DRACULA ON THE BEACH

Cruden Bay beach

Bram Stoker wrote a large part of his novel Dracula  in the village of Cruden Bay (then called Port Erroll). The Irish author wrote part-time and his annual visits to the Scottish village were when he did most of his writing. The novel was written in the years 1895 and 1896, although it had been about five years in the planning.  

This week’s blog traces the unlikely connection between Dracula and Cruden Bay beach. Bram Stoker walked along the two-mile long beach every morning before breakfast during his summer visits. One of the local residents described his walking gear as a tweed suit, a round beret and a stout stick.

It may have been when he was writing Dracula that he noticed something unusual about the beach. Here’s his description from his 1902 novel The Mystery of the Sea: ‘If Cruden Bay is to be taken figuratively as a mouth, with the sand hills for soft palate, and the green Hawklaw as the tongue, the rocks which work the extremities are its teeth.’

As a local resident living in near Cruden Bay beach I look at the same scene and see the rocky headlands bordering the beach on either side as arms reaching out to embrace the sea. But of course it’s the author of Dracula who wrote the above.

Cruden Bay beach and its 'teeth' - looking north and looking south.

He also described some of the rocks in the bay as resembling ‘fangs’ and it’s an apt description. One rock with the rather odd name of Craig Headock is particularly fang-like.

He may have been inspired to write a famous scene in Dracula from something he saw on Cruden Bay beach. Jonathan Harker is in Castle Dracula and receives a visit from three vampire sisters who get a bit too close for comfort.  How they arrive is described in the novel:

‘Something made me start up, a low, piteous howling of dogs somewhere far below in the valley, which was hidden from my sight. Louder it seemed to ring in my ears, and the floating moats of dust to take new shapes to the sound as they danced in the moonlight... Quicker and quicker danced the dust. The moonbeams seemed to quiver as they went by me into the mass of gloom beyond. More and more they gathered till they seemed to take dim phantom shapes... The phantom shapes, which were becoming gradually materialised from the moonbeams, were those three ghostly women to whom I was doomed.’

Now here’s what happens on windy days, a phenomenon called sand-devils comes about when the dry sand from the high-tide mark blows over the darker-coloured wet sand close to the sea. Snake-like and spooky they are!

Here's some more photos of the beach. You can see why Bram Stoker came back to Cruden Bay every year.