Castle in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, overlooking the Argt;s River near Poenari, Romania, about 20 miles from Curtea de Arg§s, the former capital of Wallachia. Once used by Vlad Tepes, the castle now is in ruins. In 1969 it was identified as the “real” castle dracula by researchers Raymond T. McNally and Radu R.Florescu.
Castle History
Castle Poenari dates to the 14th century and probably was built by Basarab princes; some historians say it was built in the 12th century by a Teutonic knight. Prince Basarab I (1310-1352) used it in his struggle against Hungarian rulers. It was taken over by Wallachians. Another castle faced it on the opposite side of the river, known as Castle Arg§s.
By the time Vlad Tepes assumed power in 1456, both castles were in ruins due to damage from assaults by Turks and Tartars. Despite its small size—about 100 feet by 120 feet—Vlad appreciated the strategic location of Castle Arg^s, which granted an excellent view of the River Argtjs, the narrow river gorge, and the surrounding countryside. Around 1459 he decided to rebuild it, with a novel plan to exact revenge on some of his enemies, the elite boyars. The boyar partisans of Vladislav II, Vlad’s father, had murdered the father and buried Vlad’s brother, Mircea, alive and facedown—the latter of which was a prevention against Mircea becoming a vampire.
Vlad invited the boyars and their families to a lavish Easter feast at his castle in Tirgoviste. He seized the old boyars and their wives and had them impaled on stakes. Those who were younger and in good health—men, women, and children—were marched immediately to the castle, where they were set to work, passing stones, bricks, and building materials from hand to hand in a giant human chain from the village of Poenari to the castle. Some were set to work making bricks. A description from an old Wallachian chronicle follows:
So when Easter came, while all the citizens were feasting and the young ones were dancing, he surrounded them and captured them. All those who were old he impaled, and strung them all around the city; as for the young ones together with their wives and children, he had them taken just as they were, dressed for Easter, to Poenari, where they were put to work until their clothes were all torn and they were left naked.
When reconstruction was completed, the castle had three towers and walls thick enough to withstand cannon fire. A secret staircase reportedly existed to give quick escape, if necessary, through a tunnel in the mountain that led to the riverbank far below. No physical evidence of such a staircase or tunnel has ever been found, however.
In 1462 the Turks attacked the castle, and Vlad escaped unharmed. According to lore, his wife, left behind to face the wrath of the Turks, threw herself over the castle walls and into the river gorge.
After Vlad’s death in 1476, the castle was used by others, but eventually was abandoned and allowed to sink into disrepair. Earthquakes in 1913 and 1940 severely damaged the castle. By the time Florescu and McNally wrote about it as “Castle Dracula” in 1972, the castle’s remains were little more than piles of deteriorated stone. A partial reconstruction was undertaken in the 1970s by the Romanian government to allow tourist access to the ruins. The castle can be reached by a walk up the slope and then a climb up 1,531 wooden steps. It is a popular tourist attraction.
McNally and Florescu Discover “Castle Dracula”
In the 1960s historians McNally and Florescu, along with a team of other experts, set out to research the historical roots of bram stoker’s novel, dracula. If Vlad Tepes had been the historical Dracula, what was his castle? They identified Castle Poenari as the “real” Castle Dracula, even though Castle Bran seemed—at least in appearance—a much likelier can¬ didate for the real castle behind Stoker’s fictional version. Stoker never visited Romania, however, so it is unlikely that either Bran or Poenari served as an inspirational model.
Vincent Hillyer’s Night in the Ruins
In 1977 vampire researcher Vincent Hillyer received permission to spend a night alone in the castle ruins, despite the dangers of roaming bears and wolves. Hillyer took with him a blanket roll, lantern, and bag containing dinner. He also wore a CROSS, which he concealed because of religious prohibitions of the then-Communist regime. In an inter¬ view for Vampires Among Us, Hillyer described his night:
It took me about an hour and a half to climb the steps. When I got to the top, it was just about sunset. The wind had come up, and it was a cold, biting wind, even though it was the month of July. My leather jacket was soaked through from the perspiration of all that climbing, and I felt quite a chill.
The first thing I did when I went inside was to check the different rooms and the little narrow stairs going upstairs to orient myself so I wouldn’t walk around in the darkness and go in the wrong place or fall somewhere.
When the sun did set, I sat down in the what would have been the main hallway. The roof was all broken in this old castle, so it was exposed to the night sky and the elements. I set out these provisions that I’d brought for dinner—a smoked ham, a sharp white cheese, bread, some fresh vine-ripened tomatoes, and a bottle of vintage red wine. After that long climb, I was hungry and the food tasted wonderful. I’d noticed all these little pebbles on the floor around me. Suddenly all these little “pebbles” started jumping around and moving! I held up my lantern, and saw that they were fat, scaly, shiny beetles and ugly, hairy huge spiders. They were crawling all over, coming up my pant leg. They looked ferocious. The beetles were varying sizes, anywhere from the size of a 10-cent piece up to the size of a 25-cent piece. The spiders were of myriad sizes and shapes. They all so seemed to move so fast in my direction. I frantically brushed them off, and got rid of them by setting out some of my food for them. And they were ravenous. Really greedy! They crawled all over the food, eating.
I moved further down the hallway to avoid being overrun by them and to await the approaching night. I could hear the chirping of birds and bats. Soon I heard the wolves begin to howl, and that was delightful, because then it really set the scene. Here we have a film in the making: the wolves are starting to howl as night descends and darkness covers everything.
I reminded myself what the Romanian officials told me about the bears and wolves coming into the castle at night on some occasions. Neither of which are known to be overly friendly to visitors. So I determined that if they came, I would go up a little narrow stairway to this room at the top of the tower. It was a small opening and I could block with some of the loose stones lying around. Or I could stand there and shout—you know, scare the ani¬ mals a little bit if they began to act unfriendly.
This little room was the room that Dracula’s first wife had jumped from when she committed suicide. She jumped from the balcony down to the Arg^s River below. There is one spot where the natives say her blood still colors the ArgQS River. In actuality, the red color to the water probably comes from the red sandstone in the area.
But that night, when I looked down, I could see the moonlight reflecting on the Arg^s River below, and I thought this must be the very room that she had jumped from when the castle was surrounded by the Turkish troops. And she, rather than be captured alive, killed herself. And Dracula himself escaped through a secret tunnel. The cad didn’t take her with him.
Then I heard these noises downstairs. I thought, oh, boy, I wonder if the animals have come in. I peeked down the stairs but I didn’t see anything. It was a little hazardous to try to sleep in this upstairs room, so I went back down the hall and put out my blanket and went to sleep. I was so tired, and I wasn’t afraid to sleep. I fell into a heavy, uncomfortable sleep and had this strange dream that I was riding in a horse-drawn carriage that was rushing pell- mell up a winding mountain pass with precipitous cliffs. I seemed to be pursuing someone. The carriage shot around a sharp corner and came suddenly upon a Gypsy woman who was beating a fallen horse. The horse was dead, and its eyes stared blankly at the heavens. I was angered at the Gypsy’s cruelty, and I shouted at her that I would never invite her into my house.
I came awake with an ominous sense of a presence, like somebody, or something, was watching me. Then I noticed this pain at my collarbone and rubbed it. I was shocked to see little drops of blood on my finger. I immediately thought, nobody is going to believe this, I spent the night in Dracula’s castle, and got puncture wounds! But I didn’t have time to think about the wounds because of this overpowering feeling that I was not alone, that somebody was watching me. And it was a feeling that was so strong that it made me turn and look down the end of the hallway. I had to decide whether to go down and investigate or stay there safely under the blanket and forget the whole thing.
I decided to investigate. I walked down the end of the hall half expecting to meet Dracula himself. I saw these watery, glassy eyes in the darkness. But it was an old wolf.
I assumed it was old because it had a gray muzzle and backed off fast and ran down the mountainside.
As the wolf retreated, I noticed a powerful odor of rotting flowers spreading through the chamber. I was puzzled because I had observed earlier that there were no flowers around the ruins at all. I knew I wasn’t going back to sleep, and I was chilled to the bone from the wind blowing through the place. It was near sunrise, and I decided to leave, even though it was still dark. But I felt in a bit of a jocose mood, so I went back upstairs on the balcony and I waved my lantern and howled, like a Transylvanian mis¬ creant. Way off in the distance I could see the fire of a Gypsy camp, and I thought my voice just might carry—at least they could see this lamp swinging back and forth.
Then I started back down. Even though the sun rose, the light still didn’t penetrate the thick forest, and I had to make my way through the darkness with my lantern. I panicked when I heard twigs break behind me, and I knew I was being followed. I thought maybe this time a wolf wouldn’t be frightened off so easily. I began to walk faster, but whatever it was behind me was coming up fast. Below me I saw a light—a flashlight perhaps—and I shouted. There was a shrill whistle and I heard a thundering of paws behind me. I thought I surely would be attacked, but the paws raced past me. They were two hunting dogs, evidently answering their master’s signal.
Once I reached the valley, I had to walk several miles before I came upon a power station with a telephone. I called the Posada Inn, where my guide and driver were staying. The driver came to pick me up. When I walked into the Posada Inn, Mrs. Velescu and the mayor of Curtea were startled at my appearance. I had a cold sweat. I went to lift my arms, and I just felt so rotten, so nauseated. I must have looked great just coming in from Dracula’s castle—pallid, about ready to faint and with a bloody neck. They took me right away to the Curtea de Arg?s hospital. Mrs. Velescu didn’t believe that I had been bitten. She was startled when the doctor told her I had puncture wounds.
The doctor seemed divided between whether he should be concerned or amused at my predicament, hav¬ ing been bitten at Dracula’s castle. He kept saying, “No, no, it wasn’t Dracula, it wasn’t Dracula, it was a spider.” It must have been a very big spider, because there was about a half an inch between the two wounds. He gave me an antitoxin shot, but I was sick with nausea, fever and malaise for about 24 hours. The bite healed in a few days.
Hillyer maintained that he was then permanently sensi¬ tive to sunlight and burned easily. He developed keratoses, a pre-cancerous condition of the skin.
He related his experience to experts, among them Pro¬ fessor Corneliu Barbulescu of the Romanic Folkloric Insti¬ tute in Bucharest, Florescu, McNally, Dr. Devandra Varma—a vampirologist from India—and several psychical researchers in Southern California. From them, Hillyer pieced together theories about what had happened to him at Dracula’s Castle. The castle itself may be a sort of psychic magnet for evil because of its bloody history and the huge number of CORPSES buried on the mountaintop. The dream of not inviting the Gypsy woman in could relate to the superstition that the vampire cannot enter a house unless it first has been invited in. The smell of rotting flowers might have signaled the presence of malevolent forces. Smells are common in hauntings and possession cases; the worse the smell, the more negative the presence.
FURTHER READING:
- Guiley, Rosemary Ellen. Vampires Among Us. New York: Pocket Books, 1991.
- Hillyer, Vincent. Vampires. Los Banos, Calif.: Loose Change Publications, 1988.
- McNally, Raymond T., and Radu Llorescu. In Search of Dracula: a true history of Dracula and vampire legends. Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1972.
- -. Dracula: A Biography of Vlad the Impaler 1431-1476. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1973.
SEE ALSO:
SOURCE:
The Encyclopedia of Vampires, Werewolves, and Other Monsters – Written by Rosemary Ellen Guiley – Copyright © 2005 by Visionary Living, Inc.