Romanian Dracula Park cancelled
October 12, 2006 
The Romanian government has confirmed it has cancelled plans for a Dracula Park entertainment complex amid concerns it was manipulating the country's history.
The park was originally envisaged to be 460-hectares in size and had been slated for construction at Snagov, near Bucharest - allegedly the burial place of Vlad the Impaler.
Vlad the Impaler, or Vlad Tepes as he was known at the time, was a 15th century ruler of Wallachia and became famous for his bloodthirsty method of dispatching captured Turkish soldiers and rebellious nobles - impalement.
He was also the inspiration for Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula, the Transylvanian vampire first introduced living in a nightmarish castle with three corseted female vampires.
However, plans for the park, which was expected to attract as many as a million tourists a year and create thousands of jobs for corset and cape wearing locals, have now been shelved.
Constantin Stoica, the Romania Orthodox Church's spokesperson, said: "Our church was against this project from the beginning - we regard the fact that it has now been dropped as something normal.
"Although the churches weren't consulted, they made clear the Dracula myth had nothing to do with Romanian history, and this view was shared by many historians."
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