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Wednesday, March 29, 2000
By Katka Fronk Where have all the young girls gone? Every night after dinner, Countess Elizabeth Bathory-Nadasdy retired to her castle bedroom at Cachtice, in what is now western Slovakia. Then she would undress and slip into a nice, relaxing bath of blood. Because Bathory, born in 1560, was still alive when she committed her crimes, she can't be considered a real vampire. Nevertheless her thirst for blood was unquenchable, and her love for torture was surpassed only by that of Vlad the Impaler. "The Blood Countess" still holds a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most murders attributed to a woman: 650. The woods surrounding her castle were no safe place for young maidens to dwell in the late 16th century. The Hungarian-born countess was convinced that virgin blood worked like an elixir of youth. The diary of the countess, discovered after her arrest, contained a list of all the maidens she tortured to death, with accompanying descriptions such as "strong" or "weak and disappointing." Bathory's belief that blood would keep her beautiful began when a servant accidentally pulled out one of her hairs while brushing it. The countess, already known for her violent temper, struck the girl with a pair of scissors. Blood started to flow from her face, and several drops fell on the countess' hand. When Bathory wiped the blood off with a towel she noticed that her hand looked rejuvenated; glowing and white, like that of her young servant. Some maintain that this story is merely a myth concocted by the local peasants to hide a more horrible truth -- that Bathory was actually a cannibal. At least one account notes that, in a frenzy, the countess "rose up like a bulldog and bit the girl on her shoulders and breasts." Tales about the countess' rages and tortures are numerous. One account tells about a 12-year-old girl who tried to escape her gruesome fate by fleeing the castle. She was caught and dragged back to the castle, forced into a cage and hauled up to the ceiling. Then dozens of spikes were driven through the bars, tearing the girl to pieces. In her early days of torture, Elizabeth murdered only peasant girls. But when the pickings had slimmed and the villagers became suspicious, Bathory grew less cautious. In her 40s by then, even more desperately clinging to her declining youth, she started luring girls from the lower nobility to her castle. It was this recklessness and her accomplices' carelessness in disposing of the tortured bodies, leaving them in the woods or simply throwing them into the castle ditch, that led to the countess' downfall. On a cold December day in 1610, the castle was raided. Upon entering, the posse found the courtyard filled with ice "statues" of young girls. They had frozen to death after being stripped and forced to stand in the snow while freezing water was thrown on them. The countess herself was torturing a young girl in the dungeon. Caught red-handed, she was condemned to live out her years walled up in a windowless tower room of her castle. It was there she died in 1614 at the age of 54, leaving the village of Cachtice a safe place for maidens once again. Katka Fronk's e-mail address is kfronk@praguepost.cz TRAVEL FEATURES
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