Today's Montage 1972

[Nicky]

I always hoped that Tom J and Roxanne's immolations were actually tricks and they dematerialized and rematerialized somewhere else safely.  But I'm a softy that way.   

And Gothy ... here's the word from Van Helsing himself:  "His [Dracula's] power ceases, as does that of all evil things, at the coming of day.  Only at certain times can he have limited freedom.  If he be not at the place whither he is bound, he can only change himself at noon or at exact sunrise or sunset."  This is why he doesn't just disappear when the vampire hunters corner him at his castle at the end of the novel:  according to the Prof, he can't.  Unless, as Stoker writes, "the eyes saw the setting sun, and the look of hate in them turned to triumph," so instead of turning to dust at sunset, he turned into a mist and escaped ...

[Gothick]

Thanks, Nicky!  I've wondered if the lore that the vampire can appear at Noon may have actually been a projection of what in some traditions is called the Fetch, an anergetic component of the human soul that supernatural beings in old European folklore are particularly adept at deploying to do their work.  The Fetch often takes the form of an animal.  It's unclear to me whether Dracula is supposed to be able to pop out of his coffin for the hour around the time of Noon and then return there, or manifest himself as an astral appearance (similar, perhaps, to how Julia "appeared" in 1897).

G.