[4] David O. Selznick bought the film rights to "Dracula's Guest" in 1933 and later re-sold them to Universal Studios.
Moonlight breaks through the clouds, revealing that he is in a graveyard and standing before the sepulchre of Countess Dolingen of Graz, Styria.
The door opens under his weight and a flash of forked lightning reveals a beautiful woman, apparently asleep on the bier.
The hotel keeper explains that when the coachman had returned and had told him what had happened he had decided to send out a search party.
He had also received a telegram from the Englishman's host, Dracula, warning him to take good care of his guest as there were "dangers from snow and wolves and night".
[10][11] Eighteen-Bisang and Miller write that the opening of the story is similar to the introduction to Sabine Baring-Gould's The Book of Were-Wolves (1865).
In Baring-Gould's book, the author goes for a late night walk in the woods around Vienna despite the locals warning him of werewolves.
[12] Academic Roger Luckhurst notes the story's "strong debts" to Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla.
[13] The narrator walks to an abandoned village where he finds a beautiful woman, seemingly asleep in the marble tomb of Countess Dolingen of Graz in Styria.