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(Image: North News)

The legend of Dracula has returned to haunt a seaside town… after a cascade of human bones.

And residents of Whitby, North Yorkshire – famously featured in Bram Stoker’s classic 1897 novel about the blood-thirsty count – are now facing a real-life horror story.

A landslide has opened up graves in an ancient cliff-top churchyard, causing remains to slither down on their homes.

The macabre debris began to fall after the already damaged cliffs were deluged by a leaking drainage pipe.

Now heavy rain has left locals in the shadow of the 1110 AD church living in fear.

Barry Brown, 56, a partner in the 140-year-old smoked fish business Fortune’s Kippers at the foot of the cliffs, said: “Dracula is fantasy – but this is reality and it has given us sleepless nights.

"You see things moving all the time. The next dollop of heavy rain the whole cliff could collapse.

"Some people have already packed up and left.”

He added: “When I saw the bones it was really sad and such a shame because it is a lovely churchyard.

"But it has happened before and they were gathered up and taken to be reburied.”

The Rev David Smith, canon of St Mary’s church, said the cemetery had not been used since 1865 – “so if any graves are exposed it’s only bones”.

He added: “If anything is exposed we collect and rebury it in the same churchyard away from the edge.”

He said he hoped work on the damaged drainage pipe would be completed soon.

A spokesman for the local borough council said: “We are monitoring the situation.”

Ten Dracula facts

1. Bram Stoker's Dracula was originally called The Undead.

2. More than 1,000 novels and 200 films have been made about Dracula.

3. After Sherlock Holmes, Dracula is apparently the fictional character with the most TV and film appearances.

4. In the novel, Dracula is depicted as an elderly man with a thin grey moustache, very different to the dark-haired, clean-shaven look we're used to seeing.

5. Was Stoker's Dracula gay? When rescuing Harker from vampire women he says "This man belongs to me", leading to speculation he was homosexual.

6. Stoker's inspiration for Dracula may have come from his mum, who read him tales of the supernatural and death when he was a sickly child.

7. Stoker found inspiration for Dracula while holidaying in the Yorkshire seaside holiday town of Whitby.

8. Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 big screen adaptation, Bram Stoker's Dracula, starring Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Keanu Reeves and Anthony Hopkins was a box office smash.

9. In 2009 Bram Stoker's great grand nephew Dacre Stoker released a sequel, Dracula The Un-Dead, to mixed reviews.

10. Stoker also wrote a short story called Dracula's Guest, which was published shortly after he died.