Dracula church where it's raining bones! Debris from cliff-top graves falls on town after landslide



Human remains have been collected at the bottom of the cliff and re-buried

Residents in Whitby terrified more of the cliff face is about to collapse



Bram Stoker used the cemetery for backdrop to Dracula horror scenes

The novelist visited the North Yorkshire town in the 1890s

It is the eerie old church that featured in Bram Stoker’s gothic novel Dracula.

Now St Mary’s in Whitby has become the scene of real horror after human bones began to emerge from their centuries-old graves.

The grisly discovery was made when the church cemetery, which dates to 1110AD, began to subside and fall down the cliff last month following heavy rain.

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Grave danger: Human bones have crumbled off the side of the cliff where St Mary's Church, in Whitby, stands

Ruin: It is feared the legendary St Mary's Church in Whitby could fall if the cliff face crumbles away

Many of the ancient graves were exposed – and among the debris tumbling on to the buildings below were a number of human bones, thought to be at least a century old.

Stoker was inspired to use the cemetery – which has been closed to the public since 1865 – as the backdrop for some of Dracula’s horror scenes after visiting the North Yorkshire town in the 1890s.

Resident Barry Brown, 56, told how he found several bones in the backyard of his kipper smokehouse, which sits under the cliff.

He said: ‘When the subsidence began I went out and found a few pieces of bone. They’d been buried for God knows how many years because they were soft and yellow from being in the soil.

'I managed to identify one hip bone, two pieces of skull and a large bone that looked like it was part of a leg.

‘It’s quite sad picking that sort of thing up, I expect the people who buried them thought they’d be there for ever.

Debris: More cracks have appeared in the cliff face this week following heavy rainfall in Whitby Problems: Reverend Canon David Smith said the church will have to use money earmarked for repairs to pay for the landslide recovery work

Historic: In 2000 St Mary's Church in Whitby experienced more landslides close to the edge of the graveyard

Iconic: St Mary's church featured in Bram Stoker's classic novel Dracula

Goths who flocked to the graveyard because of its links to Dracula were banned from the churchyard in 2011 Horror: Christopher Lee in the 1958 horror film Dracula which was inspired by the novel by Bram Stoker (right)



‘It could have even been one of my relatives, as my family have been here since the early 1800s.’ The bones were collected soon afterwards by church staff and have since been reburied in a more stable spot.

It is not known who the bones belonged to, as many of the headstones in the cemetery have been moved around over the centuries. St Mary’s Reverend Canon David Smith said: ‘The cemetery has been closed for over a century, so if any graves are exposed it’s only bones. If anything is exposed we re-inter them.’

The landslide has been blamed on a drainage pipe which became damaged and fell away. This meant recent heavy rainfall saturated the soil, which then began to fall.

Rev Smith added: ‘The church has been trying to muck in to get things done and we have had a civil engineer working to sort it out.

‘They’ve been trying to find where the water was coming from and making the cliff edge more secure.’

T HE PERFECT SETTING FOR A GOTHIC NOVEL As Bram Stoker sat at his desk overlooking the seaside town of Whitby Bay in 1890 he noticed the huge number of bats flying around St Mary's Church. Perched on top of a cliff St Mary's, with its rows upon rows of tombstones, looked out onto the stormy North Sea.

It was the atmospheric surroundings of Whitby and St Mary's Church which would inspire him to write the classic Gothic novel Dracula published in 1897.

The writer happened to be staying in the town trying to decide whether it would be suitable for a family holiday. However, it became the perfect backdrop for his book.

He wrote: 'For a moment or two I could see nothing, as the shadow of a cloud obscured St. Mary's Church. 'Then as the cloud passed I could see the ruins of the Abbey coming into view; and as the edge of a narrow band of light as sharp as a sword-cut moved along, the church and churchyard became gradually visible... 'It seemed to me as though something dark stood behind the seat where the white figure shone, and bent over it. What it was, whether man or beast, I could not tell.'

Stoker's Dracula is shipwrecked off the Yorkshire coast. He comes ashore in the guise of a black dog and wreaks havoc on the town. Prince Vlad the Impaler, from Transylvania and known for his bloodthirsty reputation, is thought to have been the inspiration for Stoker's character Dracula. One of the characters, Mina, keeps a journal containing detailed descriptions of Whitby and those areas frequented by Dracula.

A spokesman for Scarborough Borough Council said: ‘The cliff is not the responsibility of the council because it is private land and there is no immediate danger to life or property. ‘We have written to the church and have made them aware of their obligations as landowners.’ Dracula, published in 1897, tells the story of the vampire Count’s attempt to relocate from Transylvania to England, leaving a trail of dead in his wake, with his ship running aground in Whitby in a storm. Stoker hit upon the idea of the count while reading a history book at Whitby library, and made St Mary’s part of the story after being struck by the way the bats circled the building. In one scene, the Count appears in the church cemetery with his young victim Lucy Westenra. Many visitors to Whitby still ask about Dracula’s grave, forgetting he is a work of fiction.

The cemetery, which inspired Bram Stoker when writing his classic novel Dracula, is closed to the public

The future of the historic graveyard at St Mary's Church in Whitby is in danger after the nearby cliff began crumbling away Human bones were discovered after the landslide at St Mary's Church which took place last month