The real-life Dracula wasn’t a vampire.
But he was a bloodthirsty monster!
Five hundred years ago, in a place called Transylvania, there was a man everyone knew as Dracula. He lived in a huge stone castle in the mountains. There, in the dark rooms, Dracula killed thousands of people. Even after he died, stories of his bloodthirsty ways terrified people in Europe.
But this Dracula wasn’t a vampire in a story or movie. He was a real man. He was a prince who ruled part of the area we now know as Romania.
Despite his nasty ways, we probably would have forgotten all about Prince Dracula if it hadn’t been for Bram Stoker, an Irish writer. During the late 1800s, Stoker was a newspaper editor, a theater critic, and a fiction writer.
One day, someone told him about the legend of the evil Prince Dracula. Stoker was fascinated. He went to the library and read all he could about the real-life Dracula. He learned about Transylvania. He decided to turn Dracula into a true monster: a vampire.
In 1897 he published his masterpiece, Dracula. The book is about a British man named Jonathan who goes to Transylvania. There, in a dark stone castle, he meets the strange Count Dracula. As Jonathan soon learns, the count is a vampire who survives by sucking the blood from human victims.
The book was a huge hit. Thanks to Stoker, vampires became the world’s most popular monster. Dozens of books, plays, movies, and TV shows have been inspired by Stoker’s Dracula.
But for Stoker, writing Dracula wasn’t much fun. While he was writing, he started acting strange. He had always been a gentleman. But suddenly, he started acting mean. His temper grew violent.
Fortunately, Stoker became his sweet old self when he finished the book. “I don’t know what happened,” he told his family. “While I was writing the book, I seemed to be possessed by an evil spirit.”
Maybe it was the spirit of the nasty Prince Dracula!
** Question from this comprehension is given below. You can download it and give to your student/children to solve.