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Also this issue: Art Night Lights Oh Captain, My Captain Death and Statues Wise Guides |
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June 6-12, 2002
cover story
 Down for the count: If you squint really hard, this could look like a castle. Sort of. Photo By: Julian OâReilley |
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When you’re a kid, even the stupidest things seem fascinating.
That’s how it was with me and Dracula’s Castle. When I was young, my school used to picnic in Fairmount Park. On these outings, we took walks on the wooded trails behind Belmont Plateau, and the destination was always a ruin that, for reasons that still remain a mystery, we assumed was once the abode of the blood-sucking count.
I'm not what you would call a nature-loving girl, so I hadn't been back to those woods since my school-picnic days. Yet recently, I decided to track down Dracula's Castle to see if it really was an exciting, little-known site. I wanted to find out what the heck it really is, now that I'm old enough to know that Vlad the Impaler probably did not live on the outskirts of Philly.
My friend Julian and I set off on a muggy Sunday afternoon. We parked at the entrance to Belmont Plateau and trekked across the grass, past baseball fields and picnickers. Reaching what seemed to be the end of the field, I, our fearless leader, realized I had no idea how to even get into the woods. "Um, there must be a path somewhere?" I said tentatively. Julian sighed heavily. Then, three young girls, around 10 years old, came tearing out of the bushes. We asked if they had ever heard of a "spooky" old house in the woods, and they said they had, but they were too scared to go. They pointed us in the right direction, and Julian and I took off.
Now, let's clarify one point: Calling this "the woods" reveals my status as a city girl. The highway and the parking lot were visible through the trees for most of the walk, and a car alarm provided more background noise than any birds or woodland creatures.
But it was a lovely walk on a nice trail, and, after about 10 or 15 minutes, we reached the "castle."
Or, should I say, the "piece of a stone wall" that I apparently believed was a castle at age 8. The structure is an odd addition to the woods, with mossy and graffitied stones jutting out through the trees. Julian snapped a few photos, clearly amused that this was our destination.
Leaving the woods we bumped into the three girls again, this time with five of their friends. They asked us to take them to see the scary house. So we all set off again to show another generation Dracula's Castle, and I realized it wasn't the site that had changed, but me. (At least that's what I told myself in my best Wonder Years-inner monologue.) These kids felt, as I once did, that they were deep in the woods, and they filled in the requisite spookiness with Friday the 13th-like outbursts of "chh chh chh chh ha ha ha ha" and lots of Blair Witch jokes. At least I didn't have to make them.
On the way they noticed an old, broken chair sitting in a clearing. "There's probably an old person sitting on it that we can't see," one youngster informed me.
When we got back to the "castle," the kids weren't blown away, but they definitely thought it was spookier than it actually was. "Dracula lived here?" one asked incredulously. "Probably not," I replied. "Dracula lived in Europe." "You're from Europe?" she asked. Never mind.
After our trip, I got in touch with Fairmount Park's Historic Preservation officer, Theresa Stuhlman, to identify the spot. "I think what you are looking at are the remains of trolley bridges that used to run through the park," she said. The trolleys ran those paths between 1897 and 1946. But some of these structures date back even further, to the Columbia Railroad line, one of the first major railroads in Pennsylvania, according to Stuhlman. The line started operations in 1834. So the bridge abutment could be "a vestige of something [even] earlier," Stuhlman said. She didn't seem to have heard of anyone telling vampire tales about the site.
In the end, Dracula's Castle isn't all that exciting to those of us without overactive imaginations, but the trails behind Belmont Plateau made for a nice day outdoors. So go to enjoy the walk, and if you find a kid, give them the spooky tour. Watch out for vampires, though.
