Volume 3 of the Journal of Vampire Studies (2023) contained an article by Paul Murray, “A Tour of Dracula’s Transylvania,” which discussed my theory on the location of the (fictional) Castle Dracula,  as presented in my article “Castle Dracula—Its Exact Location Reconstructed from Stoker’s Novel, his Research Notes and Contemporary Maps,” in “The Dracula Maps,”  and in my chapter “Count Dracula’s Address and Life-Time Identity,” included in Dracula: An International Perspective.  Anthony Hogg kindly invited me to react. 

My article is planned to appear in the December 2024 issue of the Journal of Vampire Studies. As both Murray’s article and my own text are hard to understand without consulting visual references and the Journal is not able to include any pictures, I have posted several maps and illustrations on this page.

This is the site of the fictitious Castle Dracula as I discovered it in January 2012. Almost 13 years later, I still have no doubt that Mount Izvorul Călimanului is the very mountain top Bram Stoker had in mind while crafting Dracula and describing the routes of Jonathan Harker, Professor van Helsing & Mina, and the four men on horseback chasing the Szgany on their way to the Count's stronghold. Checking all details again in order to reply to Murray's article only strengthened my conviction that I was right; Murray, from his side, failed to understand my theoretical framework and mixed up the site where the Gypsies and their pursuers were supposed to leave the River Bistrița in Moldavia. According to Stoker's notes and Harker's Journal, this must have been at Straja, not at the coordinates 47°N, 25°45'E, as Murray assumes.

No person familiar with the terrain would try and drive a calèche over the peak of the Pietrosul; the route north of this summit is safer and less exhausting, and is even used for marathon running nowadays.

The route along the ridge of the volcanic caldera is less strenuous than the steep foot walk up from the Neagra Creek to the top of the Izvorul I made twice in 2012. Already north of the Pietrosul, the path reaches an altitude of 1,700 m. From there, the road climbs to 1,974 m just south of the Rețițis, and then descends again, until a "dip" occurs at an elevation of 1,805 m. From there, the terrain ascends once more toward the Izvorul (see next diagram). Like at the Pietrosul, the local pathways developed over centuries allow for a gradual ascent and descent.

Just south of the Saua Voievodesei, the route along the ridge of the caldera (county border) has a "dip." The lowest elevation I could find on Google Earth is 1,803 m. Over a stretch of 2.1km along the available pathways, the elevation increases again, by altogether 210 m, until the top of the Izvorul is reached at 2,013 m. The average pitch is 10%, which corresponds to an angle of 5.7%. For a team of four "splendid" horses drawing a light calèche with only two persons, this incline should be no problem; see the calculations posted at Reddit and Worldbuilding Stackexchange.

NOTE: All images shown below are circulating on the Internet. Some of them, such as the photos by Adolph Chevallier, or the pictures of steam launches and rescue boats, are still under copyright. They are shown here by way of "Fair Use," for non-commercial, academic reference only. The copyright remains with the respective photographers. Attribution will follow.

These photos show rafts on the River Bistrița, before the Bicaz Dam created a wholly new situation. Some of them were taken as far north as Iacobeni in Bukovina, near the origins of the river, more than 100 km upstream from Straja. Although the route was not without obstacles, shallows and rapids—as duly acknowledged by Stoker—, already at Iacobeni the Bistrița  was obviously more than just a creek.

Various small steam launches that I assume to be similar to the “swift little steamboat” (Van Helsing) acquired by Arthur Holmwood. As the photos show, a steam launch manned by two persons does not need to be longer than 5-6½ meters. For the boats depicted here, the keel is not deeper than the hull itself; they have a very shallow draft.

Hundreds of photos of steam launches can be found at https://steamboat.org.uk/register.php.

All pictures: Pixabay.

As you can guess from these pictures, toy boats have a draft between 5 and 10 cm. Murray's claim that the River Bistrița at the point where the Count's men left it was only a small stream which could hardly have accommodated a toy boat is not correct—unless he was looking for the Bistrița at the wrong place, far from the actual river....