Elisabeth Bathory (The Countess Of Blood) 1560 - 1614)

Grisly surprises awaited the raiding partyas they sliped unnoticed through the massive doors of the Castle Csejthe in Hungary on new years eve, 1610.

In the great hall lay the pale, lifeless form of a young woman, the blod completely drained from her naked body. A few steps away lay a girl sprawledgrotesquely and pitiadly on the floor. Her breasts had been slashed repetedly, and she was unconscious from loss of blood. Chained to a pillar was another young woman who had been burned and savagely whiped to death.

Hurrying to the dongeons below, the raiders found several dozen girls and young woman, many of whom had been bled. Others not yet been touch and were fattend and in good health - like domesticated animals awaiting slaughter.

It was on the second floor of the castle that the raiders surprised Countess Elisabeth Bathory, her guests, and members of the household in the midst of a drunken and depraved orgy. The raiding party, which consisted of the prime minister, the governor, a priest, and several soldiers and police, later said that the details of the lothsome bacchanal were too awful to be repeated.

Later, at her trial, it was charged that the blood of at least 600 girls and young woman stained the soul and bathed the blood of Elisabeth Bathory, The countess Of Blood. Although the countess had often been portrayed as the quintessential vampire, many researchers have expressed there opinion that she qualifies equally well as a werewolf slasher and Satanist, for there is little evidence that she ever drank the blood of her victums - but she did bite and slash a number of them to death. In her vile cosmology, blood was the elixir of youth and a crucial element in black magic rituals. In Elisabeth's quest to reman ever young, she had arrived at the belief that by bathing in the vital fluid of other woman she would be able to preserve the famous beauty that she had debauched with countless orgies.

E;isabeth married Count Ferencz Nadasdy when she was only 15 years old, but was already famous for her pale, almost translucent flesh, raven black hair, sensual lips, and blazing eyes. She was delighted when she discoverd that the count was a decotee of Witchcraft, sorcery, and the worship of satan.

The newlyweds had come into the world endowed with two of the most powerful names in Hungary. The Nadasdays were known as fierce worriors and harsh taskmasters. The there serfs, the Nadasdays were miserly with rewards and gifts and generous only with the lash and the dungeon. The Bathor bloodline combined psychosis and public service, cleverness and corruption, benevolence and brutality. Gyorgy, the primminister of Hungary, was Elisabeths cousin - but so was Sigsmund Bathory, the savage, unstable prince of Transylvania. It is little wonder that Ferencz and Elisabeth soon devoted themselves to sophisticated sadism and princely perversions.

Perhaps Elisabeth would have remaned simply a jaded aristocrat of her times, dabbling in black magic for amusement, if her well-matched mate had stayed at home. But the count becameincreasingly preoccuied with becoming Hungarys black hero of the battlefield, he left the bed of his lady for months at a time.

It was during one of these periods of loneliness, bordom, and aching frustration that the beautiful countess turned to an even more intense study of witchcraft. She orderd her faithful Ilona Joo, who had been her nurse since childhood, to sommon the most famous alchemists, witches, and sorcerers to Castle Csejthe. And they came - strange creatures from the depths of the forest, werewolves, vampires, defrocked priests, demented alchemists, and those who practiced torture for pleasure.

Although Elisabeth enterd into a veriety of diabolical studies with wild frenzy and abandon, the sexuality that hadbeen aroused by the masterfull Count Nadasdy grew even more frustrated, and she ran away for a time with a young noblamen who was reputed to be a vampire. Her cadaverous lover could not compare with the virile count, however, and Elisabeth returned to Castle Csejthe to throw herself at Nadasdy's feet in supplication. The count understood the passion that inflamed his beautiful wife, and he eagerly forgave Elisabeth for her unfaithfulness.

Vowing everlasting fidelity to her husband, the countess swore to give herself completly only to the study of satanism during her husband's adsence, and shortly after her 26th birthday she presented her Nadasdy with the male heir for which he had so long been striving. She gave birth to three other children in as rapid succession as nature would alow, and until the counts death, she set aside her study of the dark arts and completely occupied herself with the demands of motherhood.

It was after the death of Ferencz Nadasdy that Elisabeth began to notice with and ever-growing horror that the face famous throughout all Hungary for its beauty was beginning to display a few lines of aging. Desperatly, she turned once again to witchcraft for a potion that would restor her youth and loveliness.

Elisabeth discoverd the magic elixer quite by accident. One day a serving made so angerd her that she struck her violently and drew blood. Amazingly, her frenzied senses told her, where drops of blood from the wench had speckled her own flesh, the skin appeared to be softer, whiter, than it was before. She had stumbled on the true formula for eturnal youth: complete and regular submersions in the blood of a young maid.

For the next 11 years, the terrified peasants and villagers locked themselfs i their houses after dark and listened in horror to the screams of anguish and tortured pain that drifted down to them from Castle Csejthe. From behind their curtained windows thay watched with dread as the black carriage drawn by black horses decended from the castle to search for fresh victums. Not one of the girls or young woman who were abducted ever managed to escape the castle alive.

The Countess Of Blood kept her dungeons filled with girls who were fed like animals being fattened for the butcher. Elisabeth liked her victums to be plump, reasoning that stouter woman would have healthier blood in their vains, thereby providing better properties of rejuvenation for her beauty baths.

The countess believed that rubbing towles on her delicate skin had a corrosive affect. Hence, she requierd captive girls to lick the blood off her flesh after she emerged from the tub. If any girl displayed displeaser while engaged in the gruesome chore, she would be hideously tortured to death.

Elisabeth Bathory's regular in-class assembly of witches, vampires, werewolves, and alchemists easily convinsed her of the advisability of ritual human sacrafice to ensure satans blessing of their magical spells and her rejuvinating blood baths. Dark-side witches alos gained Elisabeths permission to sonbuct sadistic magical experaments on the girls. The countess herself grew to crave demonstrations of torture as a daily activity. Her cruelly inventive mind divised countless divices by which to flay, burn, freeze, and bleed the captive girls.

Rumors of such tortures and emphatic reports of large-scale abductions of young woman reached the ears of the authorities years before any action was taken. After all, Countess Elisabeth belonged to two wealthy and powerful families - Bathory and Nadasdy - and no one in Hungary dared to investigate the truthfulness of such terible charges accusations. Eventually, the prime minister, the countess's own cousin, led the raiding party of Castle Csejthe on New Years Eve, 1610. Even the most lothsome and disgusting rumors had not prepared them for the hellish scens thay discoverd.

All of the countess's assmebalage of witches and sorcerers were put to torrure and then either beheaded or burnd alive. Elisabeth herself was walled up in her apartment in Castle Csejthe with only tiny slits for ventalation and the passing of food.

Still strikingly beautiful and youthful at 50, the Countess lived for 4 years without uttering a single word to her captors. Perhaps she could only listen to the ghostly echoes of the screams of pain and the pleading for mercy of her 600 victims.