It often seems that deep down within us, past the
face we show to the world, there is often something darker coiled up in
the shadows. Humans sometimes seem to have as much of a propensity for
evil as they do for good, and history is littered with tales of deranged
serial killers who have managed to stamp a stain on the chapters of
their eras. Yet most of them cannot compete with one of the most brutal
murderers the world has ever known. Here is the tale of a countess who
single-handedly wiped out perhaps hundreds of people, and who is
shrouded in enigmatic legends of black magic, vampirism, and pure,
unadulterated evil.
As with many of the worst killers in human history, the one who would
go on to become known as “The Blood Countess” and “Countess Dracula”
was not born into this world a monster, but rather as an innocent,
wide-eyed infant, with the whole future sprawled out ahead of her.
Indeed, in 1560 she was born into more fortunate circumstances than
most, the daughter of the eminent Baron George VI Báthory and Baroness
Anna Báthory, rulers of the Hungarian independent principality of
Transylvania, and so Elizabeth Báthory was brought up amidst nobility
and opulence. She had the best education, powerful relatives in high
places, and a privileged existence of having everything she could ever
want in life, but despite this from an early age there began to appear
signs that their were dark clouds on the horizon for little Elizabeth.
One of the first signs that there was something wrong with her were
her recurring seizures, probably epilepsy but at the time were thought
to be what was called “Falling Sickness,” the treatment of which
included rubbing healthy blood on the lips and drinking a concoction of
brains and blood. This would have no doubt been rather traumatic for one
so young, but there was also the fact that she was often subjected to
the sight of horrible tortures carried out by her powerful family
against criminals, such as allegedly seeing a man sewn up into the
carcass of a horse and many others, and she is also said to have been
witness to black magic rituals carried out by her aunt, Klara Bathory, a
known witch and suspected murderer. It was perhaps because of her poor
health, bad role models, and these gruesome scenes etched into her young
mind that Elizabeth began to increasingly exhibit wild mood swings,
short-temperedness, and a proclivity towards violent outbursts, and this
would all only escalate when she was married at the tender age of 14.
Elizabeth’s husband was another Hungarian noble by the name of Ferenc
Nádasdy, the whole thing had been arranged by their families for
political clout, and she moved into Nádasdy Castle in Sárvár before
receiving the massive Čachtice Castle, in the Carpathian Mountains of
what is now Slovakia, as a wedding gift to her from her new husband. She
would end up spending much of her time alone in this remote, cold
castle tending to the estate while her husband was away fighting a war
against the Ottomans as a chief Hungarian commander. Even before this
there were gruesome tales surrounding them, such as the rumor that
Elizabeth had given birth to the child of a servant boy, the infant
later viciously killed by Nádasdy. Indeed, Nádasdy was rumored to be
quite the sadistic one, said to torment servants and to employ much
torture against his foes in his military campaigns, and he fed into
Elizabeth’s already festering capacity for dire deeds.
It is unclear if this exacerbated Elizabeth’s already present mental
instability, but it was during her marriage to Nádasdy that she would
cross over into the realm of pure evil. There was allegedly a special
room within the cold confines of the castle, built by Nádasdy expressly
for the purpose of torturing his servants and anyone who crossed him,
and Elizabeth began to put this torture chamber to use as well,
experimenting on servant girls with different methods of causing pain,
often joined by her husband, who taught her and mentored her in the ways
of torture. This was already grim enough, but it would all escalate
considerably when Nádasdy died in 1604 after contracting a mysterious
illness that left him debilitated and unable to walk. This would turn
out to be unfortunate for the servants, because although he had been a
tyrant he was till a saint compared to his wife, who had a ruthless
coiled, roiling evil force thrumming within her.
Upon her husband’s death, Elizabeth Báthory’s sadistic streak
supposedly went unchecked and spiraled to new levels of depravity,
erupting into an orgy of violence and death, her lack of anyone to hold
her back or keep her inner monster in check allowing this maniacal woman
up in her spooky castle to unleash on those around her with all of her
pent up demented will. One of her favorite things to do was to force
servants to go out into the snow naked in the dead of winter, after
which she would douse them with cold water and watch them freeze where
they stood, like statues of ice. She would also put servants in spiked
cages hung from the ceiling, torture them with needles, slather them
with honey and unleash bees or other biting, stinging insects upon them,
poke them with red hot irons, or cut off digits, and this graduated
into ever more perverse atrocities. She was said to cut servants and
suck their blood, bite off and eat chunks of their flesh, and to even
empty their blood into vat in order for her to bathe in it, convinced
that these literal blood baths were the key to eternal beauty and youth.
On top of all this, it would later be said that she also was a powerful
sorceress and witch, with the ability to cast nefarious dark curses.
It is unknown to just what extend any of this actually happened the
way it is described in the lore, but at the time rumors began to fly of
the crazy countess up in her evil lair, torturing and killing with
impunity within her dank castle walls. Some servant girls who survived
their terrible ordeals would stumble into villages nearby telling of
these horror stories, and it was not long before this all caught the
attention of authorities, although her high social standing and title
made her pretty much untouchable and above the law. Nevertheless, in
1610, after a decade of her dark deeds, she was finally arrested after
the daughters of upstanding citizens went missing in her care, with the
authorities, led by a Count Gyorgy Thurzo, allegedly finding imprisoned
girls and even dead bodies strewn about at the castle when they
investigated. Elizabeth Báthory was imprisoned within the walls of
Čachtice Castle, along with some accomplices she was mentoring in the
ways of torture and death, and she was apparently held within a
windowless room with only a slit through which to pass food, languishing
their in the gloom.
The ruins of Čachtice Castle
Elizabeth Báthory’s subsequent trial would see over 300 witnesses and
survivors testify against her, weaving a story of suffering and death
that made the court shudder, and it became a major scandal that would
become intertwined with folklore and whispered amongst the populace. She
would become the Blood Countess, an unstoppable force of strife with
magical powers, and her legend grew even as she was being tried.
According to eyewitness accounts, Elizabeth was responsible for the
torture, maiming, and deaths of anywhere between 50 to 650 young girls
between the ages of 10 and 14, often lured away from their homes by the
promise of high pay or just straight kidnapped, with the official count
settling at “only” 80. However, due to her royal standing despite all of
this, it was only her accomplices that faced prosecution, which meant
execution, and in the end she would die under house arrest in her castle
in 1614, alone and probably dreaming dreams of more carnage and death,
dreams of blood. Curiously, her body would sort of disappear after this,
and no one is really sure where one of the worst serial killers in
human history is buried.
The story of the Blood Countess Elizabeth Báthory has gone onto
become the stuff of legend, and is often suspected as being one of the
influences for Bram Stoker’s Dracula, such is her dark and
twisted infamy. Many of the elements of her life and crimes have no
doubt been exaggerated and warped over time to make her out to be some
kind of vampire boogieman, and we are left to wonder about how true the
bizarre tales are and what caused her to go down that macabre route. She
might have been just a very psychotic individual drunk on power and
free to satisfy her darkest desires, or she might have even been set up
by the church or the victim of some conspiracy, as has been suggested in
recent years. Whether she really bathed in blood or practiced black
magic is also disputed, but what we do know is that she did exist, and
did torture and kill between 50 and 650 people, making her a true
monster despite what the reality of the circumstances might be. For now
the ruins of that castle still stand as surely as her repulsive legacy,
and Elizabeth Báthory is widely regarded as one of the most prolific
serial killers in history.
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