Dracula’s Castle for Sale. Plumbing Needs Work.

Trakai Castle, Lithuania

Buy a stake in Dracula’s castle! Har har. Those folks at the Telegraph slay me. But seriously folks. “Transylvania’s most famous fortress” is for sale:

The property comes with a long list of previous owners: everyone from Saxons to Hungarians to Teutonic knights. And although the facilities may not be exactly state-of-the-art (the plumbing is reported to require some work), there’s no questioning the detachedness of the property. It stands on top of a hill, and is most definitely not overlooked by neighbours. …

And yes, we all know that the bloodsucking vampire Count Dracula was a purely fictional character, invented by the Irish writer Bram Stoker, and made famous in films starring sharp-fanged Christopher Lee. But the fearsome real-life Vlad “The Impaler” Tepes famously operated in this area in the 15th century. Indeed, he is said to have been imprisoned in Bran Castle for a couple of months. On top of which, Transylvanian legend and folklore are full of characters called strigoi. These ghostly beings leave their corporeal bodies when darkness falls and roam the surrounding valleys searching for sleeping villagers to terrify.

In the real world, too, the castle has a whole dungeon full of gripping stories. In 1920, back in the days when Romania had a royal family, the fortress was given to Queen Marie, the granddaughter of our own Queen Victoria. When she died, in 1938, she bequeathed the castle to her daughter Princess Ileana, who in 1944 set up a hospital at Bran, to treat soldiers wounded in the war. The royal tenure came to a sudden end, though, when the communists came to power.

Stupid Communists. Always messing with our castles. Anyway. No vampires! There are no actual vampires of course silly Americans. Just … don’t go down to the basement. Price available upon request.

Related: How Vampires Do Money

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