14 Real Places That Haunt the Pages of Literature

By Holyn Thigpen

Along with Bran Castle and Whitby Abbey, these ruins may have inspired Bram Stoker’s iconic vampire abode. This “little Gothic castle” on the River Thames inspired what many scholars believe to be the first Gothic novel: “The Castle of Otranto” by Horace Walpole. However, at the time Edgar Allan Poe served there, in 1827, it was still called by its original name: Castle Island.