This yearning was a borrowed concept. In the Gothic soap opera “ Dark Shadows ” (1966-1971), the character Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid) tries to replicate his romance with his long-dead lover, ...

Nearly 80 years before Bram Stoker introduced the world to Count Dracula, a strikingly similar figure debuted in a pioneering 1819 short story: William Polidori’s The Vampyre. His name was Lord ...