For some reason 1997 was a great year for monster postage stamps. This may have been because that year was the hundreth anniversary of the first publication of Bram Stoker's classic novel Dracula. You've probably seen the U.S. Postal Service's set of monster stamps that were issued in October 1997. The set of five stamps honors the classic monsters and features Dracula, the Mummy, the Wolfman, Frankenstein's monster, and the Phantom of the Opera. Unfortunately they forgot the Creature of the Black Lagoon.
 
 

Postal authorities, for some reason, seem to have monsters on their mind. Earlier in 1997 Britain released their own set of monster stamps--one of which features Dracula. Their set of four stamps pay homage to Dracula, Frankenstein's monster (wrongly labeled as Frankenstein), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, plus a wonderful stamp of the Hound of the Baskervilles. With the possible exception of Romania's stamps of Vlad the Impaler, this just might be the first vampire postage stamp. Vlad wasn't really a vampire, but he was one of the inspirations for Dracula.

Not to be outdone, the Canadian and Romanian postal services also got in on the act by issuing similar stamps of their own. The Canadian series of four stamps featured a vampire, a werewolf, a ghost and a goblin.
 
 

To the people of Romania, Vlad Tepes--or Vlad Dracula--is a national hero for protecting the country from the Turks. They are also unfamiliar with the Dracula of our literature and movies. Still, they realize that Dracula is one of their biggest tourist attractions. For the 100th anniversary of the publication of Bram Stoker's novel, they issued a set of stamps that show their national hero as a vampire.
 
 

But in the end, Ireland--the homeland of Bram Stoker, Dracula's creator--topped them all with a wonderful series of stamps to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Stoker's novel. The four stamps were issued in separate sheets and together on a souvineer sheet.
 
 

That wasn't the end of it. The following year Romania issued a set of Vlad Dracula postcards.
 
 

The African nation of Chad also came out with a set of stamps and a souvineer sheet in 1998.
 
 

Then in 1999, Chad just had to issue another stamp commemorating Dracula. This time the stamp was part of their millenium series.
 
 

Somewhere along the line, Sierra Leone came out with this stamp of Bela Lugosi as Dracula.

The bottom line of all this is that we can now finally put Dracula on our love letters, Kristmas cards and our payments to all those bloodsucking tax collectors.
 
 

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