Introducing: ‘Where Did Everyone Go?’ The Real Dracula's Castle
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Hi listeners, today we wanted to bring you an episode from a brand new podcast from the Like A Shot Network. Where did everyone go? Histories of the Abandoned. Hear from historian Sasha Auerbach and comedian Tom Ward as they reveal the incredible stories behind fascinating abandoned places around the world. We hope you enjoy this episode. Dracula, I bid you welcome. We've got a vampire story.

This is gonna be great. From the mystical mountains of Romania, we're gonna bring you the real story behind Count Dracula. And yes, he was a real person. And I would say the truth of this story is far more terrifying than what you see on movies and TV shows. Dracula was real? No, Dracula as portrayed was not real, but there was a real

Okay. I'm excited. I love vampires. This is Where'd Everyone Go? With me, Sasha Auerbach. And me, Tom Ward. A journey into the weird history of abandoned places.

So, video's up now and you can see this steep-sided forested valley with a river running along the bottom. We're in the Carpathian Mountains and it's a pretty stunning landscape. Yeah, it is. And there are loads of mountain peaks here but on top of one is this ruined castle. Yeah, and even from the ruins you can tell by those thick walls it was a proper fortress. But there's a lot of damage. Looked like it had a pretty dramatic end, eh?

It does. So who was this real Dracula and where are we going, Sash? Well, this was one of his most important castles. But let's begin with who the real Dracula actually is. It's easy to explain this. The easiest way to explain this is by starting with his father, who was born around 1395 and was called Vlad Dracul, which the English translation would be Vlad the Dragon.

He was given the name because he was a member of the Order of the Dragon, a military fraternity dedicated to halting the Ottoman-Turkish advance into Europe. Some great historical battles of the time. So when Vlad had a son, he's automatically given the title Dracul-A.

which means son of Dracul. Ah means son? Ah, you put ah at the end, son of, yes. Okay. That's, that's, never has an A done more heavy lifting on a word. Absolutely. Dracul is nice. Dracular.

Yeah, well, let's be happy it wasn't Eenie, because no one would want to hear the legend of Count Draculini. Draculini? Yeah, you'd probably think it's a dessert in a nice Italian restaurant, right? I'll have a Draculini with my espresso. Why are you hanging out with this Draculini, silly boy? He's a silly boy. Why don't you hang out with Dracula? Nice boy, strong boy. Strong boy, strong name, strong boy. Scary, menacing, nasty.

Now, he wasn't the only one that got a cool name. Vlad Dracul had other sons. They don't become Dracula, but they still had some cool nicknames. You ready for these? Go for it. We had Radu the Handsome. Nice. Vlad the Monk. And Vlad Dracula had a son called Minia the Bad. Minia the Bad? Not if it's like Minia the Bad or Minia like Bad.

Bad. Bad Minya. Like you peed on the rug again Minya. Bad Minya. Bad. If you were a kid and you kicked your ball into their garden and then someone told you the names of the people in the house, it's hard to know how you'd feel about knocking. I'd leave the ball where it lay. Yeah? I'd be like, I can get other balls. The handsome guy's all right. Who was the other one? Vlad the monk. The monk, the handsome. You'd be like, okay, probably. But then the bad. The bad, yeah. You're just too worried about him opening the door. Yeah, he can have the ball. That's fine.

Anyway, back to our man Vlad Dracula. He was born around 1430 in the Transylvania region of what is today Romania, and he would grow up to become the ruler of Wallachia, which is a region just south of Transylvania.

This region needed a lot of protecting because it was caught between the expanding Ottoman Empire on one side and the Kingdom of Hungary on the other. Which finally brings us to our castle. It's called Poenari and it's one of Vlad's fortified homes. Okay, so what do we know about this castle? Is it standard castle-y stuff? Well...

We think of castles today as the old homes of aristocrats, but we should remember that castles started as fortifications. They were military structures by and large. But we'll get back to the military part. Let's start with a couple of nice legends.

Now, it's said that Dracula's wife threw herself off of these walls when the castle was under siege. And apparently his son was able to shoot an arrow from a nearby mountain peak into the castle. You're asking, well, that doesn't seem like a very nice thing to do. That seems like something that Minheya the Bad would do. But the goal was to warn people in the castle that an enemy attack was coming. You could see more from the mountain peak. So a signal, a warning signal.

You had to be a better shot back in the day, didn't you? You had like one, you know, that was it. But why was she throwing herself off? I don't know. I don't know. Basically, maybe to avoid being captured during the siege and, you know, violated or whatever. Okay. We don't know much about that story. But.

But those are legends. Those are legends. We do have some more factual details. So the way the castle was constructed, it had a kind of killing zone. This was an entryway designed to funnel invaders into a narrow space where a trapdoor would close behind them and archers standing above could then fire down and just kill them at will. Okay. That's quite a nice, easy shift.

for the archers, isn't it? Well, when you look at these fortresses and these really well-built castles from the top down, you see they're often set up so that there are these traps, you know, like that they funnel the invaders into these regions or you have a gate that you can close on both sides when they're in between the two and then they're stuck. It wasn't just about the walls and the towers. It was about...

creating a favorable environment for defense. That's a horrible moment, I'm guessing, if you realize you've just been funneled into this thing and then you look up and it's just a bunch of guys. Why do you think people prefer to lay siege to a castle rather than assault it? Instead, you build your own counter wall around it and you try to starve them out because eventually the folks inside will run out of food. Then you run into another problem, which is people laying the siege

Might also start to run out of food disease might spread you know what if what if an ally shows up and counter-attacks I mean, you know castles are strong, but they're not impregnable, but then sieges aren't foolproof either There might be some squabbling amongst the archers if you know you got the new guys who can't even hit yeah shoot fish I just want to fire over the thing I want to shoot over there a long way proper. Oh look a bird I don't want to be that this this suckers like shooting people. They're right there. Come on. I was told I get a crossbow Yeah, what is this?

So, now, this killing zone is actually, as I mentioned, a standard tactic. But Vlad Dracula had some more unique things that he liked to do to cause terror. This word unique is making me nervous. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Apparently, Ottoman messengers who refused to take off their turbans in his presence, well, he had their hats nailed to their heads as punishment. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, rules are rules, but it's going to make it harder to take it off next time. You know, fear, even more so than a killing zone and a strong castle, fear is a powerful weapon. Yeah. And it gets worse. So, Dracula's first name is Vlad. Have you heard of any other historical Vlads?

Well, there's Vlad the Warmonger. Is there? Of 2024, 25, 23. Oh, the current Vlad the Warmonger. The current Vlad the Warmonger. Vlad, is there Vlad the Impaler? Ah, Vlad the Impaler. Now...

Vlad the Impaler was also Vlad Dracula. They are the same person. I don't like Dracula now because that sounds horrible. Yeah, it does. I don't even know what impaling means. It's one of those words where you hear it. It's like molest or grope. You don't even need to know what it means to feel kind of queasy. I'm glad we're not talking about Vlad the Groper because I'd have to know about that story. Now...

But you've already hit on what he was famous for doing. So, and I can tell by your face, like, you want some more details about what impaling is really about. Yeah, what does it mean? Oh, yeah. Do I need to, do I want to know? You don't. You really don't. Really? But I'm going to tell you anyway. His most iconic historical episode was when he captured soldiers from an Ottoman army that was pursuing him.

and impaled them all around the outskirts of a city. Spikes right through them. So that when the rest of the Turkish army arrived at the outskirts, they would be terrified by confronting a forest of

of their impaled comrades. Would they have been still alive, kind of wriggling around and all that sort of stuff? I can't tell you much about the mechanics of impalement. I mean, I guess you survive for a bit. Yeah. Depends on where you're impaled. That's horrible. So he had people doing it for him or he did it all himself? I'm sure he had like a crew of...

semi-professional impalers. Right. Probably didn't get it right the first couple of times, which must have been really gruesome. Like, we were trying to impale them, but it just kind of stuck. Well, keep trying. Keep trying. As long as they suffer, I don't care. Did you use a sharp stick? Oh, a sharp stick. Yeah, we should have thought of that one. Yeah. They were just going to use a blunt one.

And you said it was his most iconic episode, which the word iconic feels a little generous. Well, I mean, it earned him the nickname Vlad the Impaler. Right. So you got to do a lot of impaling before you get the title. I mean, I don't want to kink shame the guy, but even in the 1400s, I'm guessing this was pretty unpleasant behavior. Yeah, yeah. Also... Don't give me that. It was a different time. And apparently he developed a taste for it. He loved inviting foreign diplomats to dinner and then just impaling them afterwards. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, that's not good hosting. No, it's like, so what would you like for dessert? Would you like the flan? Or, oh, sharp stick up the ruck! Yeah, I don't like the sound of this guy. No, no. And it's a lot less sexy than the sort of presentation of Dracula in the movies.

Although that guy is biting necks and causing damage. There's a kind of romance to, you know, he's a striking figure. There's something in it for the women, usually, you know, at least. There seems to be a kind of swooning seduction. There's nothing, this is like the worst hinge date ever, you know. So Vlad enjoyed public displays of impalement and sometimes would host...

I couldn't make this up, impalement competitions to see who could produce the most gruesome and elaborate methods of this terrible torture and execution. So let me ask you, who's more terrifying to you now?

the legend of Count Dracula or the actual Vlad Dracula? Vlad. Yeah, I think we got to go with the actual. Yeah. You know, history is far more terrifying than fiction. So thanks to his ruthless brutality, Vlad was a feared and powerful leader in this part of Europe. But there were those that thought he was getting a bit too big for his boots.

So you might be thinking that other warriors wanted to bring him down, other aristocrats, you know, bring him down with force. Well, think again. One well-known attempt to hurt his popularity was actually an early form of slander and fake news. Perhaps the first one ever. Okay. Okay.

So the hammering nails thing wasn't enough to tarnish his reputation. Uh, no, no, no. And, and, you know, if you think, you know, getting, uh, you know, outed on Facebook or wherever is tough now, like these guys really, these guys really went full on to try to embarrass him. And, uh,

So what they did is, this was a bunch of priests from Brasov, a big city in Transylvania. They paid around 200 gold coins, an absolute fortune at the time, to have the first ever newspaper, which was being printed in Germany. In that newspaper, they had Vlad the Impaler described as a real vampire. One who drank children's blood and ate human flesh.

And they even published a drawing, I think it's actually a woodcut, showing him sitting at a table surrounded by his impaled victims, dining on human flesh. I mean, it...

They always go for the child's blood thing, don't they? When they're trying to slander someone. The child's blood is a real classic. They still use that now, don't they? When they try and slur American politicians. Yeah, yeah. They're like, oh, by the way, the Democrat... Well, you know, the corruption of innocence, like what's the most evil deed someone can commit. But they always do it with like chat show hosts and the nicest actor, don't they? Oh, do you know Tom Hanks? He actually drinks child's blood. Oh.

Before a role. I have really had they always come up with this. Yeah, they have yeah. Jeez poor Tom. But they always come for the guy, the people that seem that Oprah they always say oh you know by the way. Dines on, dines on, child's flesh. They always come for it. And it's like that's a way to just kind of oh maybe you don't know everything about Oprah.

You know what I mean? But this is an old technique. And I like the fact that the drawing would have been, you know, that would have been published. And it's like, here, we have proof. Yes. A drawing. We've made this primitive woodcut of this man dining on human flesh. Oh, God, it must be real. See people arguing about it at the dinner table. Like, there's some people that, you know, read this newspaper, you know, and there's others that don't. And they're like, no, that's fake news. Yeah. How do you know? Came up on my woodblock feed. Yeah.

It's real, I tell you. Yeah, okay. All right, so let's get back to our man. So the guy that wrote the first Dracula book, what was his name? Bram Stoker. Okay, right. So he must have stolen the blood thing from this whole...

impaler guy. Well, kind of. There's more to it than that, isn't there, always, right? Bram Stoker published the book called Dracula in 1897. He read up a lot on Transylvania folklore and found out that a lot of people actually believed in vampires back during this time. Okay. Well, you know, you've got to have something to believe in. Yeah. Yeah.

So, here's Mate to tell us more. So, one of the most crazy superstitions that we have when there is a problem like epidemic or pandemic moment and people are dying and you have no idea why, we start to search in the village.

And if we find out that he died and he had an unfinished business with his family or with some enemies, we go at the graveyard, we dig into the tomb, and then after that, in order to make sure that he will never come back again, we have to cut the head with the silver dagger, and then we take the head, we place the head between the legs,

It seems a very convoluted way to deal with

Well, just take the hands and throw them in the sea or something. I mean, I was going to say you're an East London boy. I would imagine you find this a very mild way to deal with the neighborhood problem. North London, actually. Sorry, North London. So even milder. Yeah, we have a very strict code over there. If we find out someone has unfinished business, we dig them up. We burn them in the town square just near Hornsey train station.

Ah yes, the hornsy burning place. Yeah, and then we sort of dance around them. And then go for a kebab. And then we take the ashes and we scatter them so that they can't reform and start their unfinished business again. Yeah, and even for like minor offenses like, you know, blocking someone's garage. Or borrowing a hammer. Borrowing a hammer for too long. For some amateur impaling.

I'm just trying to get into impaling. Has anyone got any tips? Please like and share if you know anyone who could help. Not giving a full pint at the pub. Yeah, that's a little too frothy. Burn you and scatter your ashes, you bastard. Unfinished business, you hear? Unfinished business. So Bram Stoker, the author, has taken a few of these facts and legends around Dracula and just had some fun for themselves a bit.

Yeah, but the strange thing is that Stoker never mentioned Vlad Dracule in the hundreds of pages of notes that accompanied the original book. And this has led some scholars to debate the link and some even suggest he based his character on a Hungarian woman.

called Elizabeth Bathory who was accused of killing hundreds of girls and women and became imprisoned in a castle. It's always more freaky when a woman does it, isn't it? I don't know why is that? We don't expect that from women. Gender bias. Women are just as capable of killing. It's just that we have these societal ideas and we slot women into these roles but they're very inaccurate. Do you think if we didn't there would be more women doing it?

Well, I mean, personally, I'd like to see fewer people murdering other people completely. But I think certainly studies have shown that women are no less capable of violence than men are. Just haven't had the opportunities. Well, again, I mean, societal pressure, it seems like more of a taboo for it to happen. I wanted to get into killing, but my husband never made me feel like I could. Yeah.

He wanted to do it. He said, no, you stay at home and keep the house nice. I wanted to be out killing too. I've always had a thing for impaling. I used to impale all my pets. My brother got the blame, but it was me. I wanted the credit. No, you slot into roles. Society does its thing. I'll just live out my days and hopefully get my chance. If I get a chance to do some impaling and killing, I will take it, but you know.

The patriarchy runs deep. The patriarchy does run deep, no pun intended. So back to our man. So what is the actual Dracula story? Well, let's get to it after the ad break. Over the past several days, three females have been found dead. Looks like someone's going after these girls. Then they have to know to watch their backs.

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Okay.

I'm guessing that's been quite good for the whippy tourist board. So what happened to the actual Vlad? Did he just sort of live out his days, maybe getting into gentler acts of puncturing, acupuncture maybe?

Or did the slander of the priests sort of work? Did he go after the priests? Impale the priests? Such violent delights have violent ends. In 1492, Dracula finally met his match, the great Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II. He drives Dracula out of his castle atop the mountain, Ponari, and forces him to flee. That's pretty impressive. I mean, getting Vlad to flee, this guy must be...

seriously scary? We don't know how he did it. I mean, Mehmed had a large army. He was very well organized. I mean, maybe...

Vlad just decided discretion was the better part of valor. What we do know is that isn't when all the damage was done to the castle. That happened in a landslide caused by a much more mundane event, an earthquake in 1913. Okay. So hang on, where did Vlad go? Well, this is debated, but some historians believe it was to another castle, Brand Castle, about 40 miles east. And we have some video of this castle too. Nice. Oh, this one looks in far nicer condition than the other one.

more like a fairy tale sort of castle. Yeah it's got Disney vibes for sure. It has these imposing towers and turrets and it's built on a rocky pier but it's nowhere near the kind of fortress feel of the other one. Yeah it's perched on this cliff or rocky outcrop not like a mountain top like the other one but it still looks pretty impressive. Yeah so Vlad hides here but when he goes to leave using a secret passage

People are waiting for him. His enemy had spies embedded in the castle, and he's put straight into the dungeons. Justice for the impaled at last. Yeah, yeah. So some people call this Dracula's Castle too because of the historical link and because of how beautiful it is. I mean, you won't be surprised to know this is the one that gets all the tourists. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, they're quite basic in that way, aren't they? Yeah. They're not in it for the truth, are they? Show them a turret and a tile roof and they get all excited. There's probably a Starbucks in there. Probably three. Can we go to the gift shop? I want a mini impaling stick. It's like a puppet just sits there and dangles. There's no real gift shop in history, lady.

It would be funny if they were just selling sharp sticks for like 10 euros a pop. Yeah, rubber nails. You get a crossbow or something. No, all we have is sharp sticks. 10 euros. A kid's starter kit. Impale your cats. Impress your friends. I love cats. I do too. I'm not trying to give any ideas. I love them both alive and impaled. It's a toss-up for me. It's a toss-up. Jeez.

I do not subscribe to this for anyone listening at home. Anti-cat violence. Yeah, but please subscribe. Yeah. All right, back to our man. So where's Vlad? Back to our bad Vlad. Well, after two months in the dungeons, he's released and soon returns to power. But then in another battle, the Ottomans finally kill him and have his head sent to the Sultan as a trophy. And I'm wondering, you know, there's a... I know from my old Dungeons & Dragons days, right, that there's... And reading about these legends, there's these...

This is a very complex set of circumstances. You have to keep a vampire dead, right? Because it's undead, so you can't just kill them in a normal way and stake through the heart and so on and so forth. And I'm wondering, one of the things, the legends, is that to keep them dead, you have to cut their head off.

And I'm wondering if maybe this is where that legend came from, that his head... But, you know, frankly, there was a lot of beheading going on back in the day, and it's a good way to show that you've killed someone. Yeah. So maybe there's no connection. Why not just burn the body? Then it's all just... You can't... Yeah, yeah. That's another thing you're supposed to do to vampires, or the undead in general. Again, it's just the stories go. They don't really exist, of course. I'm just surprised he was only in the dungeon for two months. I mean, what does a guy need to do to get life?

Well, he was a powerful guy. I mean, he probably had allies. Good behavior down there. And also remember that he was the one... Didn't puncture any of the guards? Can I do a little impaling? Can I just have one nail? Just give me like a little skewer of some rats. No, but this is a guy who used terror as a tool, you know, to try to protect this region from the Ottomans on one side and the Hungarians on the other. And as I said, like terror and fear are worth...

5,000 soldiers, if you can convince people that you are so frightening that you just shouldn't be messed with. Yeah, it keeps them in check, doesn't it? Exactly, exactly. You're in their heads. Yeah. Now, the location of his grave is a mystery. We still don't know where he was finally interred. If he is dead. Yeah, he's dead. Vampires aren't real.

Don't worry. Let's not give Lewis nightmares. Right. He's already on the edge. Yeah, he's still recovering from the catacombs in Edessa. From the catacombs, yeah. It's like, oh, the vampire's coming for me because we made fun of him badly. So Vlad would be 700 now. About 700? What are we talking? 1400s? Yep, yep. That body is definitely moldered into nothing. 600, 600 and something. Yeah. But, you know, all that child's blood keeps you young. I hate to tell you this, Tom, but there ain't no coming back. All right, okay.

Ellen DeGeneres is 300 and we all know why. Impaling. In blood and children. Keeps you sparky. So back to our man again. So what are the... Definitely dead. What do the Romanians think of Vlad? What's his legacy? Well, Romanians by all accounts love him. He's their national hero and here's Matej again to explain. People are still waiting for him to come back.

Because he actually succeeded in six years as he was the governor. The economy increased a lot, the army got way better. And something that even today we think it's impossible to do, to erase the corruption, he erased the corruption in his personal way, killing people and impale them, or sometimes when the rival family

were betrayed him. He used to boil the son and then force the mother or the father to eat the son in the front of his entire family. Horrible things.

But he's not the first king which ever did that, not only Romania, in order to keep the power. But as a national hero, and the reason we love him is because he raised the corruption. Oh my God. You know, a lot of people complain quite rightly about the normalization of extreme politics, but this is really, this is really some next level stuff. Yeah, I like the way he was like, he wasn't the first to do it. Yeah, I mean, I mean,

I mean, you know, Romania is beautiful, but this story makes me kind of a little bit more cautious about planning my next holiday. Yeah. Parking tickets. So what's the penalty for a parking ticket? Well, first we impale you, and then we boil you, and we make your son eat you. If you're on a double yellow. Double yellow. I mean, the sign clearly says no parking. It's like, it says in Romanian. It's like, that's no excuse. Yeah, you don't want to know what they're going to do if you park on a red line. Pfft.

Launch you off the catapult onto a bed of spikes. Yeah. And then mince you. And send a pie to all your relatives. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that he was...

So he wasn't corrupt? Did he say he wasn't corrupt? He fought corruption. He fought corruption? Mostly by impaling people. Yeah, some would say that, you know, murdering people and forcing their relatives to eat them is kind of corrupt. I don't know where you draw the line on corruption. What happened to Breslov? Didn't you hear he cheated on his taxes? What did they do with him? They impaled him like 18 times.

Yeah, yeah. It's like corruption is usually associated with documents going missing, invoices being forged. Maybe a fine or a custodial sentence, but not having a six-foot steel spike rammed up you. Yeah, yeah. I mean, obviously it's going to reduce corruption, but...

I think it does increase other things, which you would argue are worse. You can't argue with success. Yeah. He got the results, but at what cost? I don't really know whether it was worth it. But hey, you know, if society was in, you know, well behaved. Yeah. But is that everything? I don't know. Yeah. You got to have, I mean, I think the punishment should fit the crime. Yeah. I really do. Now, interestingly, this view of him, this positive view of him got a boost when the communists took control of Romania. Yeah.

Playing the crowd, Nikolai.

Always playing the crowd, wasn't he? I guess so. You know, he was a dangerous dictator, that dude. Didn't impale anyone, though. That we know about. Yeah. Just threw hundreds in jail, executed hundreds, had prison camps. Forced abortions. Yeah. No, not a good guy. And then, obviously, I think it's a bad sign. If your own people storm your house and murder you on television, that probably means that you've pissed off a few people. Probably means that you are unpopular. Yeah.

I did hear a comedian once talking about growing up in Romania and how he watched executions on television. Wow. Why did you watch executions on television? He goes, well, there were only a couple channels. Right. And so it's the executions or... Or Romanian Wheel of Fortune. Yeah, or something even more boring. So we watched executions.

It's like, wow, that makes a strange kind of sense. Yeah. Or some other glossy TV movie version of Dracula's life story, which they all were bored of. It's just running on repeat, like a Christmas story. There's not enough impaling. This is softened. This is being cleaned up. We want the real stuff. Yeah. I mean, if they turned to a reality TV show, that would be who wants to be impaled. Yeah, there'd be people. I'd probably only run for one season, I think, where people caught on.

There'd be people who want to do it. The thirst for fame is... That's better than that Japanese television show where you eat too much spaghetti and they don't let you use the bathroom. Yeah, or eat worms in a phone box or whatever they make them do. Man, no one gets tired of humiliation apparently. I know I never do. Yeah.

So this Vlad guy, Dracula, yeah, he's kind of become softened. His legacy doesn't seem... Obviously, Dracula and the Impaler are not linked so strongly that people go, oh, I don't like Dracula. No, who would... People don't associate the two. Who would think that a story about... A fictional story about a guy that tears people's throats out in the middle of the night and turns...

turns them into horrible undead is actually the nicer version. You know? Like the Dracula lite version. Yeah, I like them pitching that at the script meeting. Can we soften him a bit?

Maybe he doesn't just impale people. Maybe he just sort of eats chunks off their flesh. Yeah. And maybe they don't really die. They just become really pale and listless like Scottish people, you know? Yeah. Unable to go out after midnight. What is the... That's vampires. Yeah, daytime. They can't come out in the daytime. Dracula.

Are they vampires? Yeah. Am I confusing genres here? Vampires cannot take sunlight, apparently. And what are Draculas? Well, Dracula is the... There are no Draculas. It's not a plural. Singular. One. Count Dracula. It's not Count the Draculas. It's Count Dracula. That's a good place to end, I think. Producer Lewis here. Thanks for listening to this episode of Where Did Everyone Go?

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