Whitby is fast becoming buried under this sort of rubbish.

The twice yearly gothic festivals are quite enough considering they are based on a work of fiction where a very small part is supposedly based in Whitby without expanding into general horror.

Whitby people mostly don’t mind the lovely costumes that appear on our streets when the goths are here and mostly they don’t cause trouble.

But do we really want to encourage the atmosphere of blood sucking, weird behaviour and murder and torture that are a large part of most horror films (including Dracula) in our town.

Charles Dickens actually has more to do with Whitby than Bram Stoker.

We have such a lot of genuinely thrilling history in Whitby, why don’t we make more of that?

Whitby people through the ages have been proud, strong and brave.

We have shipbuilding, exploration, early railway history, alum and iron mining, the Abbey, St Hilda, the Synod of Whitby, Captain Cook, smuggling, early man on the moors and lots more.

This is what Whitby and the surrounding area is about, not horror films.

Whitby is worth more than that.

Pat Pearson, Bagdale,

Whitby, by email