German manuscripts, published soon after Dracula’s death, refer to him as Vlad Tepes (pronounced Tse-pesh). Translated from Romanian, the name means Vlad the Impaler. Explicit pictures from those German manuscripts help modern-day viewers to easily understand where legend and fact meet.

It wasn’t just the horrible cruelty of Vlad Tepes that made him such an intriguing character for Bram Stoker (whose novel continues to make Dracula a famous legend in the modern world). The castle in which Dracula lived, the Transylvanian countryside, his castle fortress, the Carpathian mountains, the centuries of Romanian folklore, the Russian and German manuscripts, and the matter of Dracula’s empty grave on Snagov Island all produce the stuff of great tales.

And it was the great tale of Bram Stoker’s Dracula that led F.W. Murnau, one of the most famous movie directors of all time, to create the first (and many critics say the best) Dracula movie. He called his 1922 silent movie Nosferatu (the Romanian word for vampire).