 Kilmarnock Arms Hotel's most famous guest, Bram Stoker, arrived in 1893, and it was during a later stay in 1896, that he is reputed to have finished writing 'Dracula'. Bram Stoker first stayed at the Hotel in 1894. A favourite book written by him during his stay at the hotel was "The Watter's Mou", a strange melodrama about Cruden Bay in the heyday of smuggling in the first half of the nineteenth century. Bram Stoker told people of how he got his ideas for his stories when he was on holiday in Cruden Bay, walking on the sands to Whinnyfold or scrambling over the rocks north to the castle and the Bullers. His signature can be seen in the Visitors Book of 1896.
"When I first saw the place I fell in love with it. Had it been possible, I should have spent my summer there in a house of my own, but the want of any place in which to live forbade such an opportunity. So I stayed in the little hotel, The Kilmarnock Arms".
Slains Castle, now a ruin, but then the home of the Earl and Countess of Erroll, is a strange, storm-scarred building, hanging on the edge of the cliff, looking like the original Castle Dracula, as indeed it might well be.
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