the blood countess

Elizabeth Bathory

+The Blood Countess+

family+

+Her family members were notably witches, satyrs and lesbians. She belong to oldest and wealthiest families in the country. Her cousin was the prime minister in Hungary, another relative was cardinal, and her uncle Stephan later became King of Poland. But the Bathory-family, beside the very rich and famous, also contained some very strange relatives. One uncle was known to be a devil-worshipper, and other members of the family were mental insane and perverted.

beginning+

+Married at the age of 14, Elizabeth was often left to herself, and her life became more and more boring. To kill some time, beside admiring her own beauty in the mirror for hours, she took on young men as lovers. Another thing Elizabeth did to amuse herself while home alone, was to pay visits to her aunt Countess Klara Bathory, an open bisexual.

+Reputed to be a woman of beauty, with long raven tresses and milkpure complexion, with amber eyes that watched one like a cat might, and her figure fashionably voluptuous, Elizabeth lived a vain existence of narcissism. Her inevitable aging did not bode well for the young women who had to live and work around her when wrinkles appeared and would not cede to the affects of cosmetics.

+Elizabeth made Castle Csejthe to a place of pure evil. She would always find excuses to inflict punishment and torture, upon her young servant girls. She preferred to having the victim stripped naked and then whip the girl on the front of her nude body rather than the back not only for the increased damage this would do, but so that she then could watch their faces contort in horror at their most grim and burning fate. Another favorite was when she would stick pins, in various sensitive places on the victims body, such as under fingernails.

+An influential comrade gave her an advice that the virgins must be of noble birth and blue blood, if Elizabeth's aging was to be halted. The numbers say that she practiced her blood baths and witch rites for more than a decade, drenched with the blood of over 650 maidens, peasant and noble alike. The countess reportedly documented 610 of these tortures in a diary.

+Over the next ten years, Elizabeth Bathory's evil trusted helpers provided her with beautiful young girls, from some neighboring villages, upon the cover of hiring them as servants to Castle Csejthe. Back in the castle, the young girls would be mutilated and killed, so the Countess could take her blood baths. Sometimes, she would even drink their blood, to gain some sort of inner beauty.

+But soon Elizabeth began to realize that the blood of simple peasant girls, was having little effect on the quality of her skin. Better blood was now required. Elizabeth then started picking girls from some of the surrounding lower nobility. These noble girls were consumed in exactly the same beastly fashion as the peasant girls who preceded them.

discovery+

+Elizabeth was now becoming very careless in her actions. People who lived in the neighboring villages, had already begun to talk. And soon the rumor about the horror in Castle Csejthe reached the Hungarian Emperor. The Emperor then ordered Elizabeth's own cousin, the Count Cuyorgy Thurzo, who was governor of the province to raid the castle.

+What the raiders first discovered on the cold stone floor of the great hall lay a pale, partially clothed young girl. She failed to move. They wondered if she might simply be asleep or drunk, so several men went toward her. Still, she made no effort to rouse herself. One man reached down to touch her and shook his head. He told the others she was dead. They turned her over and saw how pale she looked. She appeared to have been drained of blood—exactly as the rumors went.

+Later, they then heard a moan. Just a few paces away was another girl, sprawled face up but still alive. The men discovered that her body had been pierced in many places. She was also pale, as if from severe blood depletion. It was clear to them that she would not last long—not even long enough for them to take her to the village. Reluctantly, they left her there and moved deeper into the castle. They could smell the foul odors of decomposition.

payback+

+The Blood Countess got her punishment when the Hungarian Emperor demanded her condemn to lifelong imprisonment in her own castle. Stonemasons were brought to her Castle Csejthe, to wall up the windows and the door to the bedchamber with the Countess still inside. Here she would spend the remaining days of her life, with only a small opening for food to be passed to her.

+In 1614, four years after she was walled in, one of the Countess's jailers found her food untouched. After peeking through the small opening in Elizabeth's walled-up cell, he saw her lying face down on the floor. Elizabeth Bathory the "Blood Countess" was dead at the age of fifty-four.