Nadasdy so often engaged in warfare for long periods of battle and blood, the castle guests began taking on a strange appearance, as Elizabeth’s personal serving maid Iloona Joo and two lesbian witches named Darvula and Dorka summoned bizarre acquaintances from all over the countryside to amuse their lonely mistress. Some of the visitors claimed to be vampires or werewolves. Others were witches, wizards, and alchemists.
Many hideous and gruesome experiments were performed by these disciples of Satan, which often featured the torturing of servant girls to enliven a dull afternoon. Jonas Ujvary, the castle’s chief torturer, would select girls from the staff on whom to practice his skills with branding irons and executions, including beheadings. Johannes, a dwarf, would sometimes flog a young woman to death while the crowd counted aloud the lashes. On other occasions, he sliced off pieces of the women’s flesh and passed the bits and pieces around the circle of the guests, eager to sample the gory appetizers before the main course of a lavish feast. Stoked on cruelty and several bottles of wine, the evening would climax with a sexual orgy unmatched in all of Europe for its licentiousness.
By 1598, two more children, Kate and Paul, had been born to Elizabeth and Ferenc; and the Countess, said to be a loving mother, devoted herself to rearing her children—with the help of a number of governesses.
When Ferenc died in battle in 1604, Elizabeth found herself a single woman in her forties. She began to be concerned that she was no longer young and beautiful and that she may have difficulty finding another consort.
It was when she had begun to fear losing her legendary beauty that we can envision a scenario that was said to have begun with a serving maid who made the mistake of spilling a small portion of the wine that she had been pouring for her mistress. To emphasize her displeasure, the Countess struck the girl in the face and sent a splattering of blood on her hand.
When Countess Bathóry brushed the drops of blood away, it seemed to her that the skin beneath appeared softer and younger.
Elizabeth Bathóry, the Countess of Blood (illustration by Ricardo Pustanio).
Quickly the Countess summoned Iloona Joo and asked if the dark arts held the recipes for potions to preserve youth. “Yes, my lady,” the woman answered. “There are such potions locked in the secrets of the black rituals.”
The Countess considered this, then told the woman that she believed that she had just discovered a vital element to the secret of eternal youth. She summoned the guards and had them bring the serving maid whom she had struck. While the burly men held the terrified girl firmly in their grasp, the Countess drew a pan of blood from her veins.
Ignoring the unconscious maid who had slumped to the floor, Elizabeth Bathóry began bathing her body with the blood she had stolen. “You see,” she exclaimed to Iloona Joo, who had watched the entire proceedings carefully. “My complexion has improved immediately. I have found the secret of remaining eternally youthful. I need never know the ravages of age. All I have to do is bathe in the blood of maidens.”
Elizabeth Bathóry believed that she had made the discovery at just the right time, for the mirror had begun to reveal the lines of age encroaching upon her once flawless beauty.
With a desperate passion for retaining her allure, the fiery-eyed Elizabeth Bathóry of Hungary set out to keep a regular supply of maidens in stock to bleed for her bath. For eleven terrible years the peasants in the village below the Bathóry castle cowered behind the locked doors of their houses after dark and listened to the wailing cries of the young women being snatched up by the terrible black carriage that rumbled through the streets.
Maidens, kidnapped from the village, were brought directly to the pens in the basement where they were fattened, then bled for the Countess’s daily bath.
The horrible acts of torture, murder, and the gruesome blood baths could not go on forever. Beginning in 1602, Istvan Magyari, a Lutheran pastor, began making protests with the court in Vienna regarding the atrocities being committed by the Countess. Although other voices were soon added to that of the Pastor, the accusations against a woman of such a well-respected name were ignored until 1610.
A Bathóry or not, King Matthias at last decided, the rumors about Countess Elizabeth had to be investigated. The raiding party on the castle was led by Juraj Thurzo, the Palantine of Hungary, on New Year’s Eve, 1610. Thurzo, a cousin of the infamous countess, had discussed the accusations made against Elizabeth with members of the family, none of whom wished to have her found guilty of such terrible crimes as those being levied against her. None of them wished to surrender the Bathórys’ ownership of vast lands and wealth to the Crown. An informal agreement was reached where Elizabeth might be secreted in a nunnery. Those plans for sanctuary were forgotten when the raiding party arrived at the castle.
Although the men had been warned and had listened to all the rumors, none were prepared for the ghastly sight that lay before them
Although the men had been warned and had listened to all the rumors, none were prepared for the ghastly sight that lay before them as they crashed through the castle door. The dead and dying bodies of young women were strewn about the floor, some of them horribly mutilated. From the sounds upstairs they knew that a huge, drunken revelry was taking place. The raiders quietly sealed off the exits from the castle and arrested everyone inside.
On January 7, 1611, Royal Supreme Court Judge Theodosious de Szulo and 20 associate judges ordered Dorka, Iloona Joo, Janos Ujvary, and number of other witches put to death and their bodies burned. Because of her influential name, Countess Bathóry was imprisoned under house arrest and placed in a walled up set of rooms.
Investigators continued to collect testimonies from more than 300 witnesses to the horrors committed by the Countess of Blood—men and women who had seen their daughters and sisters lured or taken to the castle. Although the exact number of young women who were tortured, bled, and murdered by Elizabeth Bathóry may never be known, the most accepted total of her victims is 650.
The body of Elizabeth Bathóry was found on August 21, 1614, but the exact day of her death is unknown since several plates of food lay untouched in her cell. According to the guards and servants who brought her meals or checked in on her, not once did she ever speak a single word. Nearly 50 when she died, the Countess of Blood was still a remarkably beautiful woman.
Vincent Verzini’s crimes in Italy were committed between 1867 and 1871. The sexual nature of the 22-year-old vampire’s acts is unmistakable. It is reported that he achieved orgasm by grasping his female victim by the throat and tearing her flesh with his teeth. He then proceeded to suck the blood through the wound.
One day pretty Maria Previtali, a 19-year-old cousin of Verzini, went out into the fields to work. Suddenly she became aware of footsteps other than her own. Frightened, she looked over her shoulder. Vincent was following.
Fingers like bands of steel closed around her throat. She started to faint, and the hasty vampire relaxed his grip on her throat.
Maria’s footsteps picked up speed as she fought back waves of fear and panic. She thought of 14-year-old Johanna Motta, who had been viciously murdered the preceding December as she traveled on foot to a nearby village.
She
