Nicolae Ceausescu during his TV trial, hours before his execution. Nicolae Ceausescu was Communist dictator of Rumania from 1965-1989. Days after his violent overthrow, he and wife Elena were executed on Christmas Day, 1989. Since Ceausescu's rule encompassed Transylvania, protesters often portrayed him as a vampire. One such caricature from The London Times is reprinted in The Spirit of Hungary, by Stephen Sisa, 3rd ed, p. 197. Whether or not Ceausescu was a real life vampire, he is one in Vampire Nation. Nicholas Dima's Journey To Freedom offers this curious report on page 352: "Those who know [Ceausescu] personally insist that he cannot stand any Christian crosses or religious blessings of any kind. The incident in Venezuela, when he requested that the crucifix be removed from his room, was no accident. Nor was it a coincidence that, at a luncheon given in his honor by a group of New Orleans businessmen, he left the room because a pastor blessed the food. In public view he even kicked and bitterly admonished Vasile Pungan, his chief advisor, for not having informed him." Ceausescu regarded Vlad Tepes "Dracula" (1431-1476) as a national hero. He even commemorated Dracula on a postage stamp in 1976, on the 500th anniversary of Dracula's death. (Reproduced from In Search of Dracula, by McNally & Florescu, Houghton Mifflin, 1994, page 5.) In his Foreword to Kiss The Hand You Cannot Bite: The Rise and Fall of the Ceausescus, Ryszard Kapuscinski describes the book as "a shocking account, full of revelations and scandals about the communist Dracula" For more info, see Caligula and Ceausescu from History House.