So the more perceptive among you will know my surname is Harker and I write about esoteric, occult, religious, and philosophical things that most people don’t even think about. I’ve always been this way and have always had a need to express myself in this arena, often to my own detriment. I haven’t before noticed however this seems to be a “Harker thing”, and so with my name seemingly popular at the moment I did some digging and found that there is a link that pretty much holds for all fictional Harkers whether they be in literature or movie/TV sources. It’s like a pattern that keeps repeating and I don’t know why I have not seen it before.
For the record there are spoilers ahead!
Let’s start with the most famous Harkers, Jonathan and Mina. I have written about Jonathan before, here. Mina is a slightly different case to Jonathan, whereas both have been bitten by vampires in Dracula stories, it is almost exclusively Mina that writers have gone on to explore elsewhere with respect to her becoming a vampire herself. From the Movie League Of Extraordinary Gentleman, the TV show Penny Dreadful, or Demons, to the book Anno Dracula, and finally for my list the graphic novel From the Pages of Bram Stoker’s Dracula: Harker.
The Author John Masefield writes about multiple Harkers. In the book Sard Harker, Chisholm has supernatural visions and confronts a black magician. In the books The Midnight Folk and The Box of Delights John writes about Kay Harker who is a young boy who has adventures in magic and witchcraft along with a ex-witches cat called Nibbens, then in the second book he is given a magical box that gives him supernatural powers of flight and time travel, among others.
The Author Darcy Coates wrote the book called The Haunting of Leigh Harker, a story of a women and her creepy house which she refuses to leave and where we learn that she is a ghost herself.
Harker: The Book of Solomon & The Black Hound by Roger Gibson and Vincent Danks, these graphic novels feature a detective investigating a series of ritual murders connected to an occult group of satanists.
The recent Movie Longlegs features an Autistic FBI agent called Lee Harker who is trying to solve the mystery of a serial killer, only to find that she is part of a wider satanic plot herself.
So there is the list I’ve come up with. There are probably more but for now I think I’ve made my point!
To conclude then, I have written about a young boy who learns some secrets of life from an old shaman and has adventures in visions and dreams, you can find it here.
So what is it with the Harkers? Why do we have this connection to the supernatural and is it somehow hard coded into our DNA. The internet says:
“The name Harker often evokes a sense of tenacity and connection to Gothic or mystery themes, likely influenced by Dracula”
So maybe it all comes from that original Bram Stoker novel in 1897 and an unwitting Joseph Harker who had no interest in anything other than the theatre. What ever the case it seems that my family name now has a mold and it is a roll I seem happy to fill.
Just thinking a bit wider now, if I were to look at this Harker pattern from a metaphorical point of view, perhaps there is a puzzle here and a destiny for each Harker to pursue. I know I have chased this occult prize in my life, and perhaps this is a blueprint for me to find in life that was laid before me by my creator!
As a final note, it is actually on my mother’s side of the family where there is weirdness that I know about. My Great Grandfather was the head of a Spiritualist church in Hill head, Glasgow. Ironic, one might say!