by Maledicta | Mar 15, 2019 | Books, Macabre Amusements
St. Patrick’s Day celebrations are usually boisterous and cheerful affairs with freely flowing alcohol and merriment. But there’s a darker side to Irish culture, a penchant for the macabre and mysterious. Remember, Halloween itself was brought to us by the...
by Maledicta | Nov 5, 2018 | Books, Interesting People
Bram Stoker’s descendant is writing new chapters in Dracula’s story Earlier this year, I wrote an article about the Frankenstein bicentennial, the 200th anniversary of its publication, where I referred to Mary Shelley as “Frankenstein’s...
by Maledicta | Aug 27, 2018 | Books, Macabre Amusements
People love to wonder “What If…” What if the South had won the Civil War? What if Hitler had beaten the Allies in World War II? What if Napoleon had a B-52 at the Battle of Waterloo or if Eleanor Roosevelt could fly? (Okay, I borrowed the last two from...
by Maledicta | Mar 26, 2018 | Books, Macabre Amusements
This pre-Dracula novella about a female vampire thrilled repressed Victorian readers with fangs, stakes, and Sapphic undertones. When thinking of the origins of Vampire literature in the Western world, chances are you think of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. This...
by Maledicta | Nov 19, 2017 | Weird Tourism
Can Bram Stoker’s Dracula work as a guidebook for a modern-day tourist in Transylvania? Atlas Obscura’s Luke Spencer walked in the footsteps of Jonathan Harker, visiting the same cities, towns, and hotels on his journey to the home of Vlad the Impaler. (Bonus...