Unpacking The Eerie
Unpacking the Eerie is a passion project that merges the intersections of our dark curiosities with our deeply held values. Each episode we’ll dig past the surface of morbid fascination, scavenging for unasked questions surrounding the stories that creep the hell out of us. We hope that when you listen, you’ll experience the feels, the enjoyment, the horror and interludes of comedic relief that we do. - 2 politicized social workers based in the PNW and in India.
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Music Credit: Creepy Mood by Oleg Fedak
Unpacking The Eerie
9. "Certified Freak, 7 Days a Week"
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DARK HISTORY/TRUE CRIME: Elizabeth Bathory
Content Warning: anti-asian racism, extreme violence, torture
OMFG it’s episode ten, and in our humble opinion, it’s our most gruesome and also most hilarious episode. This episode we explore the life of another extremely violent woman (throwback to Linda) who inspired Lady Gaga’s character in AHS Hotel and countless death metal band names. Yes, you guessed it, she’s the Guinness Book of World Records Title holder of “Most Prolific Female Murderer,” Elizabeth Báthory. Join us as we dive deep into the murderous life of this noble woman from the Balkans and how classism, incest, witchcraft and WAP (yes, you read that correct), intersect with this wild ass story.
Audio file edited & republished 7/7/26
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Theme Song Title: Creepy Mood | Artist Name: Oleg Fedak
P.S. We're in the process of updating our intro and making edits to our episodes. You may notice inconsistencies as we do that!
Hello. Hello everyone. It's episode 10.
SPEAKER_00Yay. Which is so cool. Also, we have an Instagram live up if you weren't there. It's uh on our Instagram at Unpacking the Eerie. If you want to go check it out after the fact, we do updates on multiple cases that we covered.
SPEAKER_03Gary Ridgeway's case. We also covered updates on the Slender Man case.
SPEAKER_00Elisa, we we went over the Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel docuseries.
SPEAKER_03And the Night Stalker a Netflix series as well. We also um went over new things we learned from that. And we also just shared our thoughts on both the docuseries on Netflix. Um and yeah, some some short updates on the Queen Mary too.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. They're creating a three-part horror film series.
SPEAKER_03Oh, I'm so excited for that. And it would be very cool if they did the same with the Titanic. I would be so down for that. The right people could do it well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and it's it's time for a refresh.
SPEAKER_03It's some new stories, please.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. The stories that we shared, I had never heard before. We should share their stories. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Not we. Somebody. Somebody. Somebody do it. I d I I don't I don't need to be involved. I'll watch it when it comes out and have my my critical thoughts.
SPEAKER_00Right. We'll come back with the critical thoughts. On brand.
SPEAKER_03Yep.
SPEAKER_00Okay, as per usual, we're starting with our Patreon shout-outs. So big thanks to Allie and to Jake for being new patrons.
SPEAKER_03And in our second episode, An Asshole Aquarius, you heard us talk about Gary Ridgway, aka the Green River Killer, who is a piece of poop. More than a piece of poop. Piece of poop at the bottom of the trash can. But in that episode, we dug into how white privilege, misogyny, and violence against women and girls in the sex trade allowed Gary River.
SPEAKER_00Gary River. I see what your brain did.
SPEAKER_03It makes sense. Allowed Gary River. It's like Green River Killer. There's a lot of G's on Rs in there. Yeah, yeah. Allowed Gary, the Green River Killer, to get away with murdering sex workers and homeless girls for over 20 years down the Pacific Northwest. Most of these murders took place in the south end of Seattle. And for this reason, this winter, so from December 2020 to March, 50% of the Ghostie Giver money will be given to POC Sex Workers Outreach Project in Seattle. They are a BIPOC-led chapter of the National Sex Workers Outreach Project, who emerged as a response to the lack of support for specifically black and other sex workers of color in the Seattle area. Right now, their main focus is direct outreach to street-based sex workers via the Greenlight Project. A long-term goal of this project is to empower BIPOC in the sex trade by diffusing power from central leadership and putting it back in the hands of the community. So we're going to post receipts of that, but that's who our beneficiary for the past three months are going to be. I'm going to pass over to Shana and she's going to tell you a little bit about our next beneficiary that will be the donations that we raise from now until June.
SPEAKER_00Well, we changed up our beneficiary list because of what's what happened recently in Atlanta. If folks have not heard, I have a hard time believing people have not heard, but I also understand avoiding the news because it's been horrible taking breaks from it. So in Atlanta, Georgia, on March 16th, there were eight people killed at three massage parlors slash spas, and six out of those eight people were Asian women. Our next beneficiary will be the families of the victims of these shootings. I also wanted to just share that where'd I even begin? A lot's been coming up for me. Um I feel like I feel like I've been talking about how exoticization and fetishization of Asian women is dangerous. It's not just like some punchline that people throw around, like with yellow fever and shit. It's like really dangerous and results in sexual violence and murder. And that and it goes unacknowledged because no one likes to name race when I f when Asian people are involved because I think it disrupts this idea that we're in a post-racial society and the model minority myth. And I just like really want people to sit with that. And it this is just like one example, and it's really shitty that something so extreme had to happen for people to be like, oh shit, this is an issue. This is a fucking hate crime. I also want to like talk about how both things can be true at the same time. How like I notice that anytime there is an Asian-owned business, Asian-owned massage parlor, everyone's like, oh, sex work is happening there. And I think that's really sexist, racist in classists to just imply that, to assume that all Asian-owned massage parlors provide sexual services. And also at the same time, sex work is work, and I honor the labor and the livelihoods of these women, whether their sex work was done for survival or choice or both. All of these assumptions have deep roots in imperialism and colonization, and they reverberate over history. I also want to share, there's a Instagrammer, Mimi, who you and actually love, and they said, My heart hurts immensely this morning. I was at a massage parlor two days ago. I was taken care of by Asian women who are just trying to make a livable wage. This is a conversation about racism, and it's also a conversation about gender and class. Working class Asian women are perceived as easy targets and are constantly subjected to sexual assault and violence. I'm seeing conflicting information speculating the white supremacist intentions, and it seems fucking clear to me. They also said, be critical with your response to anti-Asian hate. Encouraging more policing will not make undocumented slash migrant communities be safer. Police have historically raided, killed, and violated Asian women in massage parlors. Read about Yang Song. I will also post some organizations to support who don't engage with organizing to increase policing. The last thing they posted was an urge to white followers. I urge you to learn about what is going on and the origins of xenophobia, the history of comfort women, the violence that is embedded in the history of colonization and war. Really consider your positioning within all of this. Consider the ways you may have fetishized Asian people, especially Asian women, and how you turn Asian culture into an orientalist exotic monolith. If you have access to intergenerational wealth, send it to mutual aid funds and support local Asian family businesses. So wanted to share that connecting to our Ghostie Giver beneficiary. Do you have anything to add?
SPEAKER_03I mean, I've just been feeling pretty fucked up since this happened. It's really been um messing with my head because shootings normally do, but yeah, this one hit very close to home, and it makes me really sad because, you know, I get used to outreach with um Asian women in Singapore who worked in massage parlors, and some of them are sex workers, some of them weren't, but these women's lives were taken away from them for no reason. No reason at all. And it's really just disgusting to me that white men think that they have some kind of entitlement like this, you know, and then justify it by saying that they're mentally ill.
SPEAKER_00Or having a bad day.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, like what the fuck?
SPEAKER_00And like make other people pay for your gross fetish.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00What the fuck?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. The ripple effects of this like one incident is gonna be so much. I mean, like, we talk about on this podcast how like even one person like in a family or community experiencing this kind of violence or dying this way, like has such profound impacts on people in their community. So like I really feel for any friends or family members of the individuals that were lost.
SPEAKER_00There is something too, like people like visibilizing the violence. Hate crimes happen all the time. They're just not ri they're just not acknowledged as hate crimes. Yeah. Yeah. Um so I don't know. I want people to look at the like big picture patterns and notice also the every small detail that could lead up to something like this.
SPEAKER_03Like honestly, call your friends out, because I'm sure small things are happening that are going unnoticed, and I just really wish that men would fucking call their friends out for saying and doing fucked up shit and not just say staying silent. That is one small thing you can do.
SPEAKER_00Right. I'm really tired of the whole like, but I'm a good guy thing.
SPEAKER_03But who are your friends though?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, who are your friends? Hashtag not all men, but like what does that matter if you're not actively interrupting that? Because all women Yes. All literally all non-cis men experience gross objectification and dehumanization in small and big ways. And fucking cis dudes don't do enough to interrupt it.
SPEAKER_03No, they don't. Do better. Do better. I was literally walking to my house from a friend's house who lives very close to me, and I was all bundled up, and these fratty boys are honking at me in their car. And I was just like, can you not? Like, I wish I could just go on a a walk at night without being fearful that I'm gonna get sexually assaulted or killed, you know? And that's very real, and I don't think that cis men realize that. That you have such privilege to just walk around.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I honestly the the resentment I feel in my stomach when a man goes, yeah, I was on a walk in the middle of the night. How about fuck you?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I feel so much resentment too, because I love going on walks.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you are always trying to go inside.
SPEAKER_03Fucking sucks, man. I'm a very outdoorsy person. Trees are always trying to call me, come outside. And I wanna go. I wanna go communicate with the trees and the moon.
SPEAKER_00Men act like they don't know. They know. They know because otherwise they wouldn't feel real really weirdly protective over their female relatives or their girlfriends or whatever. They know. They fucking know. They fucking know. The first people I heard from in my life, watch out for men, mega men or pigs, are from other men. Because they fucking know. Don't tell me you don't know.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I'm like pointing at the fucking mic.
SPEAKER_03Don't tell me Don't tell me you don't know. You know.
SPEAKER_00You know.
SPEAKER_03They know. They know.
SPEAKER_00Same thing with white people. You know.
SPEAKER_03You know.
SPEAKER_00You know. The things that white people will say to other white people when they're not in the presence of other people of color is disgusting.
SPEAKER_03Makes me so mad.
SPEAKER_00You fucking know. You fucking know. One time I went into a bathroom at my uh undergrad. I was doing a presentation, so it was post me being there. Um, and I remember I went to like one of those food courts bathrooms, and I was sitting and I look on the wall, and someone had written, White women, don't let Asian women take your white men. Take them back. And I was like, oh my God. First of all, you can have them. Yes. Also, like, what kind of white supremacist shit is that? Yeah. That is wild. And I was sitting there like, like, is this a common thing? Because I know, I know, I've seen and felt the resentment from white women towards Asian women because they think that they're a threat, because they know that people fetishize them.
SPEAKER_03Vomit. Yeah. I'm actually reading this book right now. I think it's called Everything I Never Told You by Celeste. Oh, she wrote Little Fires Everywhere, but this was her first book, Everything I Never Told You. And it's it is rough. One the family that's in the book, the father is um Chinese American and his wife's white, but they got married in like the 50s, and it's set in the 80s, and even then it's like the amount of like racism that the father and their kids experience is fucking wild. Because they live in like a small suburban town in like the Midwest. He has a PhD in like knowing about cowboys because he studied how to be American so much because he was so like isolated growing up in high school. He had no friends at all. And you can see him projecting like onto his kids like this is how you make friends with white people, essentially, because they're the only non-white kids in their entire school, and it's very sad. And honestly, that's where the motto minority myth even comes from because like Asian families have had to do all of these things to survive and like build like really unhealthy relationships with perfectionism and success that are then just like transmitted intergenerationally. It's a stereotype that actually stems from white supremacy.
SPEAKER_00The model minority myth really does just serve white supremacy. It also puts a wedge between different communities because it is predicated on anti-blackness. It totally thwarts any opportunity to, you know, engage in solidarity efforts. And there's a total erasure of black and Asian specific solidarity. Like Yuri Kochiama organized with Malcolm X, I think she was radicalized by Japanese internment, and she was there when he was murdered. And you know, like there's so many stories like this that just kind of get washed over.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_00Because it doesn't serve the dominant narrative.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. It's trash. Trash. Also, just the fact that like it is so common for um white people to mix up Asian, Latino, and indigenous folks. Like, what the hell? Like, stop. Okay. What is with your like fascination with like what what people are, you know?
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_03It's gross. It is actually.
SPEAKER_00I have been mistaken for multiple things, including the things that you've listed.
SPEAKER_03I I have also been mistaken for uh Latino and Middle Eastern. People really don't know what the fuck they're looking at. No, they don't. And then when they hear me speak, they're like they lose it. They really are just like, Hulene, are you from New Jersey?
SPEAKER_00Your English is so good.
SPEAKER_03English is so good. Like, where are you actually from?
SPEAKER_00Like when I got the voice down, you've been hearing this.
SPEAKER_03When I was in India, I once like I was in this place. I'm not gonna get into it, but I met this like frickin' German girl who was with this girl who was from California. And they were like, Where are you from? And I was like, I'm from Chennai, um, which is the city I was living in at the time. And then she was like, No, no, but like, where are you actually from? And then I was just like, I'm from Chennai. Um and I grew up in Singapore and I like have been to university in America. Oh, that's why your English is so good. And I was like, Well, English is my first language, so that's why my English is so good. It's the first language I learned from my birth.
SPEAKER_00Um C colonization.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And then this girl from California is like, oh, it makes sense why we have the same sounding accent. We did not sound the same. She had a different accent than me, and I was just like, okay, I don't know what to say. Not thinking that you're just like, first of all, in my country, microaggressing the fuck out of me. Like, get out of here.
SPEAKER_00Right, go back to your country. How about that?
SPEAKER_03Go back to your country and like quote, find yourself. Because I know, bitch, you came here to do that.
SPEAKER_00Man.
SPEAKER_03And then the German girl had a fucking Thai Buddhist tattoo on her bat body, and I was trying to be not judgmental and be like, let me, let me just ask her about it in like a curious way. And I was like, so what does this mean to you? And she could not give me any more information further that it was in Thai and that it was a Buddhist tattoo. And I was like, word, so you know nothing about it. And you just put it on your boom, you're okay. Out here, really just constantly appropriating Eastern cultures and indigenous cultures while at the same time just like being emotionally, verbally, and physically and sexually violent towards these communities.
SPEAKER_00Right. Right.
SPEAKER_03Hate it.
SPEAKER_00They don't even see how disturbing it is. They're just like, well, I just thought it was cute. Actually, this reminds me, I was drunk at a party, and I was in this room. This girl was in there, and she had a bindy on her head, and I was drunk, and I was like, Oh, is that a bindi? And she was like, Yeah. And I was like, Oh, do you are you? She interrupted me and she was like, I I know what you're gonna say. I know people say it's like appropriating, but like, you know, I just feel like I I like it, it's cute, and I don't mean anything by it, and like I appreciate. And I was like, You knew, like, I didn't even have to say anything.
SPEAKER_03If you're gonna be so defensive before anyone says anything. Why that is fucked up is that because in the 80s there was a hate crime group in New Jersey called the fucking Dotbusters who used to shoot up people who wore bindis and saris. That's why it really pisses me off when people just wear bindis for oh, it looks cute. Actually, the reason where people wear bindis is because this is where your third eye chakra is, and it's to like it's for protection. You don't even know what the fuck you're doing. No, you know nothing. Hinduism particularly, it's not a closed religion or a closed practice, but like there's a difference between like picking and choosing aspects of it for your aesthetics, then like actually practicing it and like knowing about it and like you know, learning from like teachers who are from that culture. There is a difference between appropriation and appreciation, and there's there's a line somewhere, but I think I think you know for yourself whether which side of it you're on. Yeah. And like if a ton of defensiveness is coming up, try to figure it out. Maybe pause on the wearing the bindies or whatever you're doing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And interrogate that a little more before continuing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's so wild to me too, because if someone was like, hey, did you know this thing has culture?
SPEAKER_03Yes, actually, I have a story of myself that I'm gonna say. I did not know that it was appropriation and not okay for people who aren't from specific indigenous cultures to burn sage or Palo Santo. And I actually had previously bought Palo Santo before finding this out, and after I found it out, I stopped using it, and then I recently like just gifted it to my friend who's from an Indigenous community.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Because I was like, I felt a lot of like guilt and shame about it, but then I was like, well, how what do I do? Let me just give it to someone who actually can use it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03You know, like we're it I'm not saying that we're all perfect and we know what to do. It's like just have these conversations with yourself and like actually like change your behaviors when you learn new information.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_03Specifically from the communities whose practices and cultures you might have been previously engaging in, you know.
SPEAKER_00I feel that. That's the thing people are like, why people don't have culture? And it's true they don't, because when uh you know people immigrated here and they could assimilate into whiteness and abandon their culture, they did. So like you have a lineage come from somewhere, from probably multiple European places that do have practices, that do have culture and food and religions, and you know, whatever. You could reclaim those things if you want to find culture. You don't have to steal from other people who are already fucking marginalized. Your fucking ancestors.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Do better.
SPEAKER_03Do better. Do so much.
SPEAKER_00People are not listening to this podcast. I don't know what. Maybe someone will passively aggressive. Passively aggressive. Yes.
SPEAKER_03You should listen to just this excerpt.
SPEAKER_00If that happened to you, I am not sorry. Do better.
SPEAKER_03Sorry. Not sorry.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and we're all working on it.
SPEAKER_03We're all W I Porks in progress.
SPEAKER_00Like, what's that?
SPEAKER_03Not W A P W I P.
SPEAKER_00Some people are W A P.
SPEAKER_03Someone's listening to this podcast is like, I don't know, 2040 or something. They're like, W-A-P. This is a very right now reference.
SPEAKER_00I mean, maybe it'll go down in history as like a cultural phenomenon. Yeah. Okay, so moving on. I'm glad that we had the tangent because now I'm not feeling so heavy because I really was uh feeling on the verge of tears.
SPEAKER_03Yes, me too. I'm glad we had the tangent.
SPEAKER_00Uh anyway. Okay.
SPEAKER_03Moving on to something completely different.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Moving on to something completely different. Also really gruesome. Full disclaimer. We're gonna use our usual content warning, but I want an extra content warning because this episode is so gruesome. I'm not I'm not sure it's for everybody.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah, it's very gruesome. I mean, I don't even know because I think Shana got most of the gruesome research. I I upper level know uh about it. I will also add it happened a long time ago. So gruesome and happened a long time ago, but probably not for everyone. If you're not into the gore, then yeah. You might want to skip.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I mean I'll give you warnings when it's coming up so you can prepare yourself.
SPEAKER_03But fast forward.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but I was reading stuff and I was like, whoa. I did get a kind of queasy, and I feel like gore is not a bit for some reason, I'm not super phased by gore.
SPEAKER_03Gore doesn't like I am pretty phased by it. I don't like it. Okay. I will watch things that are gory if I know that they have a good plot, but I sometimes have to close my eyes during gory scenes.
SPEAKER_00I don't know why. You would think I'd have more issues with it. But this did phase me. I'm phased.
SPEAKER_03I am phased by this.
SPEAKER_00I am phased by the gore in this. So we're talking about what's noted to be the first real quote unquote female serial killer. And I put it in quotes because sources say that it was like the first person who or first woman who is noted to kill specifically for like sadistic, sexual, hedonistic lust instead of political or personal power.
SPEAKER_03And first person who's maybe there's records of too. Right, right.
SPEAKER_00Like it's a notable person. So there might be other wild ass people who were horrific. You know. So she's known to be the first. Her actions resulted in the nickname Blood Countess, and she is said to be the so uh a source of inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula. Some sources say that she was at like the entire inspiration, and they just give credit to Vlad the Impaler because he's a man.
SPEAKER_03Wow, interesting. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I mean, sources are very mixed, so uh take the both of them are fucked up humans.
SPEAKER_03I'm sure at some point we'll we'll cover Vlad too. Oh fuck.
SPEAKER_00You know, maybe when we need a break from like the recent stuff, we could go with go back to the distant past gore. Yikes. Ugh okay. She's most famous for the legend that she bl bathed in the blood of adolescent girls to keep herself youthful. And also, she's said to have killed at least 600 victims, even though she wasn't convicted as such, noting her as the Guinness World Record for most prolific female murderer. Uh if you haven't guessed already, we're talking about Elizabeth fucking bathory. And um apparently of the time, like she's she's active in like the 1600s, and they said that Gilles de Rey is the only documented serial killing predecessor who was a French aristocrat put to death in 1440 for the torture, murder, and subsequent necrophilia of hundreds of boys.
SPEAKER_01Oh man.
SPEAKER_00Horrifying. Horrifying. What was going on with you, Gilles?
SPEAKER_03Don't know.
SPEAKER_00Maybe we'll check it out.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But um before we get into the bloodlust, I'm gonna tell you about her childhood. Because of course, I'm asking, what the fuck happened to you, Elizabeth?
SPEAKER_03Clearly something.
SPEAKER_00See clearly something. So she was born August 7th. A Leo.
SPEAKER_03A Leo. Mm-hmm. A Leo, also, it's like the middle.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. A Leo Leo. Yeah. August 7th.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_001560. She was born in Nirbatur. I'm not saying that right, but it's in Hungary.
SPEAKER_02Hungarian.
SPEAKER_00She was born into prominent Protestant nobility who resided in the eastern parts of the Holy Roman Empire. She is the daughter of Baron George VI, Bathory, and Baroness Anna Bathory. She descended from multiple noble lineages, including the King of Poland and the Prince of Transylvania, among her relatives. So she's a notable bitch. She's born into some powerful families. Um her uncle, Stephen, was Stephen. Stephen!
SPEAKER_03Why doesn't it sound like a name from like the 1600?
SPEAKER_00It doesn't, is it Stefan?
SPEAKER_03Maybe, but still. Still.
SPEAKER_00Stefan Bathory was king of Poland, and she was raised at the family castle in Exced Hungary. I don't know if I'm saying that right either. And her bloodline was known for gen generational inbreeding. Like cousins marrying cousins, siblings marrying siblings, and she is not early on in this like pattern of inbreeding. Yeah, like for centuries, these families have been just marrying each other.
SPEAKER_03So yeah, and it was like really common in that time period. Especially with the note nobly, royalty, whatever.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's it makes me think, like, you know, we're supposed to have genetic variability, and the medieval times, especially in this particular area, was so horrific. I'm just like, what do generations of inbreeding do to your families? Like, are you more prone to like Because like wow, the torture. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Must be fucked up.
SPEAKER_00What does it do to your brain? You're not supposed to do that. But um historian Raymond McNally says uh that um the constant intermarriage among the few Hungarian noble families evidently caused the blood to run a bit thin. One of Elizabeth's uncles was reputedly addicted to rituals and worship in honor of Satan, and her we're back with the Satan.
SPEAKER_03With these Satan worshippers.
SPEAKER_00I don't know, but like I mean just throughout time. Yeah. People are like, well, it must be because they worship Satan. Yeah. And apparently her Aunt Clara enjoyed torturing servants, and uh Elizabeth's brother Stephen uh was a drunkard. Another Stephen, a Stefan? I don't know. Whatever. Was a drunkard and apparently a lecher.
SPEAKER_03What does a lecher mean? Like he creeped on women? Is that what it means?
SPEAKER_00It's not a word that I hear very often anymore, but I feel like it's it usually refers to people who are like belligerent drunks.
SPEAKER_03Okay. Okay, yes. Who like are being gross. Being gross in more than one way.
SPEAKER_00Her family's not doing well. And he also said that many members of Elizabeth's family complained in their private letters of symptoms which showed signs of evident epilepsy, madness, and other psychological disturbances, quote unquote madness as well. They said that, yeah, Elizabeth suffered from severe epileptic seizures. Oh my gosh. And these are some conspiracies. I don't know. There's so many details that were added after the fact, so I don't know.
SPEAKER_03And it's from the 1600s.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. They could have just it makes for a scary legend. Right. Um but a popular conspiracy is that seizures were treated that her seizures were treated by rubbing blood of a non-sufferer onto her lips using a piece of their skull, thus igniting her insatiable bloodthirst, this uh article says.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_00And also they note that epilepsy was broadly used at the time to describe like a lot of different mental health issues. So it's hard to tell where one starts and one ends. Yeah. And they also say that she was caught torturing animals at a young age.
SPEAKER_03Wow.
SPEAKER_00So there it is.
SPEAKER_03There it is.
SPEAKER_00The the patterns are there. Multiple articles specifically said that Clara, her aunt, was a bi witch. Which I mean like bisexual? Yeah. Whoa! Yeah, bisexual witch. Um but she also said to have murdered four husbands. And the legend says that she taught torture, sexual exploits, and encouraged the occult with Elizabeth. This is there's no evidence to support this, but it's a common part of the legend. Uh some sources said that she was a witness to intense cruelty as a child. Some guy was caught stealing and uh was sewn into the b a body of a horse. Wait, say that again. This guy was caught stealing and he was sewn into the body of a horse. Some other sources say that she saw children being sewn into the body of a horse, not sure what was what, but apparently that was a punishment she bore beared witness to. And she also saw servants being severely beaten, and it sounds like she was like totally chill with all of it.
SPEAKER_03She was like introduced at such a young age, and this was like the It was pretty normal at that time for nobility to do shit like this. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And and torturous. Yes. People were wild as fuck. And another part of the legend also suggests that she was aware of her inferiority as a girl from an early age. So people say like maybe this bore some kind of like resentment. I read some stuff about how child rearing was during this time generally, like what was normal. And children were born and like often ignored until they survived the most dangerous ages of childhood because they were likely to die. Um and then they were put to work. Up to age ten. Okay. And then they could get them married off and it wouldn't be their problem anymore.
SPEAKER_03So basically, no no child rearing.
SPEAKER_00No, they didn't have a childhood. Parents kept like uh children at arm's length because the likelihood that they would die was so high, and so it it kept them from getting too close to a child that might not live. And for noble children, less is known because their lives were more private. But it's suggested that children were often handed off to like a bunch of different nurses and nannies and tutors until they got married. So it it was a hands-off upbringing, which makes so much sense to me also why it was such a brutal time and place, because it makes me think of that study with like the monkey and like the wire mother. It was a study by Harry Harlow, and basically he studied maternal deprivation, and he had newborn baby monkeys bond with different things, and one was like a wire mother, and all of the monkeys that were raised by this wire mother who never responded, didn't nurture the monkey, you know, they started showing like really disturbing behavior. They would like stare blankly and circle in their cages, they engage in self-mutilation. Um, and then when they were uh reintroduced to the group, they didn't know how to interact with other monkeys. They often stayed separate, and some even died after refusing to eat. When I was reading about how it seemed like parents didn't really nurture their children, they just kind of like had their children exist and then passed around without any like affection or care. Just makes me think of these wire monkeys, and I wonder if that contributes to like the hostility and like cruelty of so many people during this time. Yeah, and obviously strict discipline, corporal punishment by servants were acceptable. So if the parents were like, I don't want to deal with my kids, servants beat my child for me, they would do that. All that being said, uh very little is known about her childhood, and very little can be proven with like evidence. It's just all hearsay, and it helps people try to shape the story. Like why was she why was she so horrible? People want to make sense of that. And um what is known is that she was raised in luxury and that she had a level of privilege that was denied to like most Hungarian citizens. She had access to like the best education, she knew multiple languages, she had access to a lot. So Which also reminds me of our Jack episode when we were learning about m like malignant narcissism and how like the two things that are most often in people's childhoods who later develop narcissism is like extreme abuse and or like excessive coddling. So I feel like that's simultaneously happening for noble nobility. You got like excessive luxury, right? But you also have no no real connection, care, nothing.
SPEAKER_03And then also a lot of emotional neglect.
SPEAKER_00Right. And on top of all that, uh they were fucking marrying their cousins. So speaking of getting married at an early age, she was uh at eleven years old, she was engaged to Count Ferenc Nadazdi. How old is he? He's five years older than my own.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so they're both young. Both my great-grandmas got married when they were twelve and fourteen. So we're the child marriage shit is not far back in history at all. No. I mean, it still happens today, actually. Yeah, it does. Um but it was very uh c common till like what fifty years ago? Yeah, and I think my great-grandpa was like sixteen, so similar age difference.
SPEAKER_00Well, she was engaged to this dude, Ferenc, Count Ferenc, a member of another powerful Hungarian family. They moved to Castle Kacze, a wedding gift from the uh Nadazi Nadazdi family. Some accounts of her life include her giving birth to a illegitimate child fathered by another dude before this. So between I couldn't figure out if it was before she gets engaged, but it was definitely before she got married a few years later. Either way, she's incredibly young.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, she's like what eleven?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, she's eleven during engagement, and then in between, I don't know, she gets married when she's fifteen. So between that four years, that's still so young. Was she raped?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I mean, that's the first thought that I had.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, like it feels like rape.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00No, no source said that. Said that she was she gave birth to an illegitimate child, and like that's it, they leave it there. But I'm just like, what are the odds that she was raped? And I think they're pretty high.
SPEAKER_03I think they're pretty high.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Some say that this was a peasant, and so that was like extra shameful. And she was sent away to a family castle saying she had to go away because she was sick, but they also say that she gave birth to a daughter there and she was given away.
SPEAKER_03I mean, that's the same shit happens today as well. Like, I'm just thinking about in India when like women are raped and um get pregnant, or like it's found out that they were raped, and then like all this shame from the entire community is put on top of them, and then there's like fucking honor killings and things like that of these women who have already experienced like such an intense trauma.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And all of the blame is put on them for like them being shameful because they just all they did was exist to be a temptation. Ugh. Ugh. Like we really think that gender equality has like come somewhere, but like the same shit still happens today, and people just like really ignore it.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_03Or like dismiss it as like some one-off, why or dismiss it as it happens in X part of the world, it doesn't happen here. Right. Kind of thing. But it happens everywhere to different extents, as we talked about at the beginning of this episode.
SPEAKER_00So Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Back to Beth.
SPEAKER_00My brain's going on a tangent, so we'll just come back to Beth.
SPEAKER_03Come back to Beth.
SPEAKER_00To Bethy? To Bethy. Okay, we're back to Bethy. Um, so Bethy, when she was 15 years old, she married Ference on May 8th, 1575. Yeah. They had a fancy ass wedding. There was like 4,500 people there. It was a three-day party. Wow. Yeah. The couple's first child was born 10 years after their marriage. Um, so the first child was born in 1585. She gave birth to five children, two died as infants, but um two daughters and a son survived.
SPEAKER_03So I wonder if she had miscarriages too.
SPEAKER_00Probably. I'm sure that was like super common.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And they were very powerful. They covered a lot of state estates, like a network of castles, manors, and palaces all over the Roman Empire, including some in Prague and Vienna as well. And in castles and manors, they had power over life and death of servants and peasants, sources say. Just like Willy-Nilly. Yeah. Which is wild as fuck. What's his face? Friends. Friends was off to war a lot of the time, sometimes for years, fighting the Ottoman Turks, because this was around the time the long war was happening. Took place from 1593 to 1606.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00And um apparently he was really brutal because he got the name the Black Knight of Hungary. The source I was like looking at said his brutality shocked allies and terrified enemies. Wild as fuck. This war depleted the Hungarian economy, but apparently this wasn't felt on the family because they were still loaded as fuck. Turks threatened the castle. Kachica. Yes. Perfect. And then she spent time making sure the estates were secure. Um and I offered board to servants while he was away. They didn't spend a lot of time together, but apparently they bonded over love of violence. That makes sense. Classic. While they bonded over their love of violence, apparently he would roll up oiled paper and put it between servants' toes and lit it on fire.
SPEAKER_03Which is torturous.
SPEAKER_00Very torturous. Before he parted, he um gave Elizabeth clawed gloves to scratch the faces of disobedient servants. Oh my God. Apparently, while he was gone, she had many affairs. She was a very sexually motivated person, actually, like throughout her whole, like this whole history. There's a lot of like connections here, which also makes me wonder like what was she she was exposed to as a child and if she'd experienced violence. Right. Because hypersexuality is very common with people who've experienced um sexual violence, and oftentimes it's just like a way of reclaiming your body after someone has taken autonomy from you. Totally. Right? Like you're choosing this. Yes. It's not gonna undo anything, but maybe like, you know, there's this sense of like trying to reclaim power, especially when we live in a society that not only like produces so many fucking rapists, but does nothing to like ensure that survivors get justice and healing after the fact. Yeah. This is there's so few avenues to kind of regain, reclaim autonomy and power. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Well, I'm gonna disclose that participating in like burlesque was like a really healing experience for me, and I connected with my body in such a way I never had before. And like that whole experience of like, you know, having power over like who what I'm showing, who I'm showing it to, and it feeling just really empowering was like amazing for me, and I still do it to this day because it feels really great for me, and it's not for whoever the fuck is watching, it's for me. And so I totally get that, and it makes sense.
SPEAKER_00It does make sense.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and I I I don't like it when hypersexuality is like framed as like oh, it's like a negative thing, because it doesn't necessarily have to be. It's just a response. Let's let's stop placing value judgments on coping strategies. Yeah, they just are. You know, they just they are, and sometimes they're helpful, sometimes they're unhelpful, sometimes they're a mix of both.
SPEAKER_00But like we don't get to determine that for that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we don't get to determine what's good versus bad because different things work for different people at different times and situations.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, except in this case, this is terrible. Yes.
SPEAKER_03When we bring it back to Bethy, it's not so great.
SPEAKER_00I love that you're calling her Bethy. Bethy You gotta bring some of
SPEAKER_03Lightness to the story. It's true.
SPEAKER_00You're not doing you're doing some not so great things. No. You're not handling a trauma right. You're really being the worst.
SPEAKER_02She is being the worst. We haven't even gotten to the worst. We haven't even gotten to the worst.
SPEAKER_00We are just barely beginning. This is just like an amooze boosh in torture. Yes. Okay, so back to Bethy.
SPEAKER_03Back to Bethy.
SPEAKER_00Bethy was fucking around. Bethy was fucking lots of people. She really was out there. She was out there. You can arguably she had a whop. We did. We did. She was really, she a certified freak. She's a certified freak. Seven days a week. Oh my god. So, anyways, uh one of the sources said that she used to sleep with her manservants, called the manservants specifically. And apparently she would do this like kind of in public. She didn't give a fuck. So she gave a fuck in so many ways.
SPEAKER_03No, she really gives no fucks.
SPEAKER_00No, like uh I mean maybe that was her thing. That's a thing.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Like having people see you. The opposite of where is it? Exhibitionism.
SPEAKER_03Exhibitionism, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So maybe she was into that. There is a one I couldn't find any info about this dude, but apparently his name is Ironhead Steve. And she had a lusty affair with him. On the gross incest side, some sources suggest that she had she was freaky with her Aunt Clara.
SPEAKER_03Oh man. Her Aunt Clara was doing some weird shit too, right?
SPEAKER_00Murdering her husbands and this family. Yeah. Pretty wild. Okay. So in 1601, the household is joined by Anna Darvolia, who's a future accomplice. She ends up being like really instrumental in uh Bethy's torture escapades. People suggest that it's a catalyst for her more brutal behavior, um, which is interesting because 1601 is also the same year her husband becomes unwell and developed paralysis in both his legs, and they don't know what he had. Um Anna's also rumored to be a witch. I just feel like every wicked woman's just like, you witch. Yeah, yeah. Unruly woman, you witch. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Everyone's a witch.
SPEAKER_00Hysterical, you're a witch. Just everyone's a witch. Hypersexual, you're a witch. Right, just witch witch. So I don't know. But um some other writers also suggested they were lesbian lovers. I didn't find a lot of info on that at all.
SPEAKER_02That is one.
SPEAKER_00But that is one. They they they they were saying that's why they were so close that they were like This is so this is Anna and Bethy. Anna and Bethy. Okay. Yeah, Anna was like her closest confidant. Okay. And so some writers suggest maybe they were lovers.
SPEAKER_03Okay. Okay. Possible. Possible. No way to no way to confirm that.
SPEAKER_00Totally possible. And Anna was also wild as fuck, so they got along well, I guess.
SPEAKER_03Um not out of the realm of possibility, they at least hooked up one time.
SPEAKER_00Totally. And then so girls begin disappearing around this time. Any of the questions raised by the families of the girls were squashed because the Bathory Nadazdi family was so powerful. And these are like girls from the village. Okay. And pastors start to become suspicious because she keeps bringing them in to do funerals for servants who happen to keep dying from cholera. She thinks she's smooth as fuck. I mean, how many times?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So that happens. So she has to change up her shit a little bit. Shortly after her husband, he dies in 1604. And then Elizabeth begins her reputation for excessive excessive cruelty. Like people are beginning to know her for this. Um, and increased accompanied pressures to take on the reins of the empire. Really, I think the stress is really getting to her. She's already the worst. She's now just like not handling stress well.
SPEAKER_03Grieving her husband.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I don't think she gave a fuck about it.
SPEAKER_03Okay, alright, never mind.
SPEAKER_00But she probably doesn't dig that she has to take on all of these wild ass estates. Like there's so many. Apparently, there were 400 plus servants under her rule, but killing staff probably didn't serve her, so she had to like look elsewhere. She begins learning girls from surrounding villages, in which people become also suspicious about. She tended to target peasant girls who were in her service, or after this, girls who were denied marriage from aristocratic families. So there's a lot of class implications here.
SPEAKER_03So many.
SPEAKER_00Like she's targeting people that she feels like people won't notice gone or won't care as much about them being gone. Like she considers them to be unimportant. And I think she also figures like I'm powerful. No one's gonna believe these poor families when they come forward and they're saying that I've done something to their children.
SPEAKER_03I'll silence them.
SPEAKER_00Yes. So some examples of the nonsense she was up to during this time. This is gonna be horrible. I heavy content warning. Heavy, heavy content warning. I don't know how to cut it down more. Like I'm I'm sparing you details, and it's still so horrible. So just fair warning. And these were um compiled by witness survivor testimonies of over 300 people. 300 testimonies against her and also her closest servants and confidants, because they also become accomplices in her torture. She would beat them with whips, chains, metal bars. She kept servants chained up every night so that so tight that their hands turned blue and sometimes bled. She would beat them to the point where there was so much blood on the walls and the beds that they had to use ashes and cinders to soak it up. She beat a servant in Vienna so loudly that the neighbors, some monks, threw clay pots at the walls in protest.
SPEAKER_01Oh my god.
SPEAKER_00These walls are like giant stone walls, I imagine. She once strangled a servant to death with a sk silk scarf. She burned her servants with metal sticks, ro uh red hot keys and coins, ironed the soles of their feet, and stuck burning rods. She sexually she sexually assaulted them with burning rods. And a lot of this was like very sexual in nature. Like she would force people to like take off their clothes. She also like tortured them all over their bodies with needles and scissors, which I won't get into the details of because it's gross. Yeah. Yeah. There's some nail bed stuff in there. Yeah. Horrible. Um she also used knives, candles, and her own teeth to lacerate their fucking junk. Yes. This lady This lady's wild as fuck. There's stabbing, there's uh throwing bo boiling water on them, usually naked. She would force girls to run into the snow naked and pour freezing water on them. Oh my god. She would haul people up in suspended barrels spiked inside. Um, she was a big fan of Iron Maidens, which if anybody doesn't know, it's a medieval torture device. It's shaped like a coffin and it's got spikes inside so that when you close it, you that happens. She made servants sit on stinging nettles and uh then bathe with said stinging nettles during the bath. She would push the nettles into their shoulders and their boobs. I hate all this so much. I know. It's horrible. She had them stand in tubs of ice water up to their necks until they died.
SPEAKER_03She the fuck is wrong with her. Oh my god. I don't know. It's this is like really extreme.
SPEAKER_00She also smeared honey all over a girl and left her outside to be bitten by ants, whops, wasps, bees, and flies. Which gives me a lot of candyman vibes. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Mm-hmm. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. She kept them from eating for a week at a time, and if they got thirsty, made them drink their own urine. She uh engaged in forced cannibalism, including them to cook and eat their own flesh or make sausages and serve it to guests. She heated up a cake to red hot temperatures and made a servant eat it. She baked a magical poisonous cake in order to kill a rival magistrate, George Thurzo, who will come back.
SPEAKER_03Oh. But it didn't work clearly.
SPEAKER_00I guess not.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00She cast a magic spell to summon a cloud filled with n okay, so. Wait. What? This is this is these are these are pulled from yes, these are accusations. So she summoned. This is Yes. This one didn't work either. Someone said that she cast a magic spell to summon a cloud filled with 90 cats to torment her enemies. So she's losing it.
SPEAKER_02She's really losing it.
SPEAKER_00This lady is in a different world. Ugh. She stuffed five servants' corpses underneath a bed and continued to feed them as if they were alive was another one.
SPEAKER_03She sounds like she's in a psychotic episode while engaging in this violence too.
SPEAKER_00Oh, totally. I mean, I have to imagine that you can't engage in this kind of violence and have it not do something extreme to you.
SPEAKER_03Your brain already had to be a certain way to engage in this violence. And then you Yeah, I guess you you traumatize yourself over and over again every time you engage in it. And so it just Yeah.
SPEAKER_00She really is getting really bizarre.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um she also buried them in gardens, grain pits, orchards, and occasionally cemeteries, sometimes with rites, often without. Another source said that she would like throw them over the wall, hoping that they'd just be torn apart by dogs. Oh Lord. I know. Most of the heavy lifting though was handed off to her accomplices, which one source called her a torture squad. And that's just like the charges that were like against her during her lifetime after she died. Some more details were added, including bathing in virgins, blood.
SPEAKER_03Which maybe is true, maybe not true.
SPEAKER_00People suggest it's not true at all. That it was something that was like that made for uh, you know, a good legend.
SPEAKER_03That that is the exact story they told in the Dark History Tour.
SPEAKER_00So Yeah, it's what she's known for.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Also, like the person who looked this up was like, uh, this was a lie dreamed of centuries afterwards. Also, it would have been impossible due to coagulation. I checked. I was like, alright.
SPEAKER_03You can't actually bathe in people's blood.
SPEAKER_00You can't do you can't actually do that. Yeah. So don't try it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Some people suggested that she was syphilitic from you centuries of inbreeding. Which She could have also just had syphilis, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00From she could have just had syphilis in general.
SPEAKER_03There's no protection.
SPEAKER_00No. There was also like sexist claims that she was menopausal. I was like, okay, menopause does not make you a murderous bitch. Yeah. And then also with the bloodbathing, some people suggest that the origin story of this was a chambermaid note like noted her hair was disheveled, and Elizabeth smacked her so hard that blood got on her face. And then she said that after she wiped the blood off, her skin felt rejuvenated. And that was what started the bloodbathing. So this is the origin story that the legend says. Some stories say that they had to be virgins, some say that they had to come from aristocracy. Again, it was debunked. It was not found in the court records at all. But some sources also suggest that maybe she was so c covered in so much blood after torture that people thought she bathed in it.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00But I don't know. It says that they also like the heavy lifting was done by uh accomplices. So take what take all the things with a grain of salt, because it was a long time ago. Yeah. Like we said, torture was not uncommon at the time at all. I looked up torture devices in medieval times also, which I could share, and you can look up the details yourself. Just ten of the most popular is the Judas Chair, there was Saw Torture, there's what they called the Pear of Anguish, the Breaking Wheel, the Iron Chair, the Head Crusher, the Rat Crusher, the Cough Coffin Torture, the breast ripper, and the knee splitter. And these are just ten of the most like, you know, mo more notable ones. They're horrible, and oftentimes they were levied against people who were like stealing or lying to people in power.
SPEAKER_01Poor people.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, poor people. And also they were used against women for being witches, they were used against people who were trying to get an abortion. Or people that they just like s thought had an abortion, like forced miscarriage. Which could be that's like a really broad range of things that people can like blame someone for. And also they persecuted people for being gay.
SPEAKER_03So violent tools of oppression.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So that's that. I also read that she preferred fair-haired, fair-skinned, large-bosomed girls under the age of eighteen. It just seems like she was targeting girls that embodied this like standard of beauty of the the Aryan Virgin. Yes. Who was like tempting. Her features were different from that. Like she had like really dark hair, she had dark eyes. Like her features were I I just wonder if she felt threatened. And so like her focus was on these girls.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_00Anna, her closest confidant, dies in 1609, and she's sad as fuck about it. And her debts begin to pile. Legend says that another accomplice, Ertsy Marjorova, also believed to be a witch. See, everyone's a fucking witch. Um, told her if she killed noble girls, her financial fortunes would improve. So she opened up a finishing school for young noble women. And previous accounts of murder of peasant women had been ignored. The claims in 1609 that she had slain women from noble families attracted a lot of attention. Go figure. Yeah. Which is like classic. Really classic. It's patterns we've been seeing in all the episodes.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00Pass it on to you.
SPEAKER_03Well, I'm gonna kind of get in to you know how she got caught and that whole progression of events. And kind of starts off with this Lutheran reverend named Janos Pinikensus. And he uh had just taken charge of the church that was in the village of Kachitse, which is the same village that um Elizabeth's Castle is near. And he states that so basically I'm getting most of this information from this book called Female Serial Killers: How and Why Women Become Monsters. Like most of my um content comes from that source, so I just wanted to name that. So as he travels to this village, the closer he gets, the more stories he starts hearing about vampires and the torture of young women in the town. He also receives warnings of like evil deeds that were taking place in the castle. He even says that he felt the tension as he approached the town, and he noticed that the community seemed really sullen and frightened, and that there were very few young women that were like visibly present. So obviously, once he arrives, he meets Countess Bathory because he reports to her, and he felt an unusual tension among her servants and noticed very little life on the castle grounds. He arrives at the church and he finds notes in his predecessor's papers about the horrors that were occurring at the castle. One note said that he had recently, so his he being his predecessor, had recently entombed nine women in a single night in an underground crypt near the castle walls. Yanos wanted to investigate this. He went up to the crypt and found nine boxes stacked in the corner. They hadn't even been nailed shut properly, and he could smell the rotting corpses. Yep.
SPEAKER_00No.
SPEAKER_03He he was shocked by the condition of the young women's bodies. They were mutilated, partly burned, caked in dry and dark crusted blood. And I mean, all of this makes sense with what we just heard from Shana. He found human bite marks on the bodies, and he could tell that the bite marks were human, and that these women obviously did not die of natural causes. Yeah. He was very concerned and also scared by all of these discoveries that he had just made. So he sent a messenger with a report to his superior in the provincial capital. However, the messenger returned shortly after saying he wasn't able to send the report, as the reports had been confiscated by the Countess's guards on the way there. And so Yanos gets freaked the fuck out at this point because he knows that she knows that he knows. And it's the tension. Yeah, and he tries to escape the town, but he was apprehended by a guard in order to return back to the church and just like do his normal duties, quote unquote.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_03Fun fact Reverend Yanos was the inspiration for Jonathan Harker in Brahm Stoker's Dracula, who is a in the story is a realtor who journeys to Transylvania and finds himself imprisoned by a vampire. But Reverend Yanos is the inspiration for that character. Um so Yanos starts gathering details from the villagers. Apparently, his predecessor had been burying bodies of women with unexplained death for years, and he realized he wasn't the first to discover the horrors that Bethy was engaging in. So this is a quote from the book. Records were found that he sent a letter to his superior saying that um it's this connects to what you said. They found a letter that he sent to his superior saying that Elizabeth had sent six invisible black cats and dogs to attack him. Okay. And he was able to see them, but people who were around him were not able to see them, so they thought that he was like seeing things, basically. Over the years, several complaints had been filed to the royal authorities about Elizabeth. Parents who sent their daughters to work at Elizabeth's castle found that their daughters were disappearing. Rumors about cruel torture of peasant girls who were employed by her were su circulating for decades in this village. Decades! Yes. But the concerns were ignored until the disappearances of daughters from aristocrat families started happening while they were in Elizabeth's care. So the year before her arrest, 25 young women from quote, declining minor noble families is what they call them, were invited to stay at Elizabeth's castle. Several vanished during their stay, and when inquiring about them, Elizabeth said that one of the girls had murdered all the other girls for their jewels and then killed herself, which makes no sense. Why would she murder them for their jewels and then kill herself?
SPEAKER_00No, she just didn't think things through.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, she she could not come up with good like alibis or stuff for this. The the family of this girl asked for their daughter's body back so that they could give her a ceremony, and Elizabeth said no, because suicide fatality had to be immediately buried in an unmarked, unconsecrated ground. And then other multiple deaths were explained away by outbreaks of disease, and they cited fear of epidemic, which is why they burned the bodies. So she's just giving like suspect answers and people are not having it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03At it's at this point where the Hungarian parliament, which was located in Budapest, that was currently under Turkish occupation, decides that they're gonna investigate her. So on December 27th, 1610th, um, Count George Thirzo, who is um Count Palatine and also Elizabeth's relative by marriage, is sent to go investigate like what's going on at like Kachitsa Castle. Um and he does this on orders from Hungarian King Mateus II. So the same same day, one of Bethy's servants, a girl named Dorka, was caught stealing a pear. In response to this, she was stripped naked, beaten, tortured. She did not die from the beating, and so Elizabeth had one of her accomplices stab Dorka to death with a pair of scissors.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_03And then she was left in the courtyard um for to to be disposed, quote, the next morning. So legend has it that Count Thurzo's raiding party arrived at around the same time that this happened, and they found Dorka's body when they entered the castle, and then when they searched more, they found even more bodies at the castle on the hill. And they were very shocked by all of this. And Elizabeth was locked in her castle, and four of her servants, three older women and one young man, were taken away to Bitka, which was Count Thirzo's seat of power, where they were questioned and charged. So the trial began January 2nd, 1611. And this was not Elizabeth's trial. This was the trial of the four accomplices who were accused of assisting with the torture and killing of hundreds of young women between 1585 and 1609. The estimate of how many women were killed was between 37 and 650, and they were also being charged with practicing witchcraft. An estimated 100 to 200 bodies were said to be removed from the castle by those who worked there. So who were these accomplices and like what ended up happening to them after this trial? They were in Elizabeth's service from between five to sixteen years, depending on which one of them. Ilona Joe was a wet nurse to all of Elizabeth's children, and she confessed to a murder and named a total of 50 victims. Dorothea Census, a longtime servant of Elizabeth, was reported as the quote cruelest of the accomplices. She is said to have enjoyed the tortures, and she also confessed and placed a lot of blame on Anna Dorflia, who was Elizabeth's friend that you mentioned earlier. Ilona and Dorothea were both burned at the stake after having their fingers ripped off with hot pincers.
SPEAKER_00Oh my god. The justice system is the same. See?
SPEAKER_03Yep.
SPEAKER_00This was just the culture.
SPEAKER_03Yep.
SPEAKER_00Just a culture of horrible punishment. For what?
SPEAKER_03Man.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Have you watched Game of Thrones?
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah. It reminds me of like Reek.
SPEAKER_00Oh my God. Poor Reek.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. That whole freaking store storyline with that dude and like some I hated that whole thing. I did not enjoy it.
SPEAKER_00No, it was horrible. It was horrible. I w uh poor Theon. I mean, Theon was a a shithead. Yes. But he didn't have to do that. No.
SPEAKER_03Theon was a shithead, but like he did not deserve that.
SPEAKER_00He didn't have to do that. Yeah. Fucking Ramsey.
SPEAKER_03Oh my god.
SPEAKER_00You know, sometimes I feel a van a vengeance fantasy and I had vengeance towards Ramsey. And I was very satisfied, honestly.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_00When Sansa did the thing.
SPEAKER_03Side tangent, apparently they're coming out with two prequel shows to Game of Thrones on HBO.
SPEAKER_00They they really ended it poorly. I'm really mad about it. I was so, so into this show.
SPEAKER_03I feel like I wasted so many years of my life. Anyways. Anyway. Another one of the accomplices was Yanos Physico, the only male accomplice. He confessed that he brought Bathry, her victims, along with Ilona. And he wasn't actually involved in the ta torture process and was a teenager at the time of the arrest. Therefore, he was deemed, quote, less culpable, and he was not burned at the stake. He was instead beheaded. Oh. But his body was burned after being beheaded. So he wasn't burned alive.
SPEAKER_00Oh man.
SPEAKER_03And then the only one of the accomplices to escape execution was Caitlin Benexie, and she was responsible for getting rid of the bodies and cleaning up afterwards. And she was sentenced to life in prison. However, she was released after a few years and then kind of just disappeared, and people don't know what happened to her. During the trial, witness testimonies were collecting from over 300 people, and skeletons and cadavers were also used as evidence. During the trial, some of the witnesses stated that Bethy was a cannibal and had sex with the devil, which uh rumors, but you know. The accomplices were actually questioned under duress using um torturous methodology that was developed during the Inquisition. I'm gonna just now share some testimonies that people shared about the Countess during the trial. So this wasn't even her trial, this was just the trial for the four accomplices. I'm gonna get into a trial that happens that was specifically for her after this.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_03So this is a uh quote from one of the accomplices. The countess stuck needles into girls, she pinched the girls in their face and in other places. I'm not even gonna say this next part. A lot of this stuff is what Shayna has already said. The curious thing is like while they're giving these testimonies, they use terms like the countess as well as her ladyship. So they still like hold this like respect for her, or maybe it's just something that's expected. That's just the way that they're supposed to be speaking of her because she's nobility. Right. It also says she often had to change her shirt. She also had the bloodied stone pavement washed. There was even an instance where she just only used her hands to like scratch someone's face, maybe using those gloves that her husband gifted her. Yeah, a lot of this is like very aggressive, so I'm not gonna go into it. But it did come out during the trial that Elizabeth was doing all of this prior to the death of her husband, and unsurprisingly, Count Ference was aware of what she was doing and participated on occasion.
SPEAKER_00There they are, bonding over violence.
SPEAKER_03Quote from the trial at Sarver during summer, his lordship Count Ferenc Nadazdi had a young girl undressed. While his lordship looked on with his own eyes, the girl was then covered with honey and made to stand throughout a day and night. So this girl actually collapsed a couple times out of unconsciousness, and he taught Elizabeth that in such cases one must place pieces of paper dipped in oil in between the toes and set them on fire so that they would wake up from their unconsciousness.
SPEAKER_00Oh, there it is.
unknownYep.
SPEAKER_03So there's a conspiracy that, you know, all of these things about Elizabeth were were made up, and the reason why she was like persecuted this way was because King Matthias II owed Bathory's late husband a large debt. He didn't want to pay the debt, and some historians say that this may have fueled his move to incriminate her, since he was the one who ordered the investigation against her. So, some context about that. After she was placed under house arrest, King Matthias continued to press to have her brought to trial for murder, each time being told it was worthless. His on-again, off-again war with King Gabor Bathry of Poland has been cited as the reason he focused on Elizabeth so much. Others claim that he targeted her because she was wealthy and land powerful. Finally, the Habsburg family owed the Nadazdi family a great deal of money for a loan given during the Turkish War, and some believe that Matthias sought to negate the uh need to pay this debt by having her removed from power. And some people say that witnesses provided testimony under duress from the king. However, I actually found this like 200-page thesis that this person who studies history wrote about this conspiracy and found that it was essentially false. She says, although she was indeed a powerful woman and owed a large amount of money from King Matthias II, an unmarried woman in a position of power was not a cause for fear among Hungarians. Poland and Hungary were more accepting of what was called a virago or a strong woman, and it was not only accepted but expected that noble women took control of their estates, especially in the absence of their husbands. The reason she was investigated was not because of a conspiracy, but because there was enough evidence of criminal activity against her that even her exalted position did not protect her. Even outside of Hungary, the single woman who had power was not as unusual or shocking as popular belief had argued. France, England, Scotland, and Spain, as well as provinces in Italy, were all ruled by widows or single women either directly as in England or as regents in France. Women rulers and nobles who ruled with the intention of preserving or expanding family power for their children were praised for their efforts without risking their femininity. So this is kind of a conspiracy that's not based on the context of the times. In addition, the debt, the debt was actually passed on to her son after she was arrested. So the debt was not negated. And to accomplish the full negation of his debt, the entire Bathory and the senior Nadasdi branch would have had to be removed from their noble standing. So the reason why Elizabeth was not tried initially and why her accomplices were tried instead was because her family was really, really powerful. And the person doing the investigation into the case was part of her family, and he very intentionally chose who to charge and how to do the trial in a way that other members of her family and their like nobility and reputation would not be impacted as much. Which is fucked up because her accomplices were put on trial, but she wasn't, and that like speaks to um the classism that is present here because I'm sure that uh like maybe one of them who it quotes to be like as one of the cruelest was wanting to do those things, but it does really not not sound like Janos, that teenage boy was engaging in activities he actually wanted to, and he was under her like employee. So what is he supposed to do? He's either supposed to agree to helping or he's gonna be tortured himself, right? Because if she's torturing people for stealing pears, like what is she gonna do to like her servants who say no to her? So it's really fucked up that these four people were charged and killed in these really horrific ways just to kind of like save the reputation of her family. So a few days later, because trials in this period of time did not last very long, there were like a couple days done. So a few days later, there was a lower court trial on January 7th, and this was the case against Elizabeth Bathory herself, and it was reviewed by a higher court later. And Count Um Thurzo testified during this trial. Um, this trial was transcribed in Latin while the trial of the four accomplices was transcribed in Hungarian for some reason. It was during this trial that a witness known as the Maiden Susanna testified that a register existed in Elizabeth's chest of drawers that had the names of over 650 people. She testified that while she was in Elizabeth's service, she witnessed the murder of 80 girls at least. Um, so that's where the like legend of her murdering over 600 people comes from. This book was never found, but it's honestly unsurprising because her family was trying really hard to bury a lot of this stuff. So it's honestly pretty surprising the amount of information that we still have about this case today. Elizabeth actually wanted to appear in court to defend herself, but her family blocked these attempts so that she wouldn't even be able to speak because they just wanted it to like be done and over with so quickly. Count Thurzo was related by marriage to Elizabeth's family. He had the title of Lord Palatin, which meant that he had the king's judicial powers in his region. He chose to stage the trials in a way to make sure that Elizabeth's property and her debts remained payable to all her surviving relatives. All the court officials and jury members owed their allegiance to Count Thurzo. So we're seeing just like who is getting to decide how this goes.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um, and it is a member of the Bathory family, essentially. It's not an objective form of justice in any way. There was a plan in place to sentence her to life imprisonment, also known as in peripitus carceribus or perpetual incarceration.
SPEAKER_04Oh.
SPEAKER_03This is why Elizabeth wasn't even allowed to appear at the trial. If she was convicted for murder or witchcraft, her wealth and properties would have been seized by the Hungarian crown, and they were trying really hard to make sure that didn't happen.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Instead of a public execution like that faced by her accomplices, she was walled into a room at the castle. None of the ruling families wanted the details released to the public and also didn't want her estates confiscated by the crown or to have the crown's deaths to the family canceled. Although King Mateus had attempts to hold retrials so that she could be condemned to death, the agreement that Thurzo had with Elizabeth's family was upheld. When Elizabeth attempted to challenge Thurzo's authority in all of this, he said to her, You, Elizabeth, are like a wild animal. You are in the last months of your life, you do not deserve to breathe the air on earth, nor to see the light of the Lord. You shall disappear from this world and shall never reappear in it again. The shadows will envelop you, and you will find time to repent your bestial life. I condemn you, Lady of Kachitsa, to a lifelong imprisonment in your own castle. Yep.
SPEAKER_00He was like He was like the power of Christ compels you goodbye. Yep, yep. I guess that magical poisonous cake really just Right, yeah.
SPEAKER_03He was pissed about it. Right after this trial happened and Elizabeth was sealed up in this castle, records were immediately sealed by her p powerful family. There were no newspapers that reported on it. And the only thing that kind of was an indication that like justice had been done was that red gallows were erected near the castle to show the public that like something had been done. Like I said, she was shut up in a room in her castle, the windows were all walled up with bricks, and there were only a couple of small slits that were left open for ventilation and for the passing of food. So this was in 1611. On August 21st, 1614, at the age of 54, she was found dead in this room. She was initially buried in the church at Chakitsa on 25th of November 1614, but the villagers complained about this because they were like, why the fuck is this lady being buried here? And so she was then moved to the family's crypt in Exod where she was born. Once Bathry was legally dead, her crimes no longer harmed the family and she could not be brought to trial again. This was exactly the agreement Thurzo had made with Paul Nadazdi and his brother-in-laws. Had she been found guilty, she would have been beheaded and the whole family would have been implicated and lost their noble standing. Even if she had been acquitted, her children and grandchildren may never have recovered from the social stigma that followed. And Thurzo did all of this to protect his fellow nobles and family members. After she died, the family divided Elizabeth's property. The details of her crimes in the child vanished from public record. Indictments, trial transcripts, and judgments were all hidden in closed archives, and all mention of her name in Hungary was prohibited for the next 100 years. All that was left was rumors of a blood-drinking female vampire circulating in the Transylvanian mountains. Some context that I wanted to give about this time before I move on to like whether you can visit this castle today is that this occurred at a point in history that is like a halfway point between the medieval world and the industrial world. And so like she is known as an aristocrat serial killer in the medieval world, whereas like Jack the Ripper ushered in a new age of kind of like the industrial serial killers that occurred in like cities. Pre-industrial age, where most people lived in the countryside, it was pretty common to discipline one's servants to death. It was perceived as excessively cruel and impolite, but an aristocrat's prerogative. Nobody was overly concerned about it. And as we know, complaints from peasant families were ignored up until she started harming girls from aristocratic families.
SPEAKER_00They've sucked forever. Yep. They've sucked forever. And they thrive on the marginalization of poor people.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. It is really fucked up that like all of her accomplices had to die in such undignified ways while she was allowed to remain in the castle due to her noble status and then was like buried in her family script, and her family maintained all of their wealth and power and reputation after this happened.
SPEAKER_00Damn.
SPEAKER_03And if she hadn't started t targeting noble girls, she probably would have just gotten away with it for the rest of her life.
SPEAKER_00You know, like it's interesting, like, how bad did the violence have to be for people to notice? Because it sounds like rampant violence was just so common and like not a pursuable offense. Just how things are. That's how you gotta show people you're in charge. That's what it feels like.
SPEAKER_03Yep. Which is just messed up. Well like but it also it makes sense because they needed to build this fear of like intense violence in the people because if the people actually organize together to like take them down, they lose everything. They would lose everything because they're such a small they're actually a small minority of people compared to like communities living in the villages.
SPEAKER_00You know, this is this is very familiar right now.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. But the like violence and like torturous nature of capitalism is so invisibilized.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_03Whereas it's very visible here.
SPEAKER_00Right. It's just it's just shifted, evolved over time. Different mechanisms, same goal. Same profit over people.
SPEAKER_03Profit over people, deserving versus undeserving.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03It's all no dying with dignity.
SPEAKER_00Like in Titanic when they like only r uh recovered the rich people's bodies. Yep.
SPEAKER_03Yep. And they freaking shut the doors on all of the people who were making the ship fucking run the whole time. They were the first people to die. Right.
SPEAKER_00They were essential workers. So many parallels. Yep. So many fucking parallels. Also, the solitary confinement thing that she had, I was like, that sounds like modern day solitary confinement. Yes, it does. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I will say though, when I went on this dark history tour that definitely was just like an embellished story about Elizabeth, they said when she was found dead, it seemed like she had an aged day because of the blood shit that she was doing. So that's the legend. Anyways, to end on kind of something a little lighter, you can visit uh the Kochice castle. It's located in what's uh Slovakia today in the town of Kochica, located not far from the western Slovak town of Nova Mestonadvaholm. I don't know if I'm saying that right. But anyway, there's car and train connections to most of Slovakia to this town. It is quoted as being the picturesque ruins of a mysterious castle in the Carpathians, and it has panoramic views, great for hiking and photography. I looked at pictures of it, it looks very pretty. Um, and it is like ruins of a castle, like um there's not much left of it. There's accommodation available in the village nearby and plenty of places to eat and stay. The entrance fee to the castle is very, very cheap, and it gives you access to castle as well as a museum. It has previously been featured on Scariest Places on Earth, which was an ABC show as well as Sci-Fi's Ghost Hunters International, obviously. Uh I decided not to watch the episode because I'm kind of sick of watching Ghost Hunters. Um they do the most. They do the most, and I don't even like trust it. Um in terms of hauntings at the location, visitors describe feeling a sense of dread and evil while they're there. Locals maintain that the castle is haunted, and many believe that tormented souls haunt the area. People cite saying people say that they've seen shadow figures as well as full bodied apparitions. Of young girls crying. Some people have also said that they've seen the ghost of Elizabeth Bathrie herself since she was imprisoned and died there. And sometimes she's described as being faceless. Oh. Eerie. So that's kind of like the ghosty stuff that I found out about Kochitsa Castle. It has th over 3,000 reviews on Google. So like a ton of people have visited this place. A lot of people just say very beautiful place, lots of history. It has 4.5 stars. So like people are a fan of it. I think it's the the views are killer, as you can see from these pictures. Um because like, yeah, it's in Eastern Europe, which is really, really beautiful, and it's in the countryside. It's on top of a hill.
SPEAKER_00It's prime real estate. Yes, exactly. That's why the castle was a gift.
SPEAKER_03Yep. Exactly. So totally a cool place to visit. And I will just end with the fact that Elizabeth Bathory, there's literally a Wikipedia page called Elizabeth Bathory in Popular Culture, because she has been referenced in popular culture so many times.
SPEAKER_00She's living up her Leo dreams in the afterlife. Wow.
SPEAKER_03She inspired numerous stories and fairy tales and folklore. She is the main antagonist in Brahm Stoker's sequel to Dracula, Dracula the Undead, which was written by his great-grandnephew. An author named Rebecca Johns wrote a book called The Countess, which is a fictionalized account of Bathory's life. A ton of modern vampire literature and films are based on her. And tons of books, poems, comics, and plays have been written.
SPEAKER_00Damn, people are obsessed with this bitch.
SPEAKER_03Most recently, there's a musical called Bathory. No that just came out. A musical? Mm-hmm. Wow. Cast in 2009. Um, and there's like a Twitter page for this musical called Bathory the Musical.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I'd check it out.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. See what's going on. Yeah, me and Shane are into musicals, so. Uh fun fact, relating this back to Hotel Cecil, Lady Gaga's character in Hotel, American Horror Story Hotel, which is about the Cecil Hotel, is actually based, loosely based, on Elizabeth Bathory. Which is unsurprising since she's a vampire who like sl cuts people's throats with her sharp claws. Her sharp claws! There's been tons of movies about her from 1970 to today. Video games as well, toys. So there was a series of action figures that McFarlane Toys created that was called The Six Faces of Madness. And the six action figures were Jack the Ripper, Ras Buton, Vlad the Impaler, and Bathry. Okay, I'm missing a couple, but those were a few people who are involved in this series of toys. So there's toys of her that you can buy. In this particular action figure, she's depicted as bathing in blood while there are impaled heads near her. I don't know who would buy this for their children.
SPEAKER_01I don't know.
SPEAKER_03I don't know. Um there have been tons of songs written about her, and obviously a ton of black metal and death metal bands have named themselves after her. Of course. So there's a Swedish black metal band, Bathory, Ohio's hardcore thrash band, uh Elizabeth Bathory, Dutch black metal band Countess, and a few more that I'm not gonna name that are from America, Germany, Mexico, and Colombia were all, you know, inspired by Elizabeth. And you know, that is all I got about her. Well, she is the she's a wild one. She really is. Yeah, I heard you were a wild one.
SPEAKER_00Give everyone a show.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. But like, you're right, she is really living up her Leo dreams. She really is. The amount that people uh amount of attention she's gotten.
SPEAKER_00You know what I was also thinking, like when I was reading about how mostly it looks like male historians were trying to say that she didn't actually do it. It was all a lie, like a political ploy. I was like, is this just men being really uncomfortable with the idea that like a white woman could do such a thing? Like it's like disrupting this idea of like the innocence of white womanhood. Yeah. Especially like her being kind of like in a position of nobility. Well, on that note.
SPEAKER_03I will say if you have the ability to like visit Eastern Europe, it is extremely beautiful and also very affordable compared to other parts of Europe. So definitely check it out. It's it's been one of my favorite places to visit. And I definitely prefer it to like a lot of other places in Europe. Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia. Um those are the Well, I haven't been to Slovakia. I've been to Hungary and Croatia, but they're all next to each other. Road trip when the panny is over.
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