Sabrina Lane - Elizabeth Bathory: The Blood Countess by Sabrina Lane

Author:Sabrina Lane [Lane, Sabrina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-01-26T03:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6: Was Elizabeth Báthory a Witch?

It has become complicated to differentiate the reality from the fiction regarding Elizabeth Báthory. After the blood baths, probably the most frequent embellishment is her involvement with the occult. The Countess was blamed of witchcraft and pagan practices. The legend says that she gathered around herself people of evil arts. Among them were those who stated to be alchemists, witches, seers, wizards, sorcerers. They taught her their crafts and she was captivated. She herself is accused of witchcraft, lycanthropy and vampirism.

These supernatural explanations for Elizabeth Báthory's horrifying crimes could provide a comfortable distance between her and the society. With this distance, it is easier to assume that she couldn't have been human because of the horrific nature of her crimes. This is similar to the ideas behind psychopathy and modern media perceptions of psychopathy. Having a serial killer appear more inhuman is easier to accept than accepting that a human is capable of such atrocities. There might also be gender under currents in the depictions of Elizabeth Báthory as a vampire, lesbian, or witch. Due to the period of time , it is difficult to conceptualize of a male murderer, but a female murderer, especially one leading several killers, would have been unusual.

The modern depictions of Elizabeth Báthory continue to attribute supernatural forces to her crimes. For example, in 2009, Craft continue to describe her as a "Satan-worshiping, lesbian, witch" and in the 2006 film Stay Alive, Elizabteh Báthory is depicted as a supernatural force, a demon, that comes alive within a video game, becomes corporeal, and kills all those who participated in playing the game. She is illustrated as demonic, and somewhat inhuman, and, for that reason, distant from her victims.

Because of the fact that the common myths and rumors encompassing the Countess have escalated so significantly, many of the actual facts about her case have been lost and even accredited researchers have propagated these rumors and circulated them as certainty without offering support.

For example, in 1992, Segrave writes about the myths surrounding Báthory. The rumors of witchcraft, satanism, and lesbianism, were likely fabricated through simple word of mouth as people attempted to explain the atrocities she committed. Segrave only further perpetuate the standing rumors surrounding Elizabeth Báthory and keep people from the truth. He illustrates her in light of some evil queen, spending “hours admiring herself in front of a mirror” who was then walled up in her castle like a queen in a tower. The 2005 film The Brothers Grimm depicts a female antagonist highly similar to Elizabeth Báthory rumors and the Grimm fairy tales evil queens. The woman in this film is known to obsess over her beauty to the point of destroying others, and using the youth of young, virgin girls to maintain her beauty.

This account of Elizabeth Báthory illustrates how rumors can be powerful. Many of Segrave’s sources were ones known to have accepted the rumors of Elizabeth’s blood baths and witch-lesbian ways such as Dracula Was a Woman by Raymond McNally and The Bloody Countess by Valentine Penrose.

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