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The Castle in Transylvania
(aka: The Castle Of The Carpathians)

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The Castle in Transylvania (Literature)
The book actually has nothing to do with zombies, but then again, most holograms look like walking corpses anyway.

When most people think of Jules Verne, they usually aren't thinking of his single Gothic Horror novel published in 1893. The Castle in Transylvania starts off as the archetypical Haunted Castle story: the villagers of Werst, a town west of the Carpathian Mountains, notice that various strange things are occurring in the long abandoned castle of Baron Rodolphe de Gortz and believe that it is now inhabited by the devil. Count Franz de Telek, a visitor to the area, is intrigued by these superstitions and decides to go investigate the castle himself. Things start to get strange when the Count runs into La Stilla, an Italian Singer, who he believes is being kept prisoner inside the castle. But La Stilla has been dead for years...


The Castle in Transylvania displays these tropes:

  • Dead All Along La Stilla is thought to have died five years earlier, but the baron managed to keep her voice and image recorded and continuously plays them to himself.
  • Death by Despair: After the Count's manservant shoots the recording of La Stilla's last performance, the baron prefers to let himself die in his Collapsing Lair.
  • Earth All Along: The opening chapters heavily imply that the story takes place long ago, most likely in the late 1700s or early 1800s during the first golden age of Gothic Horror. (When a traveling peddler tries to sell a villager a telescope, he finds the villager's never even heard of such a thing.) Only in the final chapter does Verne reveal that the book takes place in what for him was the near-future, a time when voice recording technology had been perfected, and the village is even more rustic and out-of-touch than we thought.
  • Genre Roulette: Most of the book reads as Gothic Horror, but once you've read the final chapter, you discover it was Speculative Fiction all along.
  • Greedy Jew: Subverted with Jonas the inkeeper, who is noted to lend money at reasonable rates unlike most of his fellow Jews, but does insist on being paid back at the agreed-upon date.
  • Haunted Castle: Theories of haunting are the only way for the villagers to make sense of the title castle. In fact, they're the only genre-appropriate way for the reader to interpret what goes on at the castle unless you know what's coming at the end.
  • Hologram: Most of the "haunting" was done by projecting moving, 3-D images with a machine to make it appear like something supernatural was going on.
  • Homage: The first chapter mentions the Gothic fantasy writer E. T. A. Hoffmann by name, and his influence remains pretty clear throughout.
  • Hostile Weather: Sort of, during the Count's first visit to the castle, the clouds above the area take the shape of various demons and monsters to frighten away the protagonists.
  • It Will Never Catch On: Orfanik's inventions rival modern technology in efficiency, but the Count was the only one willing to fund his research.
  • Lightning Can Do Anything: Or rather, electricity allows the creation of create microphones, telephones, home security systems, holograms... The only thing it can't do is raise the dead.
  • The Lost Lenore: La Stilla for both the count and the Baron, dying onstage in her final performance.
  • Punch-Clock Villain: Orfanik is only with the Baron for the financial security to pursue his research. Once the gig is up, he makes no difficulty in explaining everything that happened and even freely provides the Count with remaining recordings of La Stilla's performances.
  • Ruritania: The story is set in a Romanian backwater by backwater standards, where everyone believes in the supernatural.
  • "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: The castle wasn't actually haunted, the Baron used holographic projections and voice recordings to scare away the locals, so he'd have a place to escape the law.
  • Shout-Out: The peddler and his mechanical devices (clocks, thermometers, barometers...) brings to mind Coppelius' number in The Tales Of Hoffmann.
  • Two-Way Tapping: A variation in that the discovery isn't made until the very end (and provided by the narrator at that): the Baron's Mad Scientist set up a telephone line to spy on the inn, that just happens to be able to transmit sound as well.
  • Twist Ending: As implied by all the blanked-out spoilers on this very page.

Alternative Title(s): The Carpathian Castle, The Castle Of The Carpathians, Le Chateau Des Carpathes

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