The old peddler pulls his junk cart from house to house. He comes to a stop before a prim front door. Fortunate people must live here! A young couple opens the door.—“No thank you, we don’t need anything!”—But the peddler refuses to leave. Oh: the beautiful young lady shows interest in the trinkets! Quickly he holds up a ring: a jackal’s skull. Angrily the lady refuses. Again the trembling hand reaches into the boxes. An amulet: a bloated spider clutching a moth. The door begins to swing shut. No wonder, if he begins with death and spiders to a young couple in love! But now, now he has something else for the lovely lady. He holds up a brooch. The woman’s eyes glow. Her husband cannot refuse her request; he buys it. Both gaze upon a tiny portrait in crimson enamel: a pelican suckling her young with her heart’s blood.

The peddler says, “The symbol of love, and here—” he rummages in the lowest depths of his boxes “—a little book, as a bonus.” He is already gone! The two, frightened, hold the book, on the cover of which are two entwined hearts, resplendent. A book for lovers? “Come, let me see.” Timidly they open it. “A Chronicle of the Death Which Descended Upon Our City in Anno Domini 1839, and Its True Cause.”

The woman is furious and wants to throw the book away, but as if by the power of magic, a power which seems to radiate from the printed text, the eyes of both are fastened to it.

In the little town of the narrow streets and crooked gables live Thomas and Ellen Hutter, a happy young couple. Everything is bright and sunny around them. But there is Knock, Hutter’s employer. And one day Knock produces a letter and speaks with disturbing intensity about a Count Orlok, who lives far away in Transylvania. Orlok wishes an address in their town, something “lovely and run-down.” Through the window Knock indicates the sinister ruins across from the Hutter apartment: “Offer him this!”

Wanderlust! Hutter hurries home to take his leave of Ellen. He entrusts her to his friend Harding and departs.…

He spends the night in a Carpathian inn before he calls at the castle of the Count. An old book falls into his hands. In it he reads of Nosferatu, the vampire, born out of the blood of the sins of mankind. He wants to turn back, but is no longer able to. And so he enters the castle the following evening. Misgivings swarm about him. Slowly the gates open. In the dark entranceway a figure stands motionless. Waiting. A tremor grips the visitor, but there is no going back. Behind him the gates close.