Dracula's Guest and Other Stories
Written by Bram Stoker
Narrated by Rupert Degas
3.5/5
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About this audiobook
Best known for his masterpiece of horror, Dracula, Bram Stoker wrote a number of other novels and many short stories, all on supernatural themes or filled with a physical terror reminiscent of Poe. Dracula’s Guest was originally part of the great novel, but was excised and published separately. Some of these stories, such as The Squaw, The Judge’s House and The Burial of the Rats, rank very high among classic tales of the macabre. These stories deserve to be better known for the light they shed on the enigmatic author of one of the world’s supreme literary adventures into the realm of nightmare.
Bram Stoker
Bram (Abraham) Stoker was an Irish novelist, born November 8, 1847 in Dublin, Ireland. 'Dracula' was to become his best-known work, based on European folklore and stories of vampires. Although most famous for writing 'Dracula', Stoker wrote eighteen books before he died in 1912 at the age of sixty-four.
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Reviews for Dracula's Guest and Other Stories
211 ratings11 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This is a collection of stories written by Bram Stoker, published throughout his life. It is divided into two sections. The First is a collection of assorted stories, the Second all center on a particular land and have a more fairy tale quality.First Section: Best tales include The Judge's House, The Coming of Abel Behenna, and The Burial of the Rats.Second Section: The only take worth reading was the Invisible Giant. The rest were sacarine, moralist, preachy tales full of nonsense.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Published in 1914 two years after Stoker’s death this collection of short stories are masterful tales of horror and the supernatural. Readers may well be familiar with some of the stories which have been plagiarised over the years, but reading the original versions in this collection will open some eyes to the quality of Stoker’s writing. He had the ability to create an atmosphere of dark, dense danger that his characters are unable to see for themselves. A dreadful happening seems to be lurking just around the corner and yet when it does there is no feeling of it being forced: we see it coming and are not disappointed. There are nine stories in this collection, five of which are first class examples of late gothic horror.‘Dracula’s Guest’ opens the collection and it is a concise tableau of the Dracula legend. Like many of the stories it is written in the first person; in this case a young Englishman who is exploring the countryside around Munich in the company of his German guide and in their carriage and four horses. They come to a cross roads; it is Walpurgis Nacht, but the Englishman is keen to follow the road down into a valley. The horses are already disturbed, the guide looses most of his English in a frantic attempt to persuade the Englishman that this is a very bad idea. He will not go down the road under any circumstances and the stand off is only resolved by the Englishman getting down from the carriage and walking down the road on foot.“With a despairing gesture, Johann turned his horses towards Munich. I leaned on my stick and looked after him. He went slowly along the road for a while then there came over the crest of the hill a man tall and thin. I could see so much in the distance. When he drew near the horses, they began to jump and kick about, then to scream with terror. Johann could not hold them in; they bolted down the road, running away madly. I watched them out of sight, then looked for the stranger and found that, he too, was gone.With a light heart I turned down the side road through the deepening valley………………..”The intrepid but foolish Englishman is soon in a horror story all of his own involving; a wolf who is not a wolf, a stake driven through the marble of the top of a tomb and a tornado like storm and it soon gets worse. A classic horror tale with a surprising twist at the end.‘The Judge’s House’ is the second story and it is equally as good as the first. A student studying for his maths exams rents a house in a quiet village to get on with his work. The house (the Judge’s house) has a sinister history, but the villagers keep this to themselves. Alone in the house the student is disturbed by rats that become more confident as the nights pass. He is astonished one night when a rat considerably larger than the others is sitting opposite him across the table staring at him balefully. Stoker builds up the atmosphere and tension as the student battles with the rat who is reluctant to move. A haunted house story that has the expected tragic ending. ‘The Squaw’ follows and is another excellent story involving a cat out for revenge on a human that accidentally killed her only kitten. There is a torture chamber in an old castle and an iron maiden that we know is going to feature.‘The Secret of Growing Gold’ is another revenge story, a revenge from beyond the gave perhaps. A woman has been murdered by her lover while on holiday in the Alps. Her lover soon replaces her with an ideal wife, but the ravaged figure of the former mistress reappears.‘The Gipsy Prophecy’ is a neat story of a young couple who are seemingly doomed by the Gipsy Queens prophecy that the husband will be found standing over the prostrate body of his wife with his hands running with blood.‘The Coming of Abel Behenna' is the story of two young men in a small Cornish coastal village who fall in love with the same girl. The girl’s mother arranges things so that her daughter will profit from delaying her decision to marry, this results in tragic consequences for the men and the tale takes in a shipwreck and a drowning.‘The Burial of the Rats’ is my favourite story in the collection. Again it is told in the first person by a young man exploring the rag pickers hovels that surround an area of Paris. His curiosity leads him into danger as he goes deeper into the dust heaps where the rag pickers live. He becomes conscious that his diamond ring may be too tempting a prize for the residents of this shanty town and Stoker is able to ratchet up the tension for the readers who feel a growing menace from the young man’s surroundings. The elderly sub-human residents, together with a thriving rat population become more oppressive, until the young man explodes into action in an attempted escape. He is hopelessly lost in the shanty town of dust, but must run for his life and Stoker describes a breathless night time chase in an environment that is increasingly hostile. ‘A dream of Red Hands’ is a story of a man who cannot escape the nightmares from a murder that he committed in his youth. He must pay full retribution for his deeds and Stoker brings this about with a cleverly told tale.‘Crooked Sands’ rounds out the collection and it ends on a high note. A wealthy London merchant takes his family on holiday to a Scottish seaside town. He kits himself out in full Scottish chieftains dress, much to the amusement of his family. He finds himself ridiculed in the village but his stubborn vanity will not allow him to back down and he takes to walking out alone in the evening on a beach where there is danger of quicksand. One evening he sees a mirror image of himself on the other side of the quicksands and he cannot resist stepping forward.A very fine collection of horror stories that at their best create real tension and suspense. Stoker’s fine descriptive writing enable him to quickly place the reader inside his story and once inside you will want to read until the sometimes gruesome end. Four stars.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Short stories dealing with destiny, prophecies and retribution. Some of them are pretty spooky.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dracula's Guest is a collection of short stories by Bram Stoker which includes: Dracula's Guest The Judge's House The Gipsy Prophecy The Coming of Abel Behenna The Burial of the Rats A Dream of Red Hands Crooken Sands and The Secret of Growing Old. In Dracula's guest you follow a young Englishman who is in a town and on Walpurgis Night leaves his carriage to wander off and see an abandoned village. The village was deemed unholy which sparked his interest to begin with. While there he sees a tomb and tries to take cover in the doorway while there is a terrible storm. Later he is found by some military men. They say they went to search for him because they had received word from his host Dracula that he may have been lost. It is rumored to have been Jonathan Harker before his visit with the count but that is not certain.
My next favorite was the story of the Judge's House. It has a young scholar who is seeking some peace and quiet and rents a house that locals feel is bewitched. It is mostly infested with rats. However when I read it and got to the end I had goose bumps! It was great. I completely recommend this to Stoker fans! - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Firstly I'm not a Stoker fanatic. Dracula's Guest, however gave me the bone marrow I needed from Abraham's mind. I wish I'd read this before the great vampire story. Dracula was not the horror story my macabre mind wanted. Dracula's Guest drives the wooden pin into your chest and burns the eyes. A maniacal Judge, reincarnated as a huge rat, torments a visitor into dreadful rage. Another paradigm is a possessed Black Cat.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I thought this collection was just okay. I enjoyed the story The Judge's House the most. A good rat story is always fun.
I was a bit disappointed in this collection. I'm a big fan of Dracula and I guess I just expected more. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The title piece is an excised section of Dracula. Mrs S says in her preface that it was removed due to the length of the novel. I suspect though that it's excision was more provoked by the fact that it portrays Harker as an absolute muppet and really reveals far too much far too early. If you've read Dracula you my well find that the opening part, Harker's Journal, is by far the most powerful part of the book and this would interrupt the flow.The remaining stories are for the most part overly predicable or pointless grisly stories. There are nice bits - the deaths in The Squaw are well done, for example and as Mrs S stresses, these are early and unrevised works. The humour of Crooken Sands is enjoyable too. I particularly enjoyed A Dream of Red Hands. I really do identify with Jacob Settle. Can't believe I'm admitting this online, but I do, so there. (I haven't actually murdered anyone.)I think this would be most of interest to a Dracula fan. Stoker is obviously a man with something on his mind and there are elements of all the stories that put you in mind of that novel, not least of which is his obsession with the sense of dread, either in his characters or his audience.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/53.5 ★
My favorite was Dracula's Guest
You just can't compete with the aristocratic vampire.
I found some short stories more interesting than others.
They had elements of the supernatural , physical terror and always an unsettling
aura.
Since Bram Stoker wrote a number of novels and many short stories, I'll search for more.
5 AUDIO DISCS - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
This is a collection of various tales, being Dracula's guest only one of them.
As for the tales themselves, my absolute favourite would definitely be the Judge's House, followed by the Dracula's Guest (which is a snippet that had been removed from Dracula).
Other noteworthy tales would also include The Squaw (extremely predictable, but with creepy imagery), The Burial of Rats (the reason for the title is pretty creepy, but lots of plus points for being the most action packed, since it features a chase scene), and The Secret of Growing Gold (reads much like a ghost story). Honourable mention for A Dream of Red Hands, which I found to be more original among the other tales, even if not exactly the most engaging. The rating would go something like this:
4* The Judge's House
4* Dracula's Guest
4* The Burial of Rats
3* The Squaw
3* The Secret of Growing Gold
3* A Dream of Red Hands
2* The Coming of Abel Behenna
2* The Gipsy Prophecy
2* Crooken Sands
As I said, the stories follow much the same plotline for the most part, which makes them extremely predictable when reading them all in a row. To be honest, the more stories I read, the more bored I became, because I could foresee overall what was coming. By the end, I just wanted to finish the book already, since the only story able to get me out of my 'stupor' in the second half was The Burial of Rats.
I'd still highly recommend The Judge's House and Dracula's Guest to anyone who liked Dracula however, I found those have the same wonderful eery and creepy atmosphere I loved in that book. Just those two tales alone make this book worth reading. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An excellent anthology by the Master himself. From the title story through The Signalman to Crooken Sands - all are the classic, chilling tales recognizable as Bram Stokers'.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I really enjoyed this book. For its time it had some very interesting ideas and was easy to read