The Dracula Game (a memory)

 Long time readers may remember that I blog from time to time about the Dracula Game. This was a make belief game my brothers and I played with some friends back in 1989, freely inspired by J.H. Brennan's gamebook Dracula's Castle, before I read the original novel. We only truly played it once, but it was one of the most exciting games we ever played, one that got us in an early Halloween mood, and I remember it fondly to this day. I am mentioning it again because after doing a bit of research I can say with a fairly strong amount of certainty that today is the anniversary of the day we played. It might sound silly to keep track of time like this, for one afternoon in our childhood, but that fateful day was important: my brothers and I made a new friend (read the original post for more details) and it was my first proper introduction to classic horror and to my favourite horror story.

A thought on Dracula

 For today's countdown to Halloween post, a thought about J.H. Brennan's gamebook Dracula's Castle, the original novel Dracula, and of course the Dracula Game. I think one of the appeals of the novel and what makes it stand apart to this day from other horror stories and make its title character such a terrifying antagonist is that he is not merely a monster in the shadow, but a bona fide conqueror. Because Count Dracula's scheme is to actually invade the British Empire and then the world. He has ambitions. That's what makes him such a great villain and such great antagonist for a make belief or role-playing games. This is what so many adaptations miss, because of limited budgets or because they simply don't get the character. Dracula wants to invade, subdue, conquer, dominate human civilisation. When he is in a story, the stakes should be high.

Dracula's Daughter

For today's countdown to Halloween I come back again to J.H. Brennan's gamebook Dracula's Castle. The book that was the basis for the Dracula Game of my childhood. I was obsessed about Count Dracula before I got my hands on the gamebook, but it certainly helped me develop my fascination for classic horror and it allowed me to explore it while I was still not allowed to read the original text. I am sharing two images from it. The first one is of a beautiful maiden whom you meet in the castle when you play Jonathan Harker. She is afraid of you and you think she might be an innocent victim lost in that dreadful place...

...until she turns out to be a vampire. Well of course. And not just any vampire, as you have guessed reading this post's title. When you explain to her that you came here to slay Dracula, she answers: "You want to kill Daddy?" I could have guessed right away, but apparently Harker could not. It makes for a nice bit of dramatic ironu. Anyway, I half expexted to see this unnamed daughter of Dracula when I read the novel about a year later. But she was nowhere to be found. Nevertheless, I was not disappointed. The source material is better in every way and the female vampires invented by Stoker are far more terrifying. be that as it may, this was my very first lady nosferatu, depicted both as lovable and fiendish, which is pretty much how they are traditionally depicted. And since I love the pictures, I thought I would share them here.

Demonic Hand

 For today's countdown to Halloween post, I thought I would write about an horror trope. I found this picture from used  J.H. Brennan's gamebook Dracula's Castle . It shows an Evil Hand. When you play Dracula, it attacks you and, if you win, it submits to you and becomes your ally, or rather a kind of macabre, supernatural, sentient gadget. I always loved the image. This hand made such impression on me that it made its way into the Dracula Game. It tried to strangle and claws many of our vampire hunters. there is just something about a limb with a mind of its own, bend down on committing murder and create terror. But this post is mostly an excuse to share this striking image.

The Dracula Game Coda

For today's countdown to Halloween, another trip down Memory Lane featuring one of horror's greatest villains. I am talking of course of Count Dracula. Twelve years ago, I wrote about the Dracula Game. It was a make-belief game my brothers and I invented with a brand new friend we'd made. We freely used  J.H. Brennan's gamebook Dracula's Castle as inspiration, as we had not read the original novel then. It was basically a hack and slash, shoot em'up dungeons crawl, where we played vampire hunters fighting various critters (zombies, ghouls, devils, lesser vampires) in Castle Dracula and it's surroundings, trying to destroy the Count himself. Anyway, you can learn more about the game in this post. I said in the original post that we only played once, but this is not quite true. A few weeks later, while our friend was away in his parents' cottage, we convince our neighours, twin brothers who werenot really into horror, and their friend, who was, to play Dracula as well. It was for me a continuation of our initial game, but for some reason it didn't work as well. Not at all in fact. Even though it was October, the air was way crisper and it felt far more autumnal. The atmosphere was borderline perfect, it felt like a good day for a horror game. Maybe because we did not have the visual aid of the gamebook, but I think mostly because our friend was not there. To fully appreciate certain games, you need to be in the company of a kindred spirit, who understands the appeal of spooky things and the macabre. Like I said, the twins were not really into horror and view gamebooks like this one with suspicion. Their friend was enthusiastic, but he saw the Count as a glorified Big Bad Wolf, or something like that. Not really an invader who wanted to conquer the world, starting with London. Our characters had true motivationsand purpose. Dracula too. So the Dracula Game never had a proper finale, it first ended abruptly in one afternoon, then it ended in a whimper in a second episode that truly wasn't one. Maybe I can convince Wolfie to play it with me one day. Who knows.

GrailQuest (The Den of Dragons)

A couple of weeks ago, I paid myself another trip down nostalgia lane and it only cost me £0.99. You may remember on this blog a few mentions about  J.H. Brennan, a writer of, among other things, gamebooks. I was quite fond of his work when I was a child. Well, I found on a charity shop the second bok of his GrailQuest series. I bought it on the spot. As the name indicates, it is freely inspired by the Arthurian legend, although the tone is mostly parodic. You play a young man transported magically by Merlin into the reign of Arthur through a spell, the book being a sort of "portal", as well as into the body of a young knight named Pip. It is pretty smart in a meta way. The medievalist specialised in the Arthurian legend will probably recoiled at the amount of silliness (you use a sword called Excalibur Junior, or EJ), but I do remember Brennan being capable of adding pretty dark touches here and there, as well as a few gory moments. I'm looking forward to revisiting the book in any case.

About Dracula's Castle

For today's countdown to Halloween post, yet another trip down nostalgia lane. My longtime readers may remember that I sometimes blog about the Dracula Game, a make-belief game my brothers, my friends and I played when we were young.As we hadn't read the original novel, we used  J.H. Brennan's gamebook Dracula's Castle as inspiration. Now as I wanted to blog about it again, I discused with my brother PJ about the reasons why this make belief game worked so well that we still talk about it to this day. One of the reasons resides in the antagonist himself: Count Dracula is not only a vampire, but a centuries old nobleman and ruthless warrior, who dabbles into sorcery and whose ultimate ambition is world domination. This is a worthy adversary for a group of vampire hunters, suitable for the ensemble cast that we made with our friends. The other reside in the setting itself: a Carpathian castle and its surroundings, especially as described in the gamebook, had plenty of atmosphere and was also very suitable for a classic "dungeon crawl", with lots of monsters to fight, and not only vampires. Ghouls, zombies, all sorts of undead, demonic entities, wolves under Dracula's control. There is one last element that made the game memorable: it allowed our characters to have all sorts of cool weaponry and equipment. We had of course stakes, crucifix, garlic, holy water, as well as conventional weapons: guns, knifes and the likes. Anyway, as we never finished the game, I hope this blog will encourage some of your children who have a spooky mind to make their own "Dracula Game". No Halloween could be complete without a bit of Dracula in it.

The Frankenstein Game

I already blogged today, but all the same, let's have another countdown to Halloween post. And another nostalgic post. You may remember that I blogged before about the "Dracula Game", in 2011 and in 2021. Well, a year before we played that game, my brothers and I had started another game based on a horror classic. Author J.H. Brennan had written another gamebook called The Curse of Frankenstein, based on, well, Frankenstein. Neither the gamebook nor the game we played based on it were as good as the other. The premisse was simple, even simplistic: the Monster of Frankenstein had escaped to the Arctic, his creator is in pursuit, you either play the Monster or Frankenstein himself. The setting was far less interesting: it had less atmosphere and the horror tropes less frequent. In our make-belief game,we played a team of scientists trying to capture or kill both the monster and put a stop to Frankenstein's activities. I knew nothing of the tragic story of the source material see, so our characters just fought a mad scientist and an ugly brute.As for the Dracula Game, we never finished it. I think we lost interest,partially because the North Pole has far less possibilities than a Carpathian castle. That said, Brennan's got me curious about the original story and it played a role in my discovery of gothic horror. And for all its flaws, what a cover!

Return on the "Dracula Game"

Maybe I should wait for my countdown to Halloween to blog about it, but anyway there you go. You may remember a few years ago, I blogged about the Dracula Game, based not so much about the famous novel (which I hadn't read at the time), but on a gamebook written by J.H. Brennan, Dracula's Castle. Well, I made a few rough calculations and if I'm not mistaken we played it on Thursday the 21st of September 1989. A day before the autumnal equinox, when teachers had been on strike for a week. Anyway, I blogged the story before: a friend brought this book and we decided to play a make-belief gme based on it. I think our intention was to bring the story to its conclusion around Halloween, but it was not meant to be and we played it only once. But we had such fun with it. Why I still remember it fondly and why was it so fun? Part of it is due to my fascination for the Count, which had started even back then. I wanted to know more about Dracula and this was the nearest and easiest source of info. I think it was also a well designed make belief game: a simple dungeon crawl in a castle, but in a real-world, contemporary setting, so it had relatability and atmosphere. Finally, there was Halloween already looming and this got us in the spirit of the season. These last few days, I only have to go out and smell the air and I remember how I felt that day. The boredom that suddenly triggers creativity.

Heroes against the Forces of Darkness

This is my countdown to Halloween post for today (or tonight really). I was thinking about it reading two old posts about Halloween, the one called The Arsenal against the Forces of Darkness and the other one about the Dracula game. Please read them for background info. Anyway, it made me think that in make belief games as well as horror stories, there are malevolent creatures, but there are also human beings pitted against them. Every monster needs a hunter to slay the beast, or at least try. In Dracula, the character who became the archetype of monsters hunters in general and vampire hunters in particular is of course Professor Abraham Van Helsing. He was himself inspired by a prototype: Dr Martin Hesselius, invented by Sheridan Le Fanu. They have things in common: both are elderly men of science, both are doctors, both are thus intellectuals in an age when reason is confronted to old superstitions, superstitions which sometimes are the signs of sinister and supernatural phenomenons. But Van Helsing is different and more completed than Hesselius: however an intellectual, he is more of a man of action, getting his hands dirty(er). I have heard somewhere that he is a Victorian superhero, and there is a lot of truth in it. He was carved in the same mold as Sherlock Holmes, in a way, albeit older, maybe wiser, certainly warmer. I see him as the cousin of Holmes, but also Gandalf and many others, in other genres. 

But Bram Stoker invented many other good guys in his famous novel, of various importance. My favourite is Jonathan Harker, the one I think the reader identifies himself (or herself) the most when reading it. In that silly gamebook that inspired me the Dracula game a long time ago and had such a lasting impression on me, Jonathan Harker is the hero played by the reader. Later, reading the actual novel and watching its many, many adaptations, I thought that, however silly and self-parodic the gamebook was, they gave some sort of justice to the character: in most adaptations, Harker's importance in the story is considerably reduced, when he is not turned into a joke. I guess Van Helsing's destiny was barely more enviable: he is often turned into a macho, ridiculously virile vampire hunter, a far cry from the elderly academic. But anyway, in Dracula's Castle, Harker was a proper vampire hunter, even though he kept the appearance of a mild mannered solicitor. That is not quite like the original character, but it showed more respect towards the man who was Dracula's guest and survived the count's castle to tell the story... And fight him back. Nowadays, and since a long time actually, the heroes of horror stories are often heroines and mainly scream queens. I do not long for a return of masculine heroes, but of more professional ones, people with nerves as much as intellectual capacities and of course education. Against exceptional foes, you need exceptional heroes.

Walpurgis Night

This picture was taken from an image in Dracula's Castle. It represents Samuel Unimportant, a.ka. the Happy Undertaker, whom I blogged about here, turned into a... a sort of... a kind of mix between a werewolf and a demon. The name given in the book is a, or actually the, Funereal Fiend. Here is a description of the metamorphosis: "His eyes have begun to bulge, his ears extend and sharpen into points. Fangs are growing in place of the neat little pearly teeth he displayed only moments ago. Claws burst forth from his hands. His skin turns purple and his shirt rips apart to reveal a gold medallion. He throws back his head and howls like a wolf." So far, so werewolf. And the description continues: "Mr Unimportant, brutally transformed, is jumping up and down on the spot, guttural sounds emerging from his throat. His shoes burst apart to reveal huge, taloned, bright green feet. He howls again, in agony this time, as his head splits open to allow the emergence of a huge, knotted and slowly pulsating amber brain."Kill!" he chants. "Kill! Kill! Kill!"" People can help me find references to horror movies or stories in this description. I am sure the medallion means something, I have no idea what. But in any case, isn't it a very gripping, horrifying transformation scene, especially from a character that first appeared as comical?

I uploaded this picture for two reasons: 1)for the cheer pleasure of uploading a picture from the book and to quote the lovely, vivid description, that has been haunting me since childhood. and 2)it is tonight Walpurgis Night. Which is the lesser known sister of Halloween, its Springtime equivalent. Walpurgis Night has been featured in various works of fiction, including Dracula's Guest. And since Dracula's Castle is well, based on Dracula, and furthermore since a wolf is features in Dracula's Guest it is a good enough excuse to upload it on Vraie Fiction. For more about Walpurgis Night, you can read my blog post from last year. For my fellow bloggers into spooky things, remember that tonight you have something to celebrate until Halloween is near. Maybe it is confirmation bias, but I found the recent weather to be fittingly autumnal.

Looking like a vampire

This is tonight's countdown to Halloween post. The picture was taken from this book. I don't look nearly as sinister or as grim as the count, I do not have his old fashioned elegance either, but I sure looks like a vampire. I have a cold see. When I have a cold, it usually starts in autumn and lasts until May. So I look pale, I cough, I sleep badly during weekdays, which means my eyes look very vampiric, bloodshot and all. I look like a Nosferatu all right, or a man who will soon turn into one.

And it might be the case. Vampires, just like werewolves,can become what they are not only by being bitten, but also through indirect means, say being a heathen, an heretic, and excommunicated or... being a werewolf in your lifetime. So I fit the bill. These days, I certainly have the right look.

Scholomance

Here is another Countdown to Halloween post, which I hope vampire and Dracula aficionados will enjoy. This picture was taken from Dracula's Castle. It represents the gate of, well, Dracula's castle. I uploaded it because: 1)I am going to talk about a part of the count's past that is little dwell upon and 2)it could be the gate of another sinister building, say Scholomance.

Scholomance is a mythical place in Romanian folklore where the Devil himself was supposed to teach pupils witchcraft. It is also, in the novel Dracula, a school the eponymous count attended. This is what Van Helsing says about it: "The Draculas were, says Arminius, a great and noble race, though now and again were scions who were held by their coevals to have had dealings with the Evil One. They learned his secrets in the Scholomance, amongst the mountains over Lake Hermanstadt, where the devil claims the tenth scholar as his due." It is implied here, I think (you can tell me if you disagree and why), that Dracula was transformed into a vampire there, not by the usual way (being bitten by one), but through the action of Satan, and of his own free will. Which makes him even more sinister.

Since I first read the novel, I have been fascinated by Scholomance. I often wondered how it must have been for Dracula, what and how he studied, and what exactly went on his transformation from an evil man to a nosferatu. Bram Stoker knew probably just as little about the folklore surrounding Scholomance as he knew about the historical Dracula (read more about this here). So this aspect could be developed by writers of fiction. I wonder why so many followers wrote sequels (so often poor ones) of the original novel, instead of making prequels, telling the story of Dracula before Jonathan Harker met him. I think I might give it a try here, on Vraie Fiction, a bit like I did for the story of Jack O'Lantern (Read it here: part 1 and part 2). That could be quite fun.

I cracked this code

This may not seem like a countdown to Halloween post, but it actually is. For the record, I also purchased the pumpkin, as I mentioned on my previous French post. But this post is about something else.

As my readers know, I possess an antique gamebook, Dracula's Castle. Which I read and re-read. For more information about the book, please read this post. For more info about my personal story with the book, you can also read this post. Anyway, it would not be a gamebook without secret passages (it has plenty) and riddles to solve. This one took me about five minutes. It was great fun, and quite easy to crack once you figure out how it works. Have a go at it. And just to help you: in this part where you see this coded message, you play the Count Dracula.

An Eerie Orchard

So after yesterday's sidetracked post, I am back into Halloween mode tonight with an Halloween themed post. This picture was taken from the book Dracula's Castle, which was the basis for the Dracula Game of my childhood. It is not a very good picture I'm afraid. But it is an interesting, if simple, image. I am obsessed by something August Villiers de l'Isle-Adam said about how to create terror, to show "not the devil but his work". This is what this drawing does. In the gamebook it is the setting of an comic-epic encounter and combat to the death between Jonathan Harker (the player-character-reader) and a... vampire apple. A Granny Smith, which are supposed to be the worst ones. But I digress...

This image is I think more spooky and scarier than many of the ones of monsters and vampires in the book (I will upload some of them). Because it shows the place where evil dwells: an old, abandoned orchard, with a menacing axe and old fruit trees, with ripe fruits still abandoned on the branches. Halloween is associated with harvest and gluttony. This orchard is of course associated with it, but it also has a sinister aspect: the fruits are corrupted and the place looks menacing. It is in a way a Garden of Eden after the Fall. Again, the work of the devil... And there is the apple (the vampire apple?). Apples are associated with supernatural in numerous ways, I will not list them here. here it is hanging there, already bitten... We often think of abandoned castles, old mansions, cemetaries, haunted houses as setting for horror stories. I think an orchard would do just as well.

Castle Dracula

Here is a new post about Dracula's Castle. During the weekend, it rained and we even had a storm on Sunday, a proper storm with lightning and pouring rain. And today it was cool and windy. The month of July which ended has been quite strange. But it reminded me of this drawing in the gamebook, which accompanies the introduction/prologue to the gamebook. It is a classic gothic horror scene: the horses and carriage, the mysterious man being brought to an ancient castle, ominous and sinister, a dark and stormy night in the background... Simple but so efficient. Halloween is almost three months away, so for the people like me missing the season, here is something to look at until then.

More Dracula

I often say the images uploaded on my blog show the colours of the seasons. Well, not always, as you can see here. This is something I would usually upload in autumn, when Halloween is coming. But I have been reading/playing on and off Dracula's Castle where this image is taken from and sometimes one's mind wanders around. And Halloween is only about three months away. As a child, we used to play "horror" make belief games throughout summer and not only on rainy days. I had not even read Dracula that I was already fascinated by the character. I do remember playing a few Dracula games before "the" Dracula game, but it is very vague in my mind.

I find this drawing interesting in many aspects. I do not know who Dracula is fighting. It could be either Jonathan Harker, who is the "good guy" character played in the gamebook or Abraham Van Helsing, who is the main adversary if the reader decides to play the Count. Van Helsing in the novel is elderly, but in the gamebook he is younger (40s? 50s) and nastier. The odds seem to be even here: the man is heavily armed and has a strong enough built. Of course, Dracula has superhuman strenght, but he might be weakened by the presence of the cross (although the man holds it in a strange way) and the stake is dangerously close to the Count's chest. It reminds me a lot of the climatic combats in the old Hammer movies, especially the one between Peter Cushing (Van Helsing) and Christopher Lee (Dracula) at the end of Horror of Dracula. Tense, dynamic, uncertain, vicious. I wouldn't mind watching some Hammer movies actually.

More dark humour

I could have titled this post "lavatory humour", but that may have turned people off reading it, although technically it is about lavatory humour. It is a sort of follow up to this one. I read/play Dracula's Castle. It might seem like a strange summery read, but it is not a very warm summer. Anyway, the book has plenty of humour of the dark kind. I mentioned it before. At some point, Count Dracula (played by the reader), adventures in the lavatory (I know, I know: not very dignified for a vampire, especially the Prince of Darkness himself) and reads the graffitis on the wall. It serves nothing in the purpose of the adventure, but there are some really good lines there. It gave me a good chuckle, in any case. I particularly like this one: "Mary had a little lamb... with mint sauce." The song was the first one I learned to play with a recorder. Here it is twisted into something very sinister. Anyway, good or bad, I decided to immortalise the jokes on this blog. Tell me what you think of them.

Dark humour and sinister witticism

I have been reading/playing Dracula's Castle. I mentioned here that there is plenty of tongue in cheek humour and self parodic elements. While reading/playing, I (re)discovered one of its characters. I think he was inspired from the Hammer movies. He looks like he was taken from one of them anyway. It's him on the picture at your right, the man with the top hat (the other being a corpse). He is the Happy Undertaker. His name is Unimportant, Samuel Unimportant. He is an eccentric man, but he there is a sinister side to him, not only because of the company he keeps, but because if made angry during the adventure, he becomes a Funeral Fiend, some kind of demon/werewolf mix. I might upload this picture one day.

But even as an eccentric man, he has this dark edge, in spite or because of his twisted sense of humour. When the hero, Jonathan Harker, played by the reader, comes in the mortuary of the castle where the Happy Undertaker is, he discovers that the man is a member of a political party composed of corpses... "They sit in the Lords, so nobody notices the difference," he explains. The cadavers all drink lemonade, while the Undertaker has a wide array of alcohols at this disposal. And he explains why: "You don't think I'd waste good liquors on corpses, do you? There are limits even to friendship." There is reason to madness. Anyway, I found this text very funny and I wanted to share it here and immortalise bits of this witticism on the blog. After all, the book I purchased is now a rarity. Horor and humour is a cocktail often used, but its effects are very uneven: sometimes it is a great mix, sometimes not. Often the humour gets in the way, or the horror elements are so powerful they make the jokes distasteful. In this book, even with strong elements of parody, it often hits the mark, as it does here.

Vampire corpses found in Bulgaria

Picture taken from this book, showing Dracula decomposing after being stabbed. It's not a very good picture, but it fits the topic. I hope this arresting title will draw the attention of my fellow horror fans. Tonight I am feeling very much like an undead myself, being very tired after an exhausting day of work. So anyway, I read this bit of news about two vampire bodies found in Bulgaria. I have little to say, only that I had pleasant shivers reading it. Archeology is a fun discipline when you discover something like this. Had I been a child, I think I would have believed in vampires just reading this news. It gives an interesting insights about mankind's superstitions, makes old vampire stories a little bit more palatable. Cool. (And, for the record, I never believed in vampires. It's one of the few superstitions I never bought into. But I love them as monsters.)