ABSTRACT
One of the most attractive passages of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula describes how the bookkeeper Jonathan Harker travels through Transylvania. Journeying by train and by stagecoach, he passes through a country of endless forests and mist-shrouded hills, on an assignment to provide advice to a certain Count Dracula. For the Dracula fans, their visit to Whitby is, in a certain sense, not their first encounter with the town, but rather a renewed encounter, the realization of a journey which they have already taken many times in their imagination. Dracula tourists such as Tanya are attracted by the story of Dracula, partly because of its dark-romantic mix of eroticism and violence. The Dracula Tour has been offered by ITE, an American travel agency specialised in so-called terror tours. In addition to the Dracula Tour, ITE offers GhosTours of England and Scotland, and an annual Weekend of the Witch in Salem, Massachusetts, the town infamous for its seventeenth-century witch hunts.
