Possess Me Macabre

Serial Killers: Elizabeth Báthory

Elizabeth Báthory is one of the most prolific serial killers in all of history.

She was born into a family of nobility in the Kingdom of Hungary in 1560. The Báthory family included bishops, knights, judges, cardinals and kings, but it had fallen into a moral and cultural decline by the mid-16th century. The royal bloodline scarred by incest and epilepsy, with later family ranks including alcoholics, murderers, sadists, homosexuals (considered a crime at the time) and satanists. Throughout her life, she was subject to fainting seizures and blinding headaches - probably epileptic in nature - which superstitious family members diagnosed as demonic possession.

Elizabeth was introduced to devil worship in adolescence by one of her satanist uncles. Her favorite aunt, one of Hungary's most notorious lesbians, taught Elizabeth the pleasures of flagellation and other perversions. But Elizabeth always believed that where pain was concerned, it was better to give than to receive.

Elizabeth married Count Ferencz Nadasdy at age 15. The newlyweds settled at Csejte castle in north western Hungary. But Count Nadasdy also owned other homes around the country, each complete with a dungeon and torture chamber specially designed to meet Elizabeth's needs.

Nadasdy would often leave for weeks at months at a time and leave his bride alone and bored. So Elizabeth would take part in alchemy, fulfill her sexual quirks with men and women alike, changed clothes and jewelry five to six times a day, and admired herself in full length mirrors by the hour. But above all else, when she was angry, tense, or simply bored, the countess tortured servant girls for sport.

When torture was at hand, the bisexual countess had a savage imagination. Pins and needles were favorite tricks of the trade, piercing the lips and nipples of her victims, sometimes ramming needles beneath their fingernails.
"The little slut!" She would sneer, as her captive squirmed in pain.
"If it hurts, she's only got to take them out herself." Elizabeth also enjoyed biting her victims on the cheeks, breasts, and else where, hard enough to draw blood. Other victims were stripped, smeared with honey, and exposed to the attacks of ants and bees.

Count Nadasdy would sometimes join Elizabeth in some of the torture sessions, but eventually began to fear his wife, so he would spend more time on the road. And when he finally died in 1600 or 1604 (accounts vary), Elizabeth lost all restraint and devoted herself full time to the torment and sexual misery of younger women. Elizabeth would order trusted servants to scour the countryside for fresh prey, offering peasant girls with offers of employment. None who ever entered Elizabeth's service ever escaped alive.

By her early forties, Elizabeth Báthory presided over a miniature holocaust of her own design. Elizabeth ravaged the countryside, claiming peasant victims at will. She carried special silver pincers, designed for ripping flesh, but she was also comfortable with puns and needles, branding irons, red-hot pokers, whips, scissors... almost anything at all. Household accomplices would strip her victims and hold them down while Elizabeth tore their breasts to shreds or burned their vaginas with a candle flame, sometimes biting chunks of flesh from their faces and bodies. One victim was forced to cook and eat a strip of her own flesh, while others were doused with cold water and left to freeze in the snow. Occasionally, Elizabeth would jerk a victims mouth open with such force that the cheeks ripped apart. On other occasions, her servants handled the dirty work while Elizabeth paced the sidelines shouting,
"More! More still! Harder still!" Until overwhelmed with excitement, she fainted into unconsciousness on the floor.

One of Elizabeth's favorite "toys" was a cylinder shaped cage with long spikes inside. A naked girl was forced into the cage, then lifted several feet up. Elizabeth or one of her servants would circle the cage with a red-hot poker, jabbing at the girl and forcing her against the sharp spikes as she tried to escape.

Disposal of the lifeless victims bodies was quite simple in the Middle Ages.  Some were buried, others were left to rot around the castle, while a few were dumped outside to feed the local wolves and other predators.

Elizabeth's final body count was placed somewhere between 300 and 650 victims.

Stories which ascribe to her vampire-like tendencies (Most known is the tale that she bathed in the blood of virgins to retain her youth) were recorded after her death and are said to be unreliable. Her story quickly became part of national folklore, and she has been nicknamed The Blood Countess and Countess Dracula.