Book Review :Dracula Guests and other weird Stories

My rating

4 stars

Blurb

Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories is a collection of short stories by Bram Stoker, first published in 1914, two years after Stoker's death. Dracula's Guest follows an Englishman (whose name is never mentioned) as he wanders around Munich before leaving for Transylvania. It is Walpurgis Night, and in spite of the coachman's warnings, the young man foolishly leaves his hotel and wanders through a dense forest alone.

My thought

Bram Stoker was Dublin born but is best known for his fictional creation the evil Count Dracula whose digs were in Transylvania. Stoker (1847-1912) wrote several other novels and tales while enjoying the friendship of such stellar literary artists as Walt Whitman and Mark Twain. For years he served as the business manager for famous Shakespearean actor Sir Henry Irving (the first actor ever knighted!).

Following Stoker's death his widow collected the stories in this volume which also includes the novella "The Lair of the White Worm." 

These nine tales of terror by the author of "Dracula" show him to be as good a writer as Poe.

It begins with Dracula's Guest which was cut from the original Dracula manuscript, not because it was inferior but it simply was its own story.The rest of the stories are equally odd and imaginative

I found some short stories more interesting than others.
They had elements of the supernatural , physical terror and always an unsettling
aura.Those came in a variety of horror themes and topics. I was also really surprised by the Under the Sunset collection. I hadn't realized Stoker had written such spiritual, non-horror stories before. Since Bram Stoker wrote a number of novels and many short stories, I'll search for more.

 This collection is definitely worth reading. Highly recommended to fans of Dracula and/or gothic horror stories.