Dracula may be set in Transylvania, Romania, but it was actually Whitby Abbey in North Yorkshire that provided much of Bram Stoker’s inspiration for his famed 1897 novel.

To celebrate that fact, the biannual Whitby Goth Weekends attract people from goth and alternative subcultures to gather in the coastal town for music, specialist markets and more. The October event is held on or around Halloween and welcomes people from all over the UK. Festival goers dress up in outfits over the three days, and many have a change of dress: one for each day.

Now Manchester-based photographer and graphic designer Gavin Burnett has released a photo book featuring portraits from the weekend, in a Kickstarter campaign which ends on Saturday 26 November. Titled Peculiar Portraits: A Whitby Goth Photo Project, it features over 120 portraits from the event.

“The Whitby Goth Weekend (WGW) was started in 1994 and has now grown to be one of the world’s premier goth events,” says Gavin, whose clients include Sunday Times Travel Magazine, Wanderlust, National Geographic, Telegraph Travel and The Independent.

“This sub-culture has naturally been drawn to Whitby with its spooky gothic abbey ruins and its links to Bram Stoker. Stoker stayed in Whitby while writing the novel Dracula. He writes that the dark lord shipwrecks off the coast of Whitby manifests himself as a dog and climbs the…