Airbnb has revealed a competition that will allow the winner and one guest to sleep overnight in the spooky Bran Castle, the home of Count Dracula in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel.
The winner and guest will be flown in from wherever they are in the world, with a horse-drawn carriage taking them through Transylvania.
The company said: “When you come around the final bend on the tree-lined road, you’ll catch a glimpse of Bran Castle. This misty mountain-top manor is home for the night. The chill that suddenly fills the carriage is not the evening mist, it’s a fear older than the forests now grown up around the castle rock. This is the lair of vampires, and you cannot leave until dawn.”
The castle, located in the Carpathian Mountains in Romania, will be open overnight for the first time in 70 years. On 31 October, the two lucky(?) guests will have the chance to dine – no blood will be provided – before crawling down to sleep in the lavishly furnished coffins, just as the legendary vampire did.
The evening will be hosted by Bram Stoker’s great-great nephew Dacre, author of the Dracula sequel, Dracula the Un-Dead. The stay includes a “blood-enriching meal” of Chicken Paprikash – exactly as Jonathan Harker is given in the iconic story.
The winners will be required to follow a number of rules such as a ban against garlic or any garlic-scented items, no silver jewellery or holy symbols, and curtains must be closed before sunrise. This is all to be expected of course, as the house does belong to a vampire!
In order to win the creepy ‘prize’, contestants are asked to use their “dark imagination and deep knowledge of vampires” to say what their response would be, should they end up “face to fang” with the bloodsucking creature, Dracula.