After some confusion as to the entrance of the museum, we finally hit upon the museum. The soiree was taking place, where poetry and music would be the order of the day to a select audience. The museum has a garden and among other artefacts of significance to the proprietors , are two graves, (superficial I presume) . Unlike most museums some of the artefacts are not tended with loving care and the weather in some cases had done it?s worst, but no matter. Spread about the garden are objects from previous soirees, goblets left unattended. This place has been a bit of a hive of activity and creativity. I have only threadbare information; the event is something to do with a magazine called Salamander. The program is loose and there is much discussion (well this is France).

There are two distinctive Gothic woman, think Morticia of the Addams family, wearing obligatory black, crochet like spider?s web, with long black hair, the colour of ravens. There is a man with a walking stick, with a silver skull motif. There was man wearing a collarless shirt, typical of times of Dracula. The museum itself is not like a museum more a junk shop or curiosity shop. There are leather bound books piled up, Dracula masks liberally left about. The walls are bedecked with paintings or posters of Dracula films, pictures of the likes of Christopher Lee or other portrayers of Dracula. There was an old mirror (I thought Dracula had an aversion to mirrors, but still). Part of the museum is in this dank garden, about the size of an over-sized garden shed.

The second part of the museum, you have to enter this basement, with crypt-like ambiance. The exhibits are crude, imagine blow up dolls that have been re-adorned to create a Draculaesque scene. The ?homemade ness? of this museum, is perhaps intrinsic to its charms. It has not a cooperate vision, but it is perhaps a person/peoples utopia/vision of Dracula. There is certainly a surreal ness about the place and some of the people occupying it. Even the trees in the garden have distinctiveness, I often think that branches often mirror human limbs and with these trees, this is the case, had Dali done some tampering/garden work with them? The space of the museum has been used, the exterior walls have been daubed with images, what do the neighbours think, do they stay any kind of time, or is there a constant flow of change?

The organizers seem a amicable harmless bunch, but I wonder why people have a curiosity in the dark side of human nature? They took the opportunity to drink some wine (naturally red) a wine of their own making, a wine full of herbs.

I didn?t stay to the culmination of the soiree, some other friends had bolted earlier. I trudged back to the metro, thinking of this oddball collection of people, in a strange environment in suburban Paris and the enduring story of Dracula.

Francis H. Powell is originally from England and moved to Paris in 1999. In addition to being a writer (articles, songs and poems), he is a painter, DJ and English trainer. For more information, please click here to read his complete bio.

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