The legendary Countess Bathory - Myths and Reality

On August 7, 1560, the family of Bathory was blessed with the birth of a child. The girl was named Elizabeth, and up to 11 years old they grew up in the castle of Eched. Without waiting for her adulthood, at 11 Elizabeth was married to the extremely despotic and cruel Ferenc Nadashdi, whom the enemies gave the nicknamed "Black Knight". Despite her unflattering reputation, her husband presented Elizabeth with a generous wedding gift: the Countess Bathory received the Chakhtitsky Castle in the Lesser Carpathians, where she gave birth to five children to her husband: Catherine, Paul, Ursula, Miklos and Anna. Very soon Fereng died, and Elizabeth remained alone. After this, strange things began to happen, which over time were overgrown with terrible details.

It's no secret that the countess was officially recognized as a mass serial killer, for which she even received a mention in the Guinness Book of Records. According to the legends, it all started with the fact that one morning, standing in front of a mirror, the Countess Bathory discovered gray hair in her hair, losing elasticity of her skin and already far from being an ideal figure. Reflection of an aging woman, once considered a beauty, so horrified by Elizabeth, that she immediately sent for a famous sorceress, who was seriously suspected of practicing black magic and connection with the devil. The countess left the witch in the castle, and every morning she cooked a special herbal decoction of Elizabeth, which was supposed to delay the old age, as well as a bath in which the countess spent several hours a day listening to the whisper of a witch summoning the otherworldly forces to help the countess. Over time, "treatment" really brought results, and the countess began to look much younger. However, soon the miraculous effect began to fade, and Countess Bathory savagely beat the sorceress, after which the witch gave her the latest and most terrible advice: to use the blood of virgins.

The next period of the Countess's life became a favorite theme of filmmakers. From the thought of a bath with warm blood, in which she had to climb, the countess invariably felt sick, so she decided to accustom herself to the sight of blood and work out something like "immunity." She began to ruthlessly flog the maidservants and mock them in every way: she bit off their nipples, pounded the nails under her fingernails, digged into the cervical artery and drank hot blood. Servants began to bring to the castle dozens of girls who soon disappeared without a trace. After some time local residents found their bloodless corpses, apparently, this is connected with numerous legends accusing the countess of vampirism.

When it became known about the atrocities of Bathory, all the servants involved in the "hunt for the girls" were cruelly executed, and the countess was imprisoned in the underground dungeon, where she died three years later. After the death of Elizabeth, the King of Hungary, Matius II, ordered to carefully hide all the materials on the case of Bathory, and also forbade mentioning her name, fearing a scandal. All the details of the activities of Bathory became known only after 100 years, when the monk Laszlo Turosi discovered the judicial documents in the Elizabeth case. Deciding to write about this and open the truth to the whole world, he began to collect beliefs and stories, the main character of which was the bloody Countess Bathory. His book was published in 1720 and immediately attracted the attention of all walks of life from all over the world. It was this work that served as the basis for other works and screenplays, still exciting the imagination of fans of the horror genre. Is this book true or not? Countess Bathory has always received the reputation of a bloodthirsty killer, a witch and a merciless vampire. But is it really so? Perhaps the Countess Bathory was just a weak insecure woman, because of her early marriage and cruelty of her husband who had sustained a trauma, which subsequently led to more serious mental disorders. The secrets of the life and death of the Countess of Bathory remain secrets, and we can only speculate ...