Elizabeth Bathory was Not a Vampire
|
Posted by Jill Stefko Oct 27, 2009 |
I first read about her when I attended Moravian College. I told Dad about her and he said she was one our ancestors. To this day, I’m not sure if this was a joke. I decided to write a book about her, which I’m still working on. When I was doing research, I read that her castle was in Nitrya, which has various spellings, in the Carpathian Mountains in the Austro/Hungarian Empire. Slovak was the common language in Slovakia that was ruled by the Magyars. My grandfather emigrated from what is now the Slovak Republic. His native town was Nitra in the Carpathians. He spoke both Slovak and Hungarian.
I read one too many purportedly “nonfiction” articles that proclaimed Bathory was a vampyre, which prompted me to write Who_and_What_was_Elizabeth_Bathory. She wasn’t. I had already written Vampyres: Legend, Cases and Theories and Vampyres in Rhode Island? Did Vampyres Live in New England or...? which are about the classic vampyre breed. She wasn’t a psychic or delusional vampyre as evidenced by Was_a_Landlady_a_Psychic_Vampyre and Thornton_Heath_Poltergeist_1938.
Bathory had a sense of grandiosity entitlement, hallmarks of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. She was vain and egocentric. She was a psychopath in that she felt no guilt, the disorder’s keynote. Psychopathy is now called Antisocial Personality Disorder. She derived pleasure from inflicting pain, the leading criterion for sadism. She is, at best, is an interesting study of inhuman pathology.
The Blood Countess was a serial killer because she and abettors tortured and slaughtered over 600 virgins. Bathory believed bathing in their blood was her personal fountain of youth.
Bathory was charged with and sentenced for practicing witchcraft. Her undoing was putting a curse on King Matthias of Hungary and others, which didn’t please the monarch.
 |