have you heard about Dracula?

Yes I did, I was born in Transilvania. It is a myth, the myth of Stocker's Dracula. Stoker came across some information about vampire beliefs in Transylvania which he used in the novel. But Stoker did not make up the name "Dracula". Every myth has an origin somewhere in the reallity. There was a Dracula in the 15th century: Vlad the Impaler (Vlad Tepes in Romanian language), descended from Basarab the Great, a fourteenth-century prince who is credited with having founded the state of Wallachia, part of present-day Romania. This name, from the Turkish nickname "kaziklu bey" ("impaling prince"), was used by Ottoman chroniclers of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries because of Vlad's fondness for impalement as a means of execution. In 1431, the senior Vlad (the futher) received a honor: the initiation into the Order of the Dragon. Vlad then took on the nickname "Dracul". The Wallachian word "dracul" was derived from the Latin "draco" meaning "the dragon". The younger Vlad adopted the name "Dracula" indicating "son of Dracul" or "son of the Dragon". Vlad Dracula is the name he liked to use about himself, most probably and not Vlad the Impaler. Stocker who never visited Wallachia came across his name in a book he was researching entitled AN ACCOUNT OF THE PRINCIPALITIES OF WALLACHIA AND MOLDAVIA (1820). The real Dracula is a part of the Romanian history and his bloodthirsty exploits may have led him to being linked with the legends of blood- drinking vampires!

I heard about Dracula probably before a lot of the people on mylot were born.