By Dina Kyriakidou
SIGHISOARA, Romania (Reuters) – Bloodied fangs painted on their T-shirts and silver bats dangling from their ears, they swoop to the heart of Transylvania to feed their hunger for the occult.
The guise of academia is swiftly dropped. Ghost stories dominate the dinner table, passionate debate swirls around which character actor played the best Count Dracula and midnight strolls usually head straight to the nearby cemetery.
Folklorists, historians and scientists seeking the origins of the legend of Dracula joined amateur vampirologists from around the globe during the third World Dracula Congress, held this month in Romania’s medieval town of Sighisoara.
“Romania can almost be described as a spiritual home for people who enjoy stories of ghosts, witches, werewolves, vampires and the supernatural in general,” said Sir Alan Murdie, chairman of England’s Ghost Club.
