Hawthorne, too, found himself tormented by sightings of the shadowy figure that resembled Dracula—a figure that materialized at the edge of his vision during his nocturnal prowls through the fog-drenched streets of London. At first, he dismissed the sightings as hallucinations brought on by sleep deprivation and the trauma of his past. But as the figure grew more persistent, its presence looming ever larger in the periphery of his consciousness, Hawthorne could no longer deny the chilling reality of what he was experiencing.