A nice lady named Elizabeth contacted me a while back hoping that I could be quoted, if there was some link, through genealogy or reincarnation, between two notorious figures of Old Central Europe, Vlad Tepes (otherwise known as Vlad the Impaler) who lived in Transylvania and was Romanian and a Prince and military leader, and Elizabeth Bathory, a Hungarian countess who was probably mentally ill, and who may have murdered dozens of beautiful young girls, in order to preserve her own youth or beauty.
It seems that the Hollywood horror flick mythologies of Hungarians and Romanians as creepy people is taken for history and with all the media fascination, films and television shows that are occult based, about witches and vampires in recent years, I suppose there are a lot of people who feel familiar with and enjoy "the dark side" and want to explore "power."
The story of Elizabeth Bathory is associated with evil, with vampirism, and of power over the powerless, like a huge number of Slovak servant girls gone missing. Were they so desperate for work that when their friends disappeared but they still went on interviews to the manor house?
No one should be worried about Elizabeth and inheriting mental illness, which I believe to be schizophrenia, unless they can trace their genealogy and DNA back to her through their MATERNAL LINE. Science has now proven that while sons inherit the gene for this mental illness, they cannot pass it on through their children. It is passed from a mother to her children, meaning only Elizabeth's two daughters could pass it on. Even then there is evidence that a person can have the gene for it and not develop it and further that about 20% of schizophrenics are spontaneously healed of the mental illness as they age.
It seems unbelievable to me that the locals didn't know something was amiss and put a stop to it before so very many young women were disappeared. Remember that there were so fewer people alive on earth back in those days, fewer people per square mile, fewer people to keep track of, less anonymity. People lived off the land, agriculturally, and even if there was a manor house or castle or estate with a town around it everyone knew everyone because the main business of the estate was agricultural so in the villages they were seeing people they knew frequently, working with them every day, and gossiping about each other, keeping track of who married, who had babies, and who died.
What is implied is that because Elizabeth Bathory was noble and came from a powerful family she could get away with anything, that no one, not even her husband or family, would put a stop to her behavior, and that they were all sociopaths if they didn't try to stop her because all this was simply not right.
I found this site that is interesting http://bathory.org/shyla.html Anyone wishing to quote the owner of that site would need to get in contact with them. And you would want them to provide their documentation for each statement.
If we look at this story from a genealogical POV, trying to prove it, we would need documentation recorded in reliable old books and ledgers. I've yet to find any documentation of any murders that Elizabeth might have committed through anything close to a public or civil record, but according to this site, she recorded 612 deaths in her diary. So let's go back to the reality of living in those days, the smaller population, the way everyone knew everyone, and consider that 612 girls lured to torture and death, is greatly over and beyond the numbers that some of our most notorious mass murderers have been able to get away with today. Think about 612 girls in a relatively short period of time and in one place. What did she do with the bodies? Maybe her diary is full of her hallucinations and ravings?
Since such subjects are of fascination, I've met people who say that they think Elizabeth, a powerful lady, was the subject of slanderous accusations.
So many things about Elizabeth Bathory's life were ordinary. She was from nobility and she married a noble. She married, she had children, she was supposedly able to compartmentalize so well that she was considered a loving mother. Who hasn't heard another woman being called a bitch or witch today? .
Was she "a witch"? As for "witches," people should know that during the times these people lived in, the accusation of witchcraft could be used on any woman who was not understood, or any woman who had not married or had children, or who was considered ugly or deformed, or who was different, or simply not liked. People were born into their class, their roles in this life and there wasn't a lot of tolerance for people who were different. It was an era of superstition, not science. When people accused other people of being witches, they were not talking the present day organization called Wicca, or nature worship, or the paganism of say, Native Americans. Talk of evil and witches (and Satan) was almost always that of people who were Christians and Bible based.
As for reincarnation, this is where I'm really thrown. Is there someone claiming to be a reincarnation of either or both Vlad and Elizabeth out there? Certainly I've never met anyone claiming so or heard of anyone claiming so.
And let's wrap our minds around this further, Vlad may have chopped off the heads of those he killed in battle and put them on spikes, but he wasn't the only one. This tactic was used by the Turks. It was used in South East Asia in the 1960's and 1970's. The same tactic of exhibiting the heads of those killed is being used by ISIS. Terrifying.
Reincarnation has been accepted as a spiritual reality by Hindus, Buddhists, and many other religions throughout the world for a long time. It was a matter of belief. A sensibility. These days, through the use of hypnotic regression, and through the testimonials of children who recall past lives, there seems to be more evidence for it. Having a past life or lives and recalling it through these means, dreams, deja vu, and so on, is not associated with "the dark side," or evil.
That's not to say that people never remember horrible things happening to them while regressed.
I was in a classroom in which everyone was regressed and there was a couple there who believed themselves to be soul mates who, in the past life they shared, were both victims of a concentration camp during the WWII Holocaust.
