PROVO, UTAH (ABC 4 News) - Everyone's heard of Transylvania right? It may seem like a fictional place were Count Dracula terrorizes villagers from his epic castle, except it's not all made up - as two BYU students learned during their recent trip to the city.
Nick Jones and Trent Leinenback traveled to Transylvania to study people, but to also study the folklore.
"If there are vampire stories in Transylvania it's more likely going to be due to Stephenie Meyer than to their own folklore history," says Trent Leinenback.
But as we learned, in some of the rural area of Transylvania, the old stories are alive.
"They have lots of stories where people will be transported magically to like a gathering or witches, like a black mass, where they're having a good time and worshiping Satan and then they're told, as they fly home, if they even think about God that they'll fall from the sky and die. Their power comes from this a moral defiance of religion and I think that's kind of used to teach the people to have respect in their lives for the divine. Do people actually believe that? Yeah I think they do," says Nick Jones.
There you have it. . . Many people in Transylvania believe in witches and other mystical stories. As for BYU, the University awards several undergraduates $1,500 grants to carry out creative projects of their own choosing.
