What's a Nice Christian Boy Like Me Doing at a Place Like This?

Okay, so, if you’ve made the mistake of asking me in person about vampiric lore and its attraction, and then had to listen to me prattle on for hours about how deeply I enjoy it and why, what a great playground it has been for my faith and its growth, and the general high regard I hold for the cultures that have couched the mythology, then much of what follows will be a re-cap for you (and feel free to move on to the next post as well since what follows is a bit lengthy, even for me). If you’ve not heard all that, however, let me give a quick summary of why I would fly 6,000 miles to come to some obscure castle ruin in the middle of Slovakia rather than spending my time in places like Prague and Vienna.

The castle (called Csjethe Castle – “Chayth” or, as I’ve heard it here, “Chestyeh”) belonged to Countess Erzebet Bathory. Who was Erzebet (or “Elizabeth” as she is called here forward) Bathory? Elizabeth was a Hungarian Countess who lived in the early 17^th century (note: Hungary, at one time, had control of parts of what is now Slovakia – hence, she was “Hungarian”, even though the castle is now in Slovakia), and who is a critical character in the development of vampiric lore over the past 400 years, and serves, along with Vlad Tepes, as much of the seminal material upon which Bram Stoker ostensibly drew to create his legendary monster. Elizabeth was in some ways tragic, I suppose, in that she was exposed to deeply occult practices and abuses ranging from witchcraft to sexual perversion as early as the age of 12 (according to some scholars), thus, combined with the natural superstition of the region, her position of privilege as royalty, and a general suspicion and fear of women (particularly women in power), it probably shouldn’t be surprising that a foundation was laid upon which Elizabeth not surprisingly really did become one of the worst female monsters in the last 500 years. The story goes that one day, she slapped a chamber maid for not brushing her hair properly, and when the girl’s blood ended up on the Countess’ hand, she thought that it made her skin actually “shine” with enhanced youth. Eccentric and fixated on her own beauty and its preservation, Elizabeth thereby determined that if blood could preserve her youthfulness, she would seek it by any means necessary. From there, over the next decade, Elizabeth hunted more than 600 young women in her surrounding region, had them brought to her castle, tortured and killed them, and then bathed in their blood as a remedy, she supposed, to the aging process. Because of her title and position (she was, after all, a relative to the Polish King with the same last name, and a Countess with legitimate title, land and lineage in the Hapsburg Empire), the Hapsburg ruling elite was reluctant to do anything “direct” until the public outcry grew too great. Eventually, she was investigated, tried and sentenced to death by “isolation”, walling her up in her own tower with not but a small hole through which to push food, and lasted in that state for 3 years or so before finally dying. Upon her death, the stories grow to legend quickly. One writer claimed that on the day she died, a storm blew in suddenly from the east, darkening the entire region in the fury of lightning and thunder, and that the wind blew so uncharacteristically and unseasonably hard, that everyone wondered whether or not they had unleashed some horrible thing into the world that might be more terrible than in life. From there, and even to this day, legends of her undead hauntings circulate through the region, and serve as a critical “ingredient” to the whole superstitious and supernatural “stew” that steeps in this area around such things. As Jonathan Harker comments in Dracula: “I read that every superstition in the world is gathered in the horseshoe of the Carpathians, as if it were the center of some imaginative whirlpool.”

“Yeah, okay, Jack… I get that… but… well… ‘eeew!’, first of all, and second… tell me again why YOU are here?” I mean, let’s face it, seeking out the castles of supposedly undead and notably historical serial killers isn’t exactly typical for a guy like me, right? Well, let me explain a bit (though I won’t be able to do it justice here), but would love to have the opportunity to talk at greater length in person or otherwise if you would like.

Fear: Fear is an interesting sensation, and people have many different responses to it. Most people (note: most smart or normal people) don’t spend a lot of time hanging out with their fears or studying them. But for some reason, I’ve always been drawn to what I (and others) fear. I think it’s probably because just not much really frightens me (more of a testimony to my ignorance and stupidity in most instances than courage, I’m afraid), so when I find something that elicits such a response, I’m immediately curious about why, and it forms a passion for me to figure it out. Take fighting. I used to be petrified about what I would do if I ever needed to defend myself or the people I love. Result? I’ve dedicated the last several years to figuring that out, and now feel that I would be relatively “comfortable” with just about any scenario, armed or unarmed, and even with multiple attackers. I saw Jaws when I was a kid and it scared me to death. I was reluctant to even go into swimming pools for years afterward. Result? I now know more about sharks than most people I know (Chondricthologists excepted, naturally), and would love to dive with Great Whites off the coast of the Farallon Islands or South Africa someday if I ever get the chance. Vampires are the same way. I was amazed at the roller-coaster of emotion that haunted, frightened, and yet drew me even as a young boy, and so, I guess “naturally”, I have had them lurking in the back of my head for the better part of three decades now. It’s not a “normal” response, to be sure, but that’s how I process fear. Maybe it’s because if you can understand something and at least make it a “known quantity”, you can beat it, or…as with me in the case of sharks, eventually turn the tables and even grow to love them or admire them. Even with vampires, I don’t exactly have any blood-sucking fiends for friends, but I have a deep and tender place in my heart for “Goth kids”, and that has most certainly resulted from similar processing.

“What Makes a Monster?”: I love the contemplation of the question: “what makes a monster?” In fact, if I could ever teach a college course, I would teach 19^th Century Gothic Literature and the bulk of the class would center on this question (i.e. “What makes a monster?”). What gives something that innate quality necessary to become such a horrible and twisted enemy of humanity, either in fact or fiction, and is there “something more to the story” if you dig deeply enough? If you study horror as a genre for very long, you realize very quickly that seldom are the “monsters” the “real monsters”, at least in the best samples. In Shelly’s Frankenstine, the “monster” isn’t the monster, but rather his creator. In Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame, Quazimoto is only “monster” in appearance, but the corrupt Parisian government is the real monster, and it takes Quazimoto, in all of his “monsterousness” to defeat it (an example where “only a monster can defeat a monster” in some instances). In LeReaux’s Phantom of the Opera, Eric (the Phantom) only has no regard for society or society’s laws because he has been shunned, abused and threatened by it because of his physical appearance since he was a child, and thus, society is the real “monster” that created Eric, since his deepest desire has always only been to love and be loved in return. And in Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde, we learn that man himself is his own monster, and one not need to look farther than himself to see desperate evils lurking there, and that we each have responsibility to engage the lurking demon in our own hearts, regardless of what factors have “made us” what we are. In Elizabeth’s case, I by no means call her a “tragic martyr” as each of us does have an individual responsibility to account for our actions, but it’s interesting (and terrible) to note what happens when you take a small child, expose her to all sorts of depravity, excess, debauchery and perversion, foster all of her developing eccentricities without question because of her title and privilege, give her a ton of unchallenged authority and power as an adult, and heap upon her a natural suspicion because of her sex and the superstitions surrounding it. I mean, honestly, you can see how the Hapsburgs either indirectly (or, I would vouch, directly, but perhaps unwittingly) created the very monster they condemned. Anyway, the point is, there’s usually more to the story of “monsters”, and often, lurking behind the shadows, there’s something else that is “motivating” the puppet strings, whether corrupt government hierarchies or careless individuals.

“The REAL Monsters”: Seldom does fiction not have its roots in reality or history. The things that we love, as well as the things that we fear, and the subsequent heroes or monsters we recognize or create almost always have their grounding in some sort of historical fact. Like the legendary Achilles (played by Brad Pitt) in the recent production of Troy says to the little boy who told him that he would not go into battle because he would fear death, “that is why no one will remember your name.” We remember the names of those in history, and it seems unavoidable that we either elevate or denigrate them far beyond their historical reality in order to create effigies that we seem to need to survive. As a result, I am fascinated by stories that have extremes of either quality (for good or evil), and Elizabeth Bathory is among those key personas in vampiric lore who truly do have a “physical history” to accompany her massively extrapolated legendry. In addition, whatever fiction and superstitions have sprouted from her, they have done so because of the inescapable horror of who she was in life, and the combination of privilege, power, and perversion that made her what she was. Thus, in her case, I’m not really sure which is scarier… the notion of an undead vampire Countess who still haunts the countryside and is imbued with all the qualities that being undead would afford her, or the plain and stark reality of all that she undertook and committed in real life.

Vampiric Lore: Because of Elizabeth’s crimes and subsequent legendry, I personally think that while Stoker’s monster was male and more closely resembled the personage of the historical Voivode (i.e. “warlord”) Vlad “the Impaler” Dracul Tepes (note: Dracul is the family name, thus…Dracula), much of the vampiric lore that had circulated throughout the region was a combination of pre-existing mythology (Slavs, Szelkys, Magyars, Dravidians, Poles, Slovaks, etc. ALL had myths of vampires, lycanthropes and witches before the 1600’s when Bathory and Tepes ruled), and then Bathory’s and Tepe’s legendry thrown in as well. I personally (and some others agree) think that Csjethe Castle is more what Stoker had in mind when he wrote the first few chapters of Dracula, though Harker’s journey route will actually take you to Bran Castle in Romania (which I will hopefully also see in a couple of days), mainly due to the ruinous description of the castle and its remoteness and isolation. Bran is an immaculately maintained historical site. Csjethe is not. It’s falling apart, and now, in 2007 (over 100 years after Dracula’s release), in danger of completely falling down. But either way, as Stoker spoke with monks, visitors from the region, and other sources as he collected his data, I can’t help but think that the mythos surrounding Elizabeth made it into his overall formation of his vampire.

My Personal Motivator: I guess that I personally wanted to come here because vampires are, among all the “monsters” that we create, somewhat unique, at least in my mind. They are such because they are neither blindly destructive (like zombies, whose power to cause fear lies not only in their undead and cannibalistic state, but also in their sort of blunt, mob-like mentality), uncontrolled (like werewolves and other lycanthropes, who, because of lupine rage, destroy everything around them, even those they love and care about most – despite their “human” desire not to do so or their remorse in the morning when they assume their human shape again), or overtly repugnant or even frightening in their appearance. Rather, vampires are scary because they are sensual, inviting, hypnotic, even attractive, while at the same time, something primal, or, dare I say, “spiritual”, in the back of our minds sends chills up our spines when we engage them in literature or film. They are fraught with a sort of what I call “paradoxical attraction”, which simultaneously pushes and pulls us to and from them. Consider this passage from Dracula as Jonathan Harker meets the three vampiric “brides” in the forbidden room:

“The other was fair, as fair as fair can be, with great wavy masses of golden hair and eyes like pale sapphires. I seemed somehow to know her face, and to know it in connection with some dreamy fear, but I could not recollect at the moment how or where. All three had brilliant white teeth, that shone like pearls against the ruby of the voluptuous lips. There was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear. I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips.”

For me, then, vampires are the ultimate evil, and have assumed a significant metaphor in my life, more because they pose the question of attraction, despite one’s efforts to the contrary, than because of their overt grotesqueries. This is because the evil I see around me in the everyday world is often so similarly subtle. It is the temptation to just remain motionless while something seemingly benign or maybe even “beautiful” bends over me, but with evil intent. Let’s face it, overt evil, like the kind that I saw at Auschwitz, is “easier”. It’s horrific and wrong and in your face, and we all know it, and it is “easier” to rally to fight it (not to say that it is “easy” to fight, mind you, or without sacrifice, but at least easier to identify and thus easier to engage). But so many of the darknesses in my own life are not like that. No one puts a gun in my hand and asks me to kill Jews or murder children. But how ‘bout putting just one more purchase on the credit card? Or eating that Krispy Kreme? Or just driving faster to avoid eye contact with the guy with the “will work for food” sign on the side of the road? Those are small things, and many of us might not classify them as “evil”, per se. However, they are small steps down a path that, as my favorite poet, Madison Julius Cawein writes, “beckons [us] onward, into a forest that glows”, but eventually, “[dances us] downward to where [our] doom is sealed”. I’ll bet Elizabeth Bathory didn’t wake up one morning and say, “You know? I think I’ll become one of the most horrific historical female personages since the cults of Isis… yeah, that sounds like a great plan for the day!” any more than modern renown serial killer Ted Bundy sought similar in his path. But, by Ted’s admission in his interview with Dr.James Dobson shortly before his execution, rather, “it started small… it was a series of small choices that eventually got bigger and needed more and more to satisfy.” The evil, therefore, that I fear most is not the evil that smacks you in the face and demands to be reckoned with. Rather, the evil that I fear most is the evil that kneels down beside you and offers you a kiss.