Dracula: The Maniac Behind The Legend (part 2)

By Reina Desrouleaux

Serial killers are a part of  our culture even though we dont realize it. Every Halloween we fill the movie theaters to watch Micheal Meyers, or Jigsaw hack people up.  We  seem find a weird sort of fascination with people we find to be sick and repulsive at the same time. This seems to be an explanation with Bram Stroker’s next inspiration as the person this article is about ,is a notorious female serial killer from the 16th century. Countess Elizabeth Bathury.

The Countess was a very smart and accomplished woman. As a young girl she learned Latin, Greek , and German. She also found interest in Science and Astronomy. At the age of  Twelve the then young Elizabeth became engaged to Ferenc Nadasdy through what is believed to be a political arrangement in aristocracy. They married on may 8,1875. She was fifteen then.

Unlike most wives in high society back then Elizabeth ran her home. A few years into their marriage her husband became chief of the Hungarian military, thus leaving her to manage her husband’s financials. The castle their family owned was in the middle of a village in Transylvania, meaning she was also in charge of the peasants. She provided them with food and health care when in need.

Around 1602 the rumor mill started to spin. The countess started to call for young virginal peasants to come to her castle. She and a few of her servants lured those girls with the promise of teaching them manners and rules so they could go to court, and a few with the promise of a job. Legend as it that the villagers started to get suspicious as those young women slowly started to disappear. No one bothered with those rumors until women of nobility started to disappear, the King then ordered an investigation to see what was going on inside her home. The investigators filed numerous  hearsay reports which stated the gruesome state they found some of those women in. They had reports on  women in cages as they awaited their deaths. Some barely alive with needle marks, cuts , and burns all across their bodies and especially genitalias. They heard reports of girls with chunks of their arms missing with bite marks surrounding those wounds. They  also heard that the countess had girls frozen to death, and severely beaten. Many of these girls suffered sexual abuse.

Whatever was found in that investigation was then twisted into a gruesome folklore legend. It is believed that the Countess was obsessed with staying young. One day while one of her servants was combing her hair, she slapped the woman for  combing to hard. A ring on her finger drew blood. When she saw the blood on her hand she felt as though the blood was rejuvinating her skin. An idea then occured to her. She called for young women to come work for her, in return of lessons on manners and society so they could then go into court. This attracted many women in hopes of a new future and finding a prince charming, But instead they all met a gruesome fate. It is believed that after torturing and killing the women, the Countess would  have the bodies drained of their blood which she would then bathe in and drink. These were all said to be false by an eye witness to her crimes.

Now how does such a nice smart educated woman become a vicious killer? To be honest I doubt anyone really knows.  Elizabeth Bathury was a lesbian Protestant. Even though her sexuality might have been unkown by her workers, her religion wasn’t. In Hungary there were some religious problems with Protestants, and political problems which led people to believe that all she did were conspiracy theories. Evidence was found that over 600 women went missing when  Elizabeth lived in Transylvania, meaning she probably tortured and killed all these women. Psychologists believed that her sexuality was also part of the reason of her torturing these women, meaning she also found pleasure in whatever she did. It is also believed that her diary is being held in Budapest, but has not been translated because of the age of the language, the state of her journal, and the horrifying details in that journal.

Whether the countess did commit these crimes or not, she was certainly punished for them. As she was a high member of society, the Countess was not jailed or executed like her helpers. Instead she was Assigned a lifetime of solitary confinement in a room in her castle. No one knows when she actually died because her rotting corpse was found in her room.

This madwoman as we would call her influenced Bram Stroker for the idea of a vampire when he ran across a story about her in a book, as he never actually traveled to Romania or Transylvania.  I hope you think about the past two articles on this subject while you put on your fangs, capes and fake blood next Halloween. meanwhile I hope you had an enjoyable Halloween. I wont say Happy Halloween as its not really a happy holiday, and that we seem to celebrate the gruesome parts of the human psyche with our slasher films, and hauted forests. so I hope you had an enjoyable Halloween.

 

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_B%C3%A1thory

History Channel: Vampire Secrets