Chapter 1

The grey of the morning has passed, and the sun is high over the distant horizon, which seems jagged, whether with trees or hills I know not, for it is so far off that big things and little are mixed. I am not sleepy, and, as I am not to be called till I awake, naturally I write till sleep comes. There are many odd things to put down, and, lest who reads them may fancy that I dined too well before I left Bistritz, let me put down my dinner exactly. I dined on what they called “robber steak”—bits of bacon, onion, and beef, seasoned with red pepper, and strung on sticks and roasted over the fire, in the simple style of the London cat’s meat! The wine was Golden Mediasch, which produces a queer sting on the tongue, which is, however, not disagreeable. I had only a couple of glasses of this, and nothing else.

I found that my landlord had got a letter from the Count, directing him to secure the best place on the coach for me; but on making inq...

3 May. Bistritz.—Left Munich at 8:35 P. M., on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train w...

How these papers have been placed in sequence will be made manifest in the reading of them. All needless matters have been eliminated, ...

The Book Of D R A C U L A by Bram Stoker Design & Edited by

Bistritz. Be careful of my guest--his safety is most precious to me. Should aught happen to him, or if he be missed, spare nothing to find him and ensure his safety. He is English and therefore adventurous. There are often dangers from snow and wolves and night. Lose not a moment if you suspect harm to him. I answer your zeal with my fortune. --Dracula. As I held the telegram in my hand, the room seemed to whirl around me, and if the attentive maitre d'hotel had not caught me, I think I should have fallen. There was something so strange in all this, something so weird and impossible to imagine, that there grew on me a sense of my being in some way the sport of opposite forces--the mere vague idea of which seemed in a way to paralyze me. I was certainly under some form of mysterious protection. From a distant country had come, in the very nick of time, a message that took me out of the danger of the snow sleep and the jaws of the wolf.

A few months before my husband's unfortunate death - I might even say when the shadow of death was over him - he planned three series of short stories for publication, and the present volume is one of them. To his original list of stories in this book, I have added an unpublished Dracula episode. It was originally deleted because of the length of the book, and may be of interest to the many readers of what is considered my husband's most notable work.

This Walpurgis Night, explore a little gem from Bram Stoker's universe that is unfortunately often overshadowed by the attention typically accorded to "Dracula": "Dracula's Guest." This tale, published posthumously, was an oddly interesting find and is thought to have actually been the first chapter of the now-famous novel "Dracula." This eery short story takes place in Germany, wherein it chronicles Jonathan Harker's eerie encounter on Walpurgis Night, a night when witches are said to meet. It is a chilling prelude that foreshadows the horrors to come in the main novel. So why not take this opportunity to revisit that eerie tale when the witches wander tonight?