Of all vampire legends, Elizabeth Báthory may be the most famous female vampire.
This rare female vampire was born in 1560 in Transylvania, Hungary, the daughter of the Bathory family, a most prestigious family that produced a Transylvanian cardinal and a Polish king.
In 1575, at the age of 15, Elizabeth married Count Ferenc Nádasdy and moved to a castle named Csejte. Ferenc was a brave and daring soldier known as the "Black Hero of Hungary", and was therefore often found on the battlefield.
In an attempt to escape her lonely marriage life, Elizabeth would then run away with a man she didn't know. However, this elopement failed, and Elizabeth returned to the castle, where she was placed under the strict surveillance of her mother-in-law.
It is said that from that time on, she would take pleasure in torturing the young girls who served in the castle.
Elizabeth and her husband had three sons and a daughter, but when her husband died in 1600, she banished her mother-in-law from the castle, and her cruelty accelerated.
One day, while combing Elizabeth's hair, a maid caught a strand of it, and Elizabeth slapped her. Elizabeth's hand was bathed in the nosebleed that the maid had shed, and the skin in the area covered in blood seemed to regain its youthful luster.
For Elizabeth, who had long felt that her beauty was declining, this was a discovery that could not have been more pleasant.
Elizabeth ordered her servants to strip the maid's clothes, cut her to pieces, squeeze her blood, and pool it in a bathtub, then she would immerse herself in it for the sake of her beauty.
Elizabeth's behavior escalated, and for the next ten years she, along with her manservant Thorko, nanny Ilona Jó, housemaid János Újváry, and witches Dorotya Semtész and Darvula, brought daughters from neighboring villages and indulged in the pleasures of death.
One day, however, one of the captured girls escaped.
Rumors had been spreading for some time that young girls were missing in neighboring villages, and on December 30, 1610, György Thurzó, a military commissioner and Elizabeth's cousin-in-law, rode to the Csejte Castle to confirm the facts, only to be encountered with a horrific sight.
There were girls whose bodies were covered with holes or torn apart with scissors while still gasping for breath, others who were still unharmed but shivering with fear of their coming fate, and countless corpses thrown into the dungeon.
After that, Thorko, János Újváry, Ilona Jó, and Dorotya Semtész were burned at the stake, but Elizabeth, because of her royal connections, was sentenced to life imprisonment in the castle, where all windows were to be closed and she was confined to a bedroom with only a small door for meals.
Four years later, in 1614, a guard who wanted to catch a glimpse of the fabled Blood Countess peeked into the room and found Elizabeth lying on her face, already dead.
It is said that more than 300 girls fell into Elizabeth's hands, but considering her bloodstained life, this was a very quiet ending.
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