The History of Vlad the Impaler | Atlas of Cursed Places

MAN: Transylvania, the name conjures it all—dense pine, impassable, craggy cliffs, thick ground fog. This is the mythic forest of your childhood nightmare. Bran Castle, billed as the last standing relic of a man some call Dracula. The story goes that Romania's bottomless well of tyranny, catastrophe, and overall human misery can all be traced back to one terrifying ruler and his supernatural evil.

Ah, OK. So have you ever heard of the curse of Vlad Tepes? Yeah. He lost his wife. He lost his dynasty. He lost his family. And he signed a document in order to bring a curse down against his enemy, and he promised that he will return. That was his curse, and I will take revenge against those that betrayed me. He was killed, and his body was buried in a monastery nearby Bucharest. Later on, when they opened the coffin, they never found his body, which is quite creepy.

Yeah, right. You do start to wonder what if he's coming back again? So you'd be worried if you were his enemy. You might be a little nervous. - Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

MAN: Vlad spent much of his life constructing a fearsome persona. In some ways, his reputation was so extreme that it haunts the entire world.

MAN: Gross.

MAN: Oh my god. Three days.

MAN: Yeah. What are some of the other ways he would do it? Wow. He sounds like a really nice guy.

MAN: Yeah, fascists always say that. Once he took power in 1448, Vlad began a lifelong battle to protect his country from invaders from all sides—Hungarians, rival Nobles, but, most of all, the ever-expanding ruthless Ottoman Empire, Vlad's mortal enemy. The other kings and rulers of his time had surrendered, and they all paid tribute. But Vlad fought on with a sheer hatred that defies description, perhaps because the Ottomans had kidnapped him as a child, and by the time his father and brother were killed, his hatred had grown so virulent that we still make TV shows about him 600 years later.

Vlad, himself, he was right here. Yeah, right here.

MAN: Amazing. Wow. You know, 600 years ago, there was a real person here. Vlad the Impaler looked out his little window, thought about revenge.