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":
Bram Stoker the Shroud" (1909). He had a writer's interest in the occult, notably mesmerism, but despised fraud and believed in the superiority of the scientific method over superstition. Stoker counted among his friends J. W. Brodie-Innis, a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and hired member Pamela Colman Smith as an artist for the Lyceum Theatre, but no evidence suggests that Stoker ever joined the Order himself. The short story collection "Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories" was published in 1914 by Stoker's widow, Florence Stoker, who was also his literary executrix. The first film adaptation of "Dracula"