Welcome to BrainStuff, a production of I-Heart Radio.

Hey Brain Stuff, Lauren Volkalbaum here.

Death was not the end for poor Lucy Wisterner.

A character in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, Dracula,

she fell victim to the book's aristocratic villain.

While stealing her blood night after night, Count Dracula of Transylvania slowly drained the life out of Lucy.

But that was only the beginning, for the young woman's killer also transformed her into an undead vampire like himself.

A brief reign of terror ensued at the graveyard.

Then Lucy's living fiance, Arthur, and his companions,

including the vampire savvy Dr Abraham Van Helsing, found her awake

near her tomb.

She was finally destroyed for good after trying to lure Arthur into a lover's embrace. Had Arthur accepted her kiss, Dr Van Helsing explained in his broken English,

the morning suitor would have, quote, become Nosferatu, as they call it in Eastern Europe.

The Nosferatu do not die like the bee when he sting once.

He is only stronger and being stronger have yet more power to work evil. In the novel Dracula,

Stoker treats Nosferr as a synonym for vampire.

Countless horror writers took his lead using the two terms interchangeably over the next 100 plus years,

including Tree House of Terror 4, the 1993 episode of The Simpsons.

Like Van Helsing, Stoker seems to have believed that Nosferatu was an authentic word of Eastern European origin, but the evidence tells another story.

Nasferatu is probably a mistranslation of a Romanian or Greek term that scholars have yet

to pin down.

Whatever its origins were, horror media gave Nosferatu a new meaning,

...