Revelation: Woody Allen Compared Epstein’s House to “Castle Dracula” - and Exposes a Prominent Silence

It is a document that chillingly shows how normalized and at the same time grotesque life around Jeffrey Epstein was. A letter from director Woody Allen from 2016, now publicly known, not only reveals the gloomy atmosphere in Epstein’s New York townhouse but also how deeply prominent guests were embedded in the absurdities of his daily life.

Allen, now 89, describes in his writing the dinner evenings at Epstein’s that he frequently attended with his wife Soon-Yi. The house, Allen says, was populated by politicians, scientists, journalists, and artists - and again and again by “several young women” who served the guests. His comparison to Bela Lugosi’s vampire castle is as sharp as it is revealing: a place where Epstein himself lived like a morbid figure, shut off from normal life, while young women played the role of decorative, servile beings.

The letter, in English translation, reads like a bizarre mix of a sophisticated diary entry and an involuntary indictment:

Since we are neighbors, my wife Soon-Yi and I have been invited to dinner many times. We always accepted, it was always interesting. A wide variety of interesting people at almost every dinner. Politicians, scientists, teachers, magicians, comedians, intellectuals, journalists, an entomologist, a concert pianist. Anyway, it is always interesting and the food is lavish and plentiful. Many dishes, many choices, numerous desserts, well served. I say well served - often by a professional house employee and just as often by several young women who remind one of Castle Dracula, where Lugosi has three young female vampires who service the place. In addition, Jeffrey lives alone in a huge house, one can picture him sleeping in damp earth. But back to the food. Reliably a good dinner, but that was not always the case. In fact, the first time we came, it was a completely different story. We were invited with a list of distinguished people, men and women from journalism, in TV, even royalty. We were brought upstairs to the living room where everyone sat and chatted before dinner. No drinks were served. You could get one if you explicitly asked. That should have been the first clue. When the food was served downstairs, it was meager. So meager that my wife and the people next to her murmured: Is that all? Aren’t we getting more? Afterwards I thought I might have to go to a restaurant. We didn’t want to say anything the next time, but my wife said in her tactful way: There will be more food, right? Under her urging the situation gradually improved, and later dinners offered buckets of Chinese food ordered from a local restaurant and set up on a buffet where you could help yourself. It all seemed odd for a man of substance who often entertained illustrious guests. Under my wife’s continued urging, arrangements were finally made for the food to be cooked and served at home. She had to explain in which order things should be served - not the main course first and then the appetizer, but the other way around. Over time she got him to put a few flowers in the center of the table so it looked at least a bit warm and inviting. That took time and some corrections, but eventually his meals were brought into a certain state of normal, civilized dining. The large phone and the computer at his right hand do take a bit away from the relaxed home-cooking atmosphere, but you can’t have everything - not at Castle Dracula.

This letter is more than a quirky anecdote. It is a window into a milieu where powerful men and prominent guests regularly came and went while the host was already known as a sexual predator - even if not yet officially convicted. The description of a society in which even a simple dinner became grotesque theater seems, in hindsight, like a protocol of looking away.

Woody Allen’s observations, though almost casually formulated, reveal a lot. Epstein, the man with connections in politics, media, and science, lived in a world where no one seriously questioned why young women like “vampires” flitted through his halls. Even a prominent director who describes the bizarre abysses kept coming back - and even coached his wife to teach the host table etiquette instead of naming the moral catastrophe in the room.

This revelation is another piece of the mosaic in the story of a man whose crimes remained in the shadows for so long because the environment of celebrities and influential acquaintances willingly kept silent - between grotesque luxury, ridiculous decadence, and an atmosphere that even Woody Allen could only describe as “Castle Dracula.”

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