St Mary's Church, Whitby arch is a Jacobean pew. There is a monument to Sir Richard Cholmley who died in 1631. Two significant land slips due to broken drainage and torrential rain, the first occurring in November 2012, have placed the churchyard, and properties below the cliff, in significant jeopardy. Whitby town councillor Steve Smith stated the church was in no danger, having been built on solid rock. Human remains have fallen onto the street below, and pathways on the cliff-side of the church have been closed. Bram Stoker used St Mary's Church graveyard as the setting for a scene in his novel, "Dracula":
The Tomb of Dracula the two titles occasionally overlapped, with storylines weaving between the two. Most of the time the stories in "Dracula Lives!" were stand-alone tales, including a serialized adaptation of the original Bram Stoker novel, in 10- to 12-page installments written by Roy Thomas and drawn by Dick Giordano. "Tomb of Dracula" was supplemented by a "Giant-Size" companion quarterly that ran for five issues in the mid-1970s. Artist John Byrne’s first story for Marvel Comics, "Dark Asylum", was published in "Giant-Size Dracula" #5 (June 1975). The color title "Tomb of Dracula" was succeeded by another black-and-white magazine, also called "Tomb of Dracula",