Elizabeth Bathory's Reign of Terror Ends

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According to History.com, Elizabeth Bathory's sadistic acts of physically torturing local young ladies was officially made public on this day in around the year 1610. In the article Bathory was instructed in Satanism by an uncle and sadomasochism by an aunt. What a family!

However, a Wikipedia article doesn't mention anything about family influences other than the level of her nobility. Her nobility raises questions of conspiracy theories and also questions regarding the credibility of sources who make Bathory out to be the most prolific serial killer ever. While her horrific behavior was publicly ignored for years because of her position, King Mathias began seeking evidence against her. Was it because she was starting to target aristocratic daughters instead of her usual peasants or because the King owed her a lot of money and wanted a way to get out of the debt? Who knows. The article states that scholars still debate the number of her victims, her motivation and the means and extent of her methods of torture. Apparently, the popular stories of her bathing in the blood of virgins to retain her youthful appearance are probably fiction. It did say that she bit chunks of flesh from their bodies. Maybe she did think she was a vampire! Pretty scary either way.

The basic truth here is still true today; wealthy people with social status and political connections are punished less severely (if they're prosecuted and punished at all) than people without those particular assets. However, kings overrule countesses, so eventually Bathory was arrested and sentenced to house arrest for her crimes. Powers of the rich and connected are the ultimate power, not magic or supernatural powers, when it comes to getting away with torture and murder, or as Bram Stoker suggested in Dracula, the power of solid teamwork and ample financial resources can overcome anything.

Dracula Double Feature!

TCM Presents: Dracula Double Feature at select locations. I went to one of those select locations this afternoon and enjoyed this double feature. 1931 movies were made so long ago with such limited technology, but so darn good! Movies made before my parents were born seem so old!

The main thing that rang loudly in my head was the lack of sound effects and blasting music to announce or emphasize every tiny action, reaction or emotion already being visually displayed on the screen. On one hand, it was kind of lame not hearing the creaking hinges on Dracula's coffin as he rose in the evening determined to make someone his victim or his step scraping the dusty steps as he climbed the castle stairs. On the other hand, the silence added to the eerie feel and suspense. There wasn't any surround sound assault to tell me what to feel or expect. 

There was some unexpected cheesiness to make me giggle, for example, when Dracula was making someone his slave by using his telekinetic powers to have someone do his bidding, they just used the same clip of Lugosi with his intent stare for every scene. The fake bats bobbing at the end of fishing line (or whatever they used) outside the windows was low budget, but also made me realize that this same effect was used almost 40 years later on Dark Shadows when Barnabus Collins would be stalking Victoria Winters. You'd think they could have made some improvements in 40 years, but then Dark Shadows was working on a shoestring budget and had to keep costs down.

There was a ten minute intermission before the second feature started, which was the Spanish version filmed using the same sets but a different cast and crew. The Spanish version was almost identical with a little more sex appeal thrown in. I liked the end scene of the Spanish version better as John and Mina (Eva in the Spanish version) ascended the stairs on their way out of Dracula's lair. It had more of an atmosphere of closure than the English version somehow. Must have been the camera angle from the top of the stairs rather than the English angle with the camera down in the lair. 

The Dracula Double Feature is showing again on Wednesday if you'd like to catch it.

Dracula:The Holy Circle

To protect Mina from a possible vampire attack as they travel to Dracula's castle, Van Helsing draws a ring around where Mina sits by the campfire and sprinkles broken communion wafers along the circle. When Dracula's three "wives" or whatever they are visit, they are unable to pass the "Holy circle" to get at Mina. This entire scene is really cool the way Van Helsing thinks he might be imagining the three vampires at first as they seem to materialize out of the the wind and swirling snow. Then they are finally solid and he knows they're real and is relieved and thankful that the holy circle's power is strong enough to keep Mina and himself safe from their evil intentions, whatever they may be.

He holds out a bit of the wafer in front of him to step out of the circle to tend the fire. The vampires stay at bay outside the circle until dawn is near when they disappear into the wind again. He describes them as voluptuous, with bright eyes and white teeth. Isn't it odd that the female vampires become beautiful after death while Dracula was ugly with his long pointy teeth and bony body? However, their looks mean nothing to the poor horses who become so terrified by the vampires' presence that they die.

I've heard of people camping out in the winter, but I don't know how it's done. I kept thinking how cold Mina and Van Helsing must have been. They brought firewood and lots of furs with them for warmth, but there's no amount of furs and campfires that would keep me warm enough to camp out in the wind and snow!

A Vampire Defense Kit

For my birthday my daughter surprised me with a vampire kit. It contains wooden stakes, holy water, a cross, a couple of garlic bulbs and some vampire literature. I hope I never have the chance to use it, but I thought it was a pretty cool gift and now I have my own doctor's kit - Dr. Van Helsing, that is.

Dracula: Blood and Bloom on Doolittle's Wharf

For the most part, Van Helsing is pretty long winded and wordy. I imagine if I were one of the characters in Dracula, I'd be inwardly rolling my eyes wishing he would just spit it out and stop rambling every time he needs to explain something; however, Mina Harker's journal entry that describes Van Helsing's experience at Doolittle's Wharf is pretty straightforward and entertaining. It isn't called sailor mouth for nothing!

The first man Van Helsing, Godalming, Seward and Quincey question as they try to learn which ship Dracula has hired to make his escape back to Transylvania swears loudly and often until Godalming greases his palm in return for some information, which makes the man more polite and accommodating. He leads them to other workers on the wharf who are loud and sailor mouthing all over the place, prompting the inquiring men to give them beer money as well.

This scene is pretty funny as he explains how the men describe Dracula's visit to the dock and to the ship Czarina Catherine to arrange his box of earth to be transported. Apparently, the captain of the ship had a raging sailor mouth as Van Helsing describes his language as full of "blood and bloom." He says the men tell him that the captain tells Dracula "...he doesn't want no Frenchmen, with bloom upon them, and also with blood, in his ship, with blood on her also." 

Stoker, by way of Van Helsing, reveals the use of swear words, bloody and blooming, without actually using the exact words, which readers probably would have found offensive if not worth censoring, and maintains the common expectation of sailors and dock workers using coarse and vulgar language. 

Of course, Dracula wasn't offended in the least by the foul language, as he was probably planning to kill them all anyway to quench his own thirst. I'll have to keep reading to find out!

Dracula: The Love Story

This isn't the first time I've read Dracula and, of course, I've seen Dracula movies, although not recently; but this time I'm really noticing the love story between Jonathan and Mina. Their relationship is so mutually loving and respectful and caring toward each other, that I wonder why I didn't notice it in past readings. 

The first thing that struck me was their special shorthand that they use to communicate to keep their letters private. They must have spent a lot of time together to devise and practice their personal shorthand and, obviously, enjoyed doing it.

Then, when Mina finally learned of Jonathan's whereabouts after his long imprisonment at Castle Dracula, she traveled alone to an unfamiliar place to be with him and help him recover from his trauma. He trusted her with his diary and left it to her judgement, which he respected, to decide when and if she would read it. Even though he was ill and might lose his ability to provide for her, she married him on his sick bed without hesitation, out of pure love.

Once they knew that Dracula had been feeding on Mina and planning to make her a vampire, Jonathan resolved that she would not become a vampire alone. He also vowed to do whatever he could to destroy Dracula and save Mina's life.

Their relationship is not one of practical pairing or convenience like many marriages during that time, but one of deep mutual love and respect. They weren't just husband and wife, but best friends and soul mates.

Dracula: Bonechilling Biblical Quotation

How lusciously evil for Dracula to use "the word of God" as his own during his arrogant rant to Mina, gloating about her husband and friends' failure to find his lair and destroy him while, in their absence he uses his superior stalking skills to gain access to her bedroom and feed from her veins; the one person the men were trying to protect. 

Dracula's plan is to use her as a blood supply to punish her for scheming to destroy him, then making her his slave, telepathically linking her to him no matter where in the world she is. He tells her she is now "flesh of my flesh; blood of my blood," a biblical line from Genesis as Eve is created from Adam's rib. Another work of fiction. No matter how repulsed by him, she's helpless to resist. Seems like a bone chilling fate worse than death!

Dracula is so arrogant he believes himself a god or at least possessing the same power and will of a god. He believes he's invincible and confident that he will never be destroyed. That's usually a villain's biggest mistake.

Dracula's Cruise Ship to Whitby

Schooners! Bram Stoker moved Dracula and his boxes of dirt into Whitby, England, aboard a schooner named the Demeter. I know I've already posted about the mysterious schooner that entered port during a wild and windy storm that would have torn apart any other ship, but when I got the opportunity to look at some schooners in person, I had to share.

I saw an ad for a schooner fest being held in New London, CT, and had to check it out. It isn't Whitby and it isn't London, but NEW London will do!

It was cool to see them in person anchored at the pier, although in full sail would have been better. I could imagine 50 large boxes of dirt and a vampire's coffin being carried on that ship. Imagine it crashing ashore with the dead captain bound to the wheel!

Dracula: Protecting Mina

Why would the men think that Mina would be safer all alone in the vicinity of Count Dracula than hunting him with them? She's too delicate to break into Carfax to search for the boxes of dirt and to witness whatever they may see in Dracula's lair, but she's OK to be alone where they've all seen Dracula as a bat flying around looking into windows. 

Maybe Stoker was an equal rights advocate who was pointing out how silly it was for them to consider Mina someone who needed to be protected from manual labor and manly pursuits such as vampire hunting. By excluding her from the good stuff and making her go to bed while they went out, they left her totally vulnerable and in a perfect position to be victimized by a vampire or anyone else, even one of the mental patients in Seward's care. 

Mina's husband, Jonathan, doesn't even have a hint that something is amiss when he mention's Mina sleeping extremely late the following morning, being difficult to awaken and looking pale and weak. Her husband wasn't around to see Lucy's symptoms after becoming Dracula's victim, but everyone else was, including Mina. If I were Mina I would have noticed the bite marks as well. 

Maybe they all just assumed she was having her time of the month!

Dracula: An Evil Genius

One would have to be an evil genius to make himself so feared that many generations of an entire population of a region would be too afraid to organize and rid themselves of its horrible presence. Dracula seems to be able to stalk and murder the townspeople without consequence. The one desperately brave mother who pursues Dracula to his castle in an attempt to save her child, is instantly killed as well, silencing the only voice that spoke out against him.

Even in broad daylight would you enter the vampire's lair?

Van Helsing learns that Dracula is thousands of years old, having had direct relations with the devil himself as a scholar in the Scholomance, learning everything evil that the devil had to offer. The Scholomance was the devil's academy for everything magic and dark. Here's a good article on The Scholomance by Jason Colavito. This is where Dracula apparently learned all of his powerful skills that have allowed him to victimize the human population at will while keeping them too terrified to risk an attempt at exterminating him.

Even Jonathan Harker, staring straight into Dracula's face as he rested in his coffin, couldn't bring himself to destroy him as he lay there totally vulnerable, knowing that Dracula had plans to kill him.

Dracula: Modern Technology

Mina Harker transcribed all of her journal entries written in the shorthand she and Jonathan used in their correspondence with each other. She used a typewriter to get it done and make copies for Van Helsing, Seward and Morris to share all the info they had collected about the evil Count Dracula. Mina was a really bright woman who could get things done and use the newest technology to do so. It's strange to think that the typewriter was a new tool and that it wasn't a common piece of equipment like a computer is to us, making the typewriter obsolete. Have you tried using a typewriter lately? What a pain! All that erasing and no copy and paste function.

However, tech savvy and smart Mina is with her typewriter, she's surprised and amazed when she finds Dr. Seward dictating on his phonograph. She comments that she's heard of them, but never seen one before. She's thrilled to witness Seward's demonstration of his phonograph and is eager to learn how it works. Imagine how excited she'd be if she could learn about all the technological gadgets we use these days!

Dracula: Vampires Raising the Coffin Lid vs Slipping Out Between the Cracks

One of the creepiest traditions of vampires in old movies is when they rise from their coffin after the sun goes down. There's an atmosphere of mystery and fearful anticipation as the creaky coffin lid slowly rises when the awakened vampire pushes it up from the inside. This scene was something I never tired of when watching Dark Shadows when Barnabus Collins would rise for the night.

However, in Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula, the basis for most vampire tales, Lucy does not lift the lid of her coffin or push open the squeaky iron gate of her family tomb to enter and exit her coffin. She somehow passes through the sliver-like areas between doorways and coffin covers:

We all looked on in horrified amazement as we saw, when he stood back, the woman (Lucy), with a corporeal body as real at that moment as our own, pass in through the interstice, where scarce a knife-blade could have gone. (Stoker)

I kind of like the creaky coffin bit, but Stoker's method does provide more safety and mystery for the vampire. Van Helsing had to cut through the lead liner after removing the coffin lid to show the others that Lucy was indeed a vampire. Would it have better if he could have simply hid nearby with the men and waited for her to slowly raise that lid on her own?

Dracula: Beware the Creepy Tombs, Trees, Grass and Dogs

In Seward's diary entry Dr. Van Helsing proves to Dr. John Seward, Quincy Morris and Lord Arthur Godalming that their beloved Lucy Westenra has risen from the dead as a vampire. Van Helsing has already brought Seward to Lucy's coffin twice without completely convincing him of the fact. Now, he has brought all three men to the tomb.

As Seward and the other two men wait and watch Van Helsing prepare the tomb for Lucy's rising, Seward describes the atmosphere:

 Never did tombs look so ghastly white; never did cypress or yew, or juniper so seem the embodiment of funereal gloom; never did tree or grass rustle so ominously; never did bough creak so mysteriously; and never did the far-away howling of dogs send such a woeful presage through the night. (Stoker)

Seward's ominous description of his surroundings as he waits to witness the unimaginable horror of   Lucy as a vampire has warped his view of the natural world into something that's unnatural as plants and domestic animals become creepy and foreboding.

Stoker captures this ability of the human mind so well here. I've never waited for anyone to rise from their coffin as a vampire, but I've definitely had the experience where my mood has unnaturally altered my perception of normally innocuous things that we barely notice under normal circumstances. Has this ever happened to you?

Dracula: Van Helsing Breaks into Lucy's Coffin

Dr. Van Helsing was certain that Lucy Westenra had risen from the dead as a vampire and she was what the neighborhood children referred to as "The Bloofer Lady" and wanted to prove his theory to Dr. Seward by taking him to the Westenra family tomb and opening Lucy's coffin.

The Collins mausoleum on the original Dark Shadows TV show is similar to the description in Dr. Seward's journal entry of the Westenra tomb with the creaky door and Van Helsing reading the coffin plates to find Lucy's coffin:

Then he fumbled in his bag, and taking out a matchbox and a piece of candle, proceeded to make a light. The tomb in the daytime, and when wreathed with fresh flowers, had looked grim and gruesome enough; but now, some days afterwards, when the flowers hung lank and dead, their whites turning to rust and their greens to browns; when the spider and the beetle had resumed their accustomed dominance; where time-discoloured stone, and dust-encrusted mortar, and rusty, dank iron and tarnished brass, and clouded silver-plating gave back the feeble glimmer of a candle, the effect was more miserable and sordid that could have been imagined. (Stoker)

Isn't that great imagery? The dust and rust and creaking iron gate, the dead flowers, the empty coffin!

Dracula: The Bloofer Lady

How times have changed! According to the "Westminster Gazette" in Dracula young children have been wandering away from their homes or not coming home from playing on the heath. A couple of them go missing for the entire night, not returning home until morning. Even after their return home with bite marks on their necks and explain that they were lured away by the "Bloofer Lady," people make light of it. The neighborhood children make a game pretending to be the Bloofer Lady and lure little children away from their homes. Adults find this amusing and play the Bloofer Lady at outdoor performances.

Under the circumstances, don't you think people would be watching their kids a little closer and not allowing them outdoors after sundown and teaching them not to talk to strangers? If that happened now parents would be imprisoning their kids in their homes, barely allowing them out to go to school.

Apparently not, because later the same day the Gazette reports another pale child had been discovered that morning under a bush on a remote side of Hampstead Heath. Did the Bloofer Lady, (who we learn is Lucy Westenra risen from the dead) lure them away with her vampire powers or a sweet treat?

Dracula: Lucy's Funeral Flowers

Lucy's youth and beauty is restored after her body is attended to by the undertaker in such an amazing restoration that Dr. Seward and her fiance Arthur can hardly believe that she's dead. Only Dr. Van Helsing knows the gruesome secret of her unnatural transformation. As they leave her coffin where she's swathed in drapery and decorated with lilies, roses and garlic flowers, Dr. Seward writes in his journal:

"Van Helsing did not go to bed at all. He went to and fro as if patrolling the house and was never out of sight of the room where Lucy lay in her coffin, strewn with the wild garlic flowers, which sent, through the odour of lily and rose, a heavy, overpowering smell into the night."

Earlier in Dr. Seward's journal when he reports that Lucy's beauty and youth have returned as she lay in her coffin, Van Helsing lifts the sheet away from her mouth to lay his gold cross over her lips. The mention of the sheet reminded me of the drapery mentioned in Catherine Earnshaw Linton's funeral arrangements when Nelly arranges it around her face in Wuthering Heights.

Mostly the visualization of all the flowers in the candle lit room with young beautiful Lucy's corpse in the coffin and then the strong odor of the garlic overpowering the scents of lilies and roses is so intense, I can almost smell it myself. Stoker's strong description of the scent of flowers and garlic, without using words, points out to the reader that there is absolutely no natural odor of decomposition, which is what the flowers are used traditionally to mask. Regardless of the beauty and aroma in the room, there's something very mysterious and unnatural as well.

Dracula: A Working Class Mourning Custom

Some Victorian mourning customs are shown in Wuthering Heights after Catherine Earnshaw Linton's death as I listed in a previous post, but I was intrigued by one mourning custom used in Dracula after Mrs. Westenra's death.

In Dr. Seward's diary post describing his consultation with Dr. Van Helsing after finding Mrs. Westenra dead and Lucy Westenra on the brink of death, he mentions the darkness of the dining room, where they closed themselves in for a private conversation:

"The shutters had been opened but the blinds were already down, with that obedience to the etiquette of death which the British woman of the lower classes always rigidly observes."(Bram Stoker)

I wondered about the significance of that custom since I leave my blinds down 24/7. It's just a privacy thing with me, but in the mid-nineteenth century it had real meaning. I looked it up and found in Death, Grief and Poverty in Britain, 1970-1914, by Julie-Marie Strange, that people in the working class would draw the blinds after a death in the house to notify the neighbors or anyone passing by of the death. This way anyone coming to the house would know before visiting that the household was in mourning. Some neighbors would also draw their blinds out of respect until the funeral. During the funeral every house on the street would draw their blinds. After the funeral, all blinds went back up.

I suppose this custom came about because it didn't cost anything, since the working class was pretty poor. They certainly couldn't afford the jet jewelry and decorations with the black drapery around the house that the upper classes could. 

Drawing the blinds is a logical, useful custom that communicates an important message to everyone in the neighborhood. I was kind of hoping it would have some superstitious significance, though, like they draw the blinds to keep evil spirits from getting in and taking another life, or something like that.

Dracula: Lucy's Near-Death Experience

Lucy describes her sleepwalking experience to Mina a couple of days after the event. Mina was reluctant to bring it up for fear of causing Lucy anxiety and anguish by bringing up the bad memory. However, Lucy wasn't disturbed by the memory at all and gave Mina a detailed description of her experience.

Her memory of the sleepwalking part where she left her bedroom in her nightgown and walked through the streets, over the bridge and up the stairs to the bench overlooking the harbor near the churchyard had a dream-like quality, although she was consciously aware of a fish jumping as she crossed the bridge and dogs barking as she climbed the stairs. 

However, the part where she's on the bench with the black figure with red eyes (Dracula) seems like a description of a typical near-death experience:

"My soul seemed to go out from my body and float about the air. I seem to remember that once the West Lighthouse was right under me, and then there was a sort of agonising feeling, as if I were in an earthquake, and I came back and found you shaking my body. I saw you do it before I felt you."

It's really cool how, as the reader knows that this is when Dracula is drinking Lucy's blood, she's having this out-of-body near-death experience. When Dracula is scared away by Mina's approach and Mina resuscitates Lucy, Lucy's essence returns to her body.

Dracula: Horror at Sea

By Artist: George A. Traver, (1864-1928) Engraver: F. A. Pettit [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

USS Enterprise

The above image is the USS Enterprise (not the one from Star Trek), which is a schooner similar to the schooner Demeter, the ship which carried Dracula into England. The imagery in the book as the newspaper correspondent describes the mysterious ship outside the harbor in full sail during a violent storm, which no one on shore imagined the ship could endure, is really creepy! Then a thick foggy mist blows into the harbor only lifting after the ship miraculously makes its way to safety within the narrow treacherous harbor. Slick one, Stoker! 

After the ship runs aground, the storm abates and when the coast guard seems shocked after boarding the ship, everyone runs to find out what's so shocking. The correspondent is allowed to board the ship with a few others and describes the corpse of the ship's captain bound by his hands to the wheel, the cords cutting right to the bone, a crucifix wound around his hands.

Apparently, the captain learned that he could ward off the scary stowaway with a crucifix, or maybe he just assumed or hoped it would. After reading his notes kept in the bottle tied around his neck about the evil monster on board that killed his entire crew, the townspeople still assumed the captain had gone mad and made the whole story up, just as the captain had thought about his terrified mate.

No one suspected the large dog that bounded from the ship could be the monster in disguise. No one suspected that the dog had done the killing. They all searched the town for it in hopes of adopting it as a pet! Nice doggy!

Dracula and A Walk in the Park

I've been rereading the Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, since it's been several years since my first reading. I've been enjoying it and its creepiness but especially Stoker's vivid detail in his describing the atmosphere and environment as the characters write their journals and letters. I'm at the part where Mina Murray awaits word on Jonathan Harker's whereabouts since she hasn't heard from him in weeks and the last letter she received didn't seem natural, so she's a little worried. She's in Whitby with her friend Lucy Westenra, and been worrying about her as well and her worsening habit of sleepwalking. I read Mina's journal entry of the pasted-in newspaper article describing the arrival of the mysterious ship the Demeter.

The arrival of the ship was preceded by hot, humid weather, with the heavy still air typical of a very humid summer day. Stoker's description of the weather and the August day before the wild, fast moving storm broke out along with the hazy mist over the harbor impressed me so much that it caused me to have a creepy feeling when I took a walk in the park the next day after work.

The park was as colorful as usual on a summer day, but the heat and humidity was oppressive and as I walked I realized it was really similar to Stoker's description of Whitby except it was still light out during my walk. I was also inland so there wasn't a harbor, but there was a small beach on a pond. I experienced that strange silence that the heavy oppressive air causes, which was helped by the absence of the usual crowds. Maybe it was too hot for some people or maybe I was there later in the day than usual and the beach was closed for the day.

Anyway, as I walked along I was noticing the strange quiet and thinking how it was like the book when a dog started barking in the distance to my east. Then it was answered by a couple of dogs from my west. A minute later all the dogs were quiet and all I heard was the insects buzzing in the brush and I got the creepiest sensation of being followed, but I had just turned a corner on the path and knew I was alone. The creepy feeling persisted and I had the strong urge to check behind me. Finally, I just had to look and all I saw following me was my shadow!

When I realized the only thing following me was my own shadow, the creepy feeling went away. It helped that a little further on up the path I ran into a few families walking which broke the silence and helped me feel less alone. Stoker strikes again!