Dracula carriage slides off hillside, rescue teams light up Carpathian Mountains to find passengers

By Missy Hap

Staff Axe-idents Writer

A spooky carriage ride through the Carpathian Mountains to Castle Dracula last night went horrible wrong when the back wheels of the coach slid off the side of the eerily narrow pathway that crosses a large gorge in the mountains and tumbled down a hillside.

Search and rescue teams lit up the area with floodlights while ground crews and helicopters tried to locate the passengers of the downed carriage.

“It’s a little embarrassing,” Dracula told reporters last night as teams searched for his guests. “You go through all this trouble -- adding fog and wolves to the scenery, magic walls of fire and driving the carriage as a bat -- and then one false move on a pathway I’ve driven a million times sends my carriage and my guests down a hillside. I got out in time because I was a bat and simply flew away, but now there are search and rescue teams all over my property, and rescue choppers and news choppers everywhere in the sky above. The castle doesn’t even look looming on TV. This is ridiculous.”

News media satellite up-link trucks and photojournalists gathered outside the front gates of Castle Dracula to cover the scene. The creatures of the night fled as the media took over the area. Dracula’s brides, however, came out from hiding to see what was going on.

“I, like, totally told him he’d go off the side of that hillside one night,” said Thyia, one of the brides. “He had that pathway built especially narrow so he could freak out passengers as he went hot-wheeling across the gorge. His driving, though, like, is so terrible, oh my gawd. But I can’t say anything. He gets totally mad when I do and tells me not to be a back seat driver. Whatever.”

Crews found the passengers around 3 a.m. this morning.

“They’re a little banged up,” said Transyl-vein-ia County Sheriff Vlad Tuveeovsurviss. “Dracula is taking them to his castle and he’s going to make sure they have the best care possible. He’s pretty upset over the whole thing.”

The media circus finally left the site around 7 this morning. What remains in front of Castle Dracula are coffee cups strewn about, half-empty water bottles and other litter from craft service.

“There are truck tire tracks everywhere as well,” Dracula said. “It’s gonna take me a long time to get this place looking desolate and scary again. Like I said, this whole thing was ridiculous. I just want to get the place back to normal and put this whole thing behind me.”