arthur to be her husband.

126
00:11:22,680 --> 00:11:29,680
But competition has arrived from Transylvania, and Lucy cannot resist.

127
00:11:29,680 --> 00:11:40,680
When her friend goes missing one night, Mina finds her in the cemetery on a bloody rendezvous with Dracula.

128
00:11:40,680 --> 00:11:44,680
Now that Lucy has felt Dracula's bite, her life will never be the same.

129
00:11:44,680 --> 00:11:48,680
It's the cruelest trick of the vampire's curse.

130
00:11:48,680 --> 00:11:52,680
His victims become predators themselves.

131
00:11:52,680 --> 00:12:06,680
Now, Lucy's friends and loved ones will have to face their own fear, and a new kind of enemy.

132
00:12:06,680 --> 00:12:11,680
The men of England are running scared from something even more dangerous than vampires.

133
00:12:11,680 --> 00:12:16,680
The women's liberation movement.

134
00:12:16,680 --> 00:12:21,680
When truth or scare returns.

135
00:12:21,680 --> 00:12:27,680
Your adventure continues when Discovery Kids comes right back after these messages.

136
00:12:27,680 --> 00:12:30,680
Welcome back. Our story so far.

137
00:12:30,680 --> 00:12:33,680
The Prince of Darkness is terrorizing England.

138
00:12:33,680 --> 00:12:37,680
His latest victim lies sick in bed. Could Lucy rise up from her bed?

139
00:12:37,680 --> 00:12:41,680
A new woman? A vampire?

140
00:12:41,680 --> 00:12:46,680
It's no surprise that Stoker was thinking about strong female characters that threatened the system.

141
00:12:46,680 --> 00:12:53,680
While he was writing Dracula, the women's liberation movement was starting right outside his door.

142
00:12:53,680 --> 00:13:01,680
Lucy is fading. Desperate for a way to help, her friends turn to the medical expert, Dr. Van Helsing.

143
00:13:01,680 --> 00:13:08,680
When Van Helsing examines Lucy, he immediately decides she needs a transfusion.

144
00:13:08,680 --> 00:13:11,680
But nothing helps.

145
00:13:11,680 --> 00:13:17,680
When night comes, Dracula empties Lucy of every drop the men have given her.

146
00:13:17,680 --> 00:13:24,680
Finally, her strength fails. Her life is over.

147
00:13:24,680 --> 00:13:27,680
And the horror is just beginning.

148
00:13:27,680 --> 00:13:33,680
The next time the men see Lucy, she's walking through the cemetery, undead and hungry.

149
00:13:33,680 --> 00:13:41,680
Her victims? Any people she can find. Lucy has become a vampire.

150
00:13:41,680 --> 00:13:45,680
Only one thing can stop her.

151
00:13:45,680 --> 00:13:49,680
For Lucy and Arthur, it was supposed to be their wedding night.

152
00:13:49,680 --> 00:13:53,680
Instead, a very different kind of ceremony will take place.

153
00:13:53,680 --> 00:13:59,680
The men arrive at her crypt, the tomb where she sleeps during the day.

154
00:13:59,680 --> 00:14:06,680
The only way to let Lucy rest and stop her from killing again is to drive a stake through her heart.

155
00:14:06,680 --> 00:14:12,680
It's Arthur, her own fiance who does the job of hammering in the stake.

156
00:14:12,680 --> 00:14:18,680
Do I even have to say it? Never try this at home.

157
00:14:18,680 --> 00:14:23,680
It's the Battle of the Sexes, Gothic style.

158
00:14:23,680 --> 00:14:30,680
In the late 1800s, the world was a very different place, especially when it came to equal rights for women.

159
00:14:30,680 --> 00:14:35,680
At the time of the Dracula was written, things were starting to change.

160
00:14:35,680 --> 00:14:43,680
Early feminists were taking it to the streets, organizing and protesting for the same opportunities that men had.

161
00:14:43,680 --> 00:14:49,680
The new woman is what they called any female who was a part of the movement.

162
00:14:49,680 --> 00:14:58,680
Bram Stoker didn't see women as equals. His version of the new woman was Harker's girlfriend, Mina.

163
00:14:58,680 --> 00:15:03,680
She's described as being an amazing typist. Big deal.

164
00:15:03,680 --> 00:15:10,680
Victorian women wanted the right to be the boss, not just the secretary.

165
00:15:10,680 --> 00:15:21,680
Dracula doesn't have a lot of respect for Mina either. He finds her in London and appears in her room as white mist.

166
00:15:21,680 --> 00:15:27,680
When he takes human form, he drinks deeply from her neck.

167
00:15:27,680 --> 00:15:36,680
Harker has escaped the castle Dracula and returned to England, but he's no match for the Count.

168
00:15:36,680 --> 00:15:45,680
One night, the men burst into Mina's room. Harker is lying there unconscious as Dracula feeds Mina blood from his own heart.

169
00:15:45,680 --> 00:15:50,680
He's turning her into a vampire.

170
00:15:50,680 --> 00:15:59,680
Now it's up to the men to save Mina.

171
00:15:59,680 --> 00:16:06,680
Next, the final showdown between the Victorian gentlemen and the Prince of Darkness.

172
00:16:06,680 --> 00:16:11,680
And truth or scare returns.

173
00:16:11,680 --> 00:16:17,680
Your adventure continues when Discovery Kids comes right back after these messages.

174
00:16:17,680 --> 00:16:24,680
In Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula is not only frightening because of his powers. He's from Transylvania.

175
00:16:24,680 --> 00:16:29,680
And in the 19th century, just being a fordner was very scary to some people.

176
00:16:29,680 --> 00:16:41,680
So we return to our story as the Vampire Slayers are on a mission to save both their friend Mina and their entire country.

177
00:16:41,680 --> 00:16:49,680
The key is the dirt that Dracula has to sleep on. He brought it from his homeland and hid it in different spots around London.

178
00:16:49,680 --> 00:16:58,680
To chase him out of the shadows, the men in Stoker's novel search out his supply of native soil.

179
00:16:58,680 --> 00:17:07,680
Without a place to sleep, Dracula can't survive. The plan? Destroy all of the Count's resting places.

180
00:17:07,680 --> 00:17:13,680
If they can do it, he will have to return to his homeland.

181
00:17:13,680 --> 00:17:23,680
When they find each box, Dr. Van Helsing blesses the earth, sterilizing it so the Count won't be able to sleep there anymore.

182
00:17:23,680 --> 00:17:35,680
Van Helsing knows that this is no ordinary killer. If Dracula wins, he'll keep turning people into vampires everywhere he goes.

183
00:17:35,680 --> 00:17:41,680
Elizabeth Miller thinks Stoker took real events and reworked them for his own purposes.

184
00:17:41,680 --> 00:17:51,680
Dracula can be read as a novel about British feelings of supremacy at the end of the 19th century, coupled with a distrust and a hatred and a fear of foreigners.

185
00:17:51,680 --> 00:18:03,680
At the end of the 1800s, there was a wave of Europeans moving to England. A lot of the English were unhappy about this.

186
00:18:03,680 --> 00:18:11,680
It's possible that the fear of Dracula was not too different from the way some people felt about the new immigrants.

187
00:18:11,680 --> 00:18:17,680
While most of the Europeans who came at that time made their homes in England, the vampire ran for his life.

188
00:18:17,680 --> 00:18:23,680
The men and Mina chase him back to Transylvania, where the drama builds to a fevered pitch.

189
00:18:23,680 --> 00:18:35,680
Stoker, as if he was a major film producer or film director, organizes the chase so that there's the coach, there's the horseman, and there's Dr. Van Helsing with Mina.

190
00:18:35,680 --> 00:18:39,680
The three of them are converging on Dracula's castle.

191
00:18:39,680 --> 00:18:47,680
As the sun sets and the wolves start to howl, the horror story becomes an action movie.

192
00:18:47,680 --> 00:18:51,680
Suddenly you're in this John Ford Western and this mountain shootout.

193
00:18:54,680 --> 00:19:00,680
As the sun just goes down, the men converge, Dracula leaps up.

194
00:19:00,680 --> 00:19:04,680
And Quincy Morris drives him through the heart with a booina.

195
00:19:04,680 --> 00:19:10,680
When he's stabbed, Dracula gets a look of peace on his face and crumbles to dust.

196
00:19:10,680 --> 00:19:14,680
But is he dead? It just doesn't sound right.

197
00:19:14,680 --> 00:19:26,680
It's probably not crumbling to dust at all. He's just turning to moonbeams the way vampires can and sort of floating away when they think they've killed him.

198
00:19:26,680 --> 00:19:32,680
Because you obviously can kill Dracula with a bowie knife. That's silly.

199
00:19:32,680 --> 00:19:38,680
Even though they didn't use the right tool for the job, the story of Dracula does have a happy ending.

200
00:19:38,680 --> 00:19:43,680
The count turns to dust, just the way vampires are supposed to.

201
00:19:46,680 --> 00:19:53,680
Mina is freed from the curse and lives happily ever after with Jonathan and their son Quincy.

202
00:19:53,680 --> 00:19:57,680
Stoker's own life didn't have such a storybook ending.

203
00:19:58,680 --> 00:20:02,680
Oly's mother truly appreciated what he had done in his novel.

204
00:20:02,680 --> 00:20:08,680
She wrote to him that it was his best work and one of the very best horror stories of all.

205
00:20:08,680 --> 00:20:12,680
Bram Stoker died the same week that the Titanic sank.

206
00:20:12,680 --> 00:20:17,680
For all the hoopla about the shipwreck, most people missed his obituary.

207
00:20:17,680 --> 00:20:24,680
But it's hard not to wonder, did the great writer have something else in store for Jonathan Harker's family?

208
00:20:25,680 --> 00:20:31,680
In a final journal entry, Harker described returning to visit the castle Dracula with their son.

209
00:20:31,680 --> 00:20:36,680
He said, it was almost impossible to believe that the things which we had seen,

210
00:20:36,680 --> 00:20:41,680
with our own eyes and heard with our own ears were living truths.

211
00:20:41,680 --> 00:20:45,680
Every trace that had been was blotted out.

212
00:20:46,680 --> 00:20:51,680
That's what he thinks.

213
00:20:51,680 --> 00:20:55,680
Dracula is a long way from being blotted out.

214
00:20:55,680 --> 00:21:01,680
There has never been a creature in history or fantasy that compares to the count.

215
00:21:04,680 --> 00:21:11,680
The master of our darkest fears, wild beasts, the night, torture, death.

216
00:21:11,680 --> 00:21:16,680
Dracula is every nightmare rolled into one.

217
00:21:18,680 --> 00:21:20,680
And what about Bram Stoker's novel?

218
00:21:20,680 --> 00:21:24,680
Was he secretly planning to bring his monster back someday?

219
00:21:24,680 --> 00:21:27,680
Maybe Stoker never really meant for Dracula to die.

220
00:21:27,680 --> 00:21:32,680
That would explain why it was a hunting knife that supposedly finished him off.

221
00:21:32,680 --> 00:21:40,680
Well, one thing I know, no matter how many times he's killed, Count Dracula will always return.

222
00:21:41,680 --> 00:21:44,680
Harker, you fool.