What is the theme of the supernatural as introduced into the story of Dracula?

In the opening pages of Jonathan Harker’s journal, he disparages the quaint superstitions of the Eastern European peasants that surround him as he travels to Dracula’s castle. When one such peasant gives him a crucifix, he is embarrassed but after some time with Dracula he is happy to have it, saying,” It is odd that a thing which I have been taught to regard with disfavor and as idolatrous should in a time of loneliness and trouble be of help” (Page 33). Jonathan exemplifies the tension between science, an outgrowth of modern life, and superstition. After escaping Dracula’s castle he doesn’t even trust his memories, assuming he must be mad to believe he experienced such supernatural things. Throughout the novel, anything outside the realm of empirical, scientific data is associated with madness, including other characters like Seward who also thinks he must be mad to even consider Van Helsing’s theory on vampires.

Van Helsing, a scientist and a doctor, is the only one who gives himself over easily to the belief in Dracula’s evil roots and the superstitions that might be used to battle against him. Stoker uses him as a mouthpiece to propose that the impossible exists in reality and believing in the inexplicable does not make one mad. There is a greater battle at stake here, and Jonathan’s earlier statement sums it up: he, as an English Christian believed crucifixes were the embarrassing symbols of the faithful who trusted inanimate objects to help them. What is Christianity but an international superstition, whose followers believe they actually eat the body and blood of Christ during a ritual that transforms ordinary bread and wine? Dracula is literally the anti-Christ, drinking blood without spiritual edification. The modernization of the world, through science and industrialization, has destroyed people’s faith and pushed them to ignore their spirituality and the fate of their immortal souls. The superstitions Van Helsing relies on to fight Dracula is a metaphor for Christian faith itself, a call to slow down the world’s rapid progress into the future and remember to find space for God in one’s daily life, lest the world itself go to ruin. As Jonathan points out, “the old centuries had, and have, powers of their own which mere "modernity" cannot kill” (Page 41). In many ways Dracula is a call back to a life of faith.