Madness Personified

Elizabeth Bathery was born into a powerful Hungarian family in 1560. The family, though of noble blood, had with a history of madness, Elizabeth Bathery would eventually characterize the family history. Engaged at eleven to a young nobleman, Forenz Nessadi who she married at fifteen but not before she became pregnant by a peasant. Carrying an illegitimate child, she was sent away to live at a remote castle until the child was born and the child was handed away to a peasant woman.

For ten years the couple had no children as Elizabeth's husband was making his career fighting and winning victory over the Turks. In 1585, Elizabeth had her first daughter and in the nine years following, she had two more. It was while her husband was away fighting, that the horror began. One day a servant girl was combing Elizabeth's hair and  pulled it too hard and Elizabeth slapped her. The young girl's blood fell upon Elizabeth's hand and when she wiped it away, she noticed the skin was softer and smoother. Since Elizabeth was obsessed with staying young and beautiful, her thirst for blood became evident as young peasant girls began disappearing from neighboring villages.. 

Her rituals were as macabre as they were horrible. She began imprisoning, torturing and killing the local peasant girls with the aid of her old nurse Jo Ilona who was also purported to be a witch, and several other servants. Elizabeth would beat the peasant girls bloody, stick hot pokers in their mouths, use scissors to cut open their veins to drain the blood into a container so that she could then bathe in the blood, convinced she had found the fountain of youth. She would also stick pins into various body parts and in the winter, she would have her victims stripped and led out into the snow and drenched with water until they were frozen. A favorite ritual was to have her victims stripped, covered with honey and left outside for the insects...Some of these rituals shen learned from her husband who would torture Turkish prisoners

She was eventually caught and put on trial but because she was of noble blood, could not be executed, although the servants who helped her including Jo Ilona, were. In her journal and in her own handwriting, Elizabeth listed 650 victims. Her punishment was to be walled up in her castle so that she could never again see the light of day. Two years later, she died.

For a more detailed account of her life, go to http://www.istrianet.org/istria/legends/vampires/bathory.htm#ilona