Blood Countess: The Lies that Made Elizabeth Bathory a Serial Killer with Shelley Puhak

Show Notes

Elizabeth Bathory is one of pop culture’s favorite monsters. Accused of torturing and killing hundreds of young women, she’s inspired everything from Snow White’s evil stepmother to Lady Gaga. But the actual historical record shows almost none of it happened.

Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack sit down with Shelley Puhak, author of The Blood Countess: Murder, Betrayal, and the Making of a Monster, to trace the documented history behind one of history’s most sensationalized witch trial-adjacent cases. From the fractured Kingdom of Hungary to a Lutheran minister’s invisible demonic cat army, this episode connects the Bathory case to the broader European witch trials and the religious and political warfare driving them.

What You’ll Learn

What the preserved record actually shows
The witchcraft and magic accusations woven into the case
The political war that made Bathory a target
What the Palatine of Hungary stood to gain from her downfall
The one minister behind the witchcraft accusations
Why no bodies were ever found
What her own letters reveal about who she really was
The role of ointments, alchemy, and antimony
Why widowed noblewomen were especially vulnerable to accusation
The tension between a pop culture monster and a real historical victim
What justice could look like

About Shelley Puhak

Shelley Puhak is a poet, essayist, and historian from Maryland. Her previous nonfiction book, The Dark Queens (Bloomsbury, 2022), was a national bestseller and Goodreads Choice Awards finalist. Her essays have appeared in The Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, and Virginia Quarterly Review.