“There are darknesses in life and there are lights; you are one of the lights.”
DRACULA & SIX DEGREES OF JACK THE RIPPER
NINE YEARS BEFORE DRACULA WAS PUBLISHED A REAL MONSTER STALKED LONDON
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FIVE WOMEN WERE MUTILATED & MURDERED IN BLOODY METHODS BEFITTING A VAMPIRE
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HISTORY HAS SHOWN THAT DRACULA OWES A LOT MORE TO THESE MURDERS THAN BLOOD AND GORE.
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DRACULA: A REQUIEM IN TERROR MOVES THE ACTION OF THE NOVEL FORWARD TO THE TIMES OF JACK
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ADDING TO THE HORROR AND MYSTERY OF THE PIECE
KEEPING A CALENDAR OF TIME PASSAGE IN A NOD TO STOKER'S EPISTOLARY CALENDAR​
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A PRODUCTION OF DR. JEKYLL & MR. HYDE WAS BLAMED FOR INCITING THE RIPPER
ACTOR RICHARD MANSPIELD'S HYDE WAS A SUSPECT BASED ON HIS PORTRAYAL
THE SHOW WAS PLAYING AT THE LYCEUM, MANAGED BY BRAM STOKER
STOKER DEDICATED DRACULA TO HALL CAINE (HOMMY-BEG)
WHO HAD HIGHLY ENDORSED THE WORK OF "DR." FRANCIS TUMBLETY, AN AMERICAN QUACK WHO IS WIDELY CONSIDERED A LEADING CANDIDATE FOR JACK
We are not afraid of being alone in the dark; we are afraid that we are not. The “"other" in the darkness both fascinates and terrifies us. Jack the Ripper seemed tailor-made to exploit that fear. The London fog, dense and impenetrable, became the perfect cloak for the misdeeds of the night. Jack the Ripper changed how we understand killing and the reasons behind it. In an era nearly a century before the term "serial killer" existed, these senseless and violent murders etched themselves permanently into the collective psyche.
Within seventy years of the publication of Frankenstein, the literary world experienced a resurgence of the Gothic that still defines modern horror. As Stoker researched and shaped Dracula, Stevenson had given us Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Wilde had penned The Picture of Dorian Gray, Leroux imagined The Phantom of the Opera, and H.G. Wells revealed The Invisible Man. Stoker and Conan Doyle both toyed with the idea of a resurrected Mummy, while Jules Verne introduced worlds where nature itself became monstrous. The air was thick with what would later be known as the Universal Monsters.
Fog. Gaslight. Footsteps on cobblestone. A caped, top-hatted figure emerging with malfeasance in mind. Once again, humanity seemed to be fighting for its place atop the food chain. This could not be a man; it had to be a monster. But had we truly outgrown the need for monsters, or merely refined them?
​When Tod Browning finally brought Dracula to the screen, he drew from this shared visual language, borrowing heavily from the silhouette already burned into the public imagination: Jack the Ripper. From that moment on, the two figures became inseparable. To this day, they remain entwined in how we envision the darkness.
STOKER WAS SO PUT OUT WITH THE POLICE HANDLING OF THE RIPPER CASE THAT HE CHANGED HIS POLICE CHIEF CHARACTER TO A DUTCH SPIRITUAL MATHMETICIAN
