The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

I have been recently finding more and more information regarding the infamous "Blood Countess".
And i was wondering

how many of you have your own speculations as to her motives of the blood baths and tortures???

p.s.
i just found out they are making a movie based on her life said with a March 2007 - planned release date!!!
IM SO EXCITED!!!
tho it is presented as a slovak movie the main language will be english with american actress Anna Friel to play Erzsebet.

LINK TO INFO HERE.

Just to reiterate the question is:

How many of you have your own speculations as to her motives of the blood baths and tortures???


in this new movie they are showing a sympathetic side. Whereas Erzsebet was not entirely guilty of all the atrocities shoved upon her thru the years. But really a victim of mens aspirations for power and wealth.

well as to her motivations...she was only one of a few in her family to have various insanities form...she was socially distorted..as were most of the aristocracy.....but to blame it all on men...
doubful.....women are just as capable of brutality and terror

I TOTALLY AGREE!
For starters the fact that she as a women is actually the most horrendous mass murderer in the history of humankind ((next to god)) is actually applausible in a way for feminism.
To prove that a female was that smart to get away with it for so long and still not even get convicted of the murders is awesome.

#2. to say it all because of a man is a fukken copp out!!
As humans we do things of our own free will, even with a gun to ur head you still have the choice,
do it or die thats your choice.
Just because you dont like your choices doesnt take away from the fact that YOU HAVE THE CHOICE!!

Hmm a new take on the blood countess stories. I find the way that the director and writers of this movie are trying to shoot it be quite interesting. In recent movies that have been shot whether it be low budget or not she always comes off as a lunatic. If done right I am sure that it will be fun to watch.

Sorry for the small rant let me answer your question...
My personal viewpoints as to why she did what she did are because of things she witnessed as a child. There have been stories where they talked about how cruel her parents where to commoners. One story in particular stated they took horse and basically disemboweled the animal and placed a gypsy insider and sewed the wound up. Now the details of this particular tale are quite vague it was just lightly touched upon. Actions like this can seriously corupt a child’s mind. Just as if a everyday child in society today witness there mother or father being verbally or physically abused in a marriage. Actions of such can carry over into the child’s life as to how they will carry themselves and with what they do as a individual. You could just as easily say she is a sadist but pin pointing what made her want to do it is very difficult.,,,

yea she was quite the woman,preying on young ,helpless,defenseless,women,if u want to know of her life,go to my profile i have a section on her!!!

I have always found her to be a sad, despicable character, but nonetheless fascinating....hope the movie does her infamous life justice and doesn't turn into just another lurid, boring Hollywood-ed biopic.

I will have to see this movie. I think it was a combination of physical and mental problems that affected Elizabeth.

She was a product of her environment with insanity tossed in for good measure. Interested in seeing how this movie is done.

Insane and desperate for power to hide behind.

A lady who let beauty define who she was to such an extent that she went insane as a result.....its a sad story....

I've read alot about Bathory myself. apparently she believed that bathing in the blood of virgins kept her looking young. if ya want more jus ask

this will of course not get me any fans but I am not looking for it so I can be honest..
She wanted eternal beauty and youth and was willing to steal the lives of others to get it. She was selfish and cruel. there is nothing of honor in her story outside of the way she died. Beside that she should be listed amoungst those who deserve out spit and not our pride.. imho

I've seen a few films use her as a character (Daughters of Darkness, Eternal) but they don't really connect to the historical Countess.

I'm a little shocked to see people upset that she killled people and took their blood to stay young and beautiful. That's what vampires do, darlings!

Damn her for being stupid, greedy, indiscreet, and wasteful perhaps...

I make a small tribute to her in a song I wrote to the tune of "Cabaret" (and yes, all my work is copyrighted)

What good is lying all alone in your tomb
Helping the worms get fed?
True death comes soon enough, my dear
First spend some time un-dead.

Lift yourself up from the stygian gloom
Of your eternal bed
True death comes soon enough, my dear.
First spend some time un-dead.

Come taste the night!
Come drink the blood!
You’ve got fangs for exsanguinating
Come on up! There’s victims waiting.

Start by arising as mist from your tomb
And find someone to be bled.
True death comes soon enough, my dear.
First spend some time un-dead.

A countess named Elizabeth Bathory
Lived long ago, but she had quite a story
She kept her youth and beauty with her urgin’s
To take the blood from hundreds of young virgins.
The day she died the homicide rate crashed in,
And everyone breathed easy once she cashed in.
Until a bunch of people up and died,
And when they opened her grave she wasn't inside.
I think of Lizzie to this very day.
And a get a smile that makes folks edge away.

What good is lying all alone in your tomb
Helping the worms get fed?
True death comes soon enough, my dear.
First spend some time un-dead.

And as for me! And as for me!
I’ve figured out like Liz Bathory
When I go it’s gonna get gory

Start by deciding alone in your tomb
Is no way to stay in bed.
True death comes soon enough, my dear.
It always comes too damn soon, my dear!
So first spend some time un-dead.

She didn't immediately dive into the whole "bloodbathing, mass-murdering, etc." She was abusive to her servants, and over the years, she got more and more brutal. As others have said, it was part a result of her upbringing, and part of it was her mounting insanity. Eventually, she sunk into a sad, desperate hole of madness, and when she got the blood of her servant splashed on her skin, she could have sworn it made her skin look younger, healthier... It was then that she made the leap into total insanity...

Plain and simple she liked blood, and liked to play in it, take baths in it. She just found the reason trying to stay young looking to do so. I would say that she was a vampire, much like most of us.

I didn't have time to read all the replyes and if i repeat something allready said, i appologize.

Her motives ? well i learned this in high school at history ( I'm from Romania ) and the motif is eternal youth. she had only wemen as slaves around the castel and everyone feared her and they were all nervous around her, so one day one of her slaves droped something near her ( i don't remember what ) and she ordered to cut her head and the blood flowed in the water where she was bathing. She felt something like reviving and from that moment on killed virgins and nonvirgins, the primal for baths, the latter for not beeing virgins. She hid the bodues in her castle and after a few years the bodyes were discovered and she was sentenced with death. She was built in the wall of her castle and left to die just like her victims.

I will most defiantly see this movie . as for her motives i have always heard as the above posts have mentioned a mixture of insanity and a way to keep her youth and beauty.

That's great, my wife and I are both very intrigued by the stories of the countess of Bathory, even though she was a completely deranged sicko. Bathing in the blood of over 600 victims in hopes of maintaining her youth and beauty, can you say freak.

Oh, pish-tush... she was only privleged enough to be very resourceful and, alas, overly extravagant, self-indulgent, and indiscreet -- not unlike the Bush twins. Of course those two have demonstrated no such proclivities to creativity or resourfulness.

Huh!
Well, I haven't had a chance to get on here much, and when I do it's pretty much only to scan the titles and then run back off to work or college.
Interestingly enough, I'm writing a paper right now about serial killers and in one section I talk about female serial killers, and I mention Miss Oh-So-Young-And-Pretty Bathory.
I don't like to have concrete opinions on things that I can't know (I can't very well dig her up and interview her), but from what I've read, she killed almost 600 young servant girls, bathed in their blood and drank it, all to make herself stay young. I do wonder if she had a fascination with vampires, but then again, (and this is something I'd have to research more; I don't mention vampires in my paper) her case came about in roughly the time period that Dracula came out. Dracula is, from what I know, the first generally attractive and desirable fictional vampire to come about. Since I don't know the exact date that Dracula was published, I cannot say which it is, but either;

1. Dracula was not out yet and her obsession with blood was her own creative input in her murders, and perhaps had nothing at all to do with vampirism in her mind;

or
2. Dracula had been published and her fantasies got out of hand. WAY out of hand.

Bathory was arrested in 1610, wasn't she? When did the book come out? And if it came out later, what other 'young and beautiful' fictional vampire might there have been in her time to influence her thought process?

yes she liked blood but her mind flew out the window,she thought she would live forever if she bathed in their blood,she would torture her servants for days at a time,having rotting corpses in her basement,the stench could be smelled for miles around her castle!!!!

If memory serves correctly the historical Vlad Tepes Dracula lived 1430-1476. The Countess Bathory might well have known of him, but Bram Stoker's novel was published in the 1890's. There had been a great many Victorian novels about vampires, mostly "penny dreadfuls" that is to say cheap pulps. The great example of this is "Varney the Vampire." Sheridan LeFanu's "Carmilla" is about a beautiful Vampiress, but all of this literature was of the Victorian/Romantic era of the 1800's, a few centuries after Her Grace developed her Estée Slaughter beauty treatments, so there can be no connection. A 16th-early 17th century Hungarian countess might have been influenced by vampire legends of the locality, but there wasn't and had never been any vampire literature as such in those days.

I believe if I have read things correctly on her was that she was a distant relative of Vlad, I had thought she was before Vlad was. I could very well be wrong on that one.

I have also read up on the fact that one of her servant girls was brushing her hair and pulled on it, Elizabeth got mad about it and slapped hard that she drew blood, a droplet of blood splashed down upon her hand I believe in one story I had read where she noticed a day later that the same exact spot the blood was, her skin looked younger. And that was the start of it.

She was also married to a ruthless land lord during that time frame. The things he did, he had showed her some of the devices etc.!

Just my input in this.

I find her facinating actually.

There's a nice little biography of Her Grace at

http://hjem.get2net.dk/the_cellar/bathory.htm

it's pretty consistent with other accounts I've read

This lady witnessed many horrific tortuous events in her childhood. Was forced to mary very very young and then her husband was never. This caused her to become fond of women while her husband was away. She found a liking to blood as well and probably put two and two together.

I don't know much about her but i do know that many things in her childhood exposed her to torture. Therefore she was more vulnerable to do it as well.....
-MixedBlood-

sound intresting,i have seen a movie based on Elizabeth Bathory called Eternal,it's quite good.

She was known for her beauty and fear of growing old. She though by bathing in the blood of young maidens would preserve her. She started out with peasant girls, but in lack of effect, she came to the conclution it was not good enough, so she started kidnaping maidens from the nobles and other aspects of high society. It was at that point they began to suspect her.

She was blinded and mislead by her vanity and fear.

That is at least what I have read.

Hm, if it comes out i will see it. I get the blood baths and drinking, but as for the tortures, I dont know why she did it. Although i have read that she had an affair and that she and the pple around her thought that he was a vampire.
But the tortures, I dont get

It's fun! A chance to get creative.
What's not to get?

The story goe's somewhat like this she was abusive to her servant girls and stuck one of them on the head with I believe it was a small statuette and the servant girl began to bleed massively and as you can guess most of it got on the countesses hands and when she saw how soft, how and well her skin glowed...she began killing them and bathing in there blood and If im correct to the point of even drinking their blood cause she felt it would prolong her life...she would hang them up in cages lined with spikes and heat the metal to the cage and as the servant girl flailed around and got cut on the spikes the blood would shower down on the countess who would be in a bath tub just below.

She was insane, and had the station in life to act out her insanity...to use the blood to bath in to keep her skin soft and smooth and young, and herself young...

Would she be considered the first female serial killer? And this is a very good thread

there is a book of serial killers that actually included her in it. It went into descriptions of what she would do to the victims and various torture she inflicted. The things i read made me think how sadistic she really was.

I am afraid that i the movie is going to make her so mainstreem and we are going to have all kinds of new theories come up with no evidence to back them....

toria brings up a good point. A lot of things went mainstream like anne rice bringing us queen of the damned...CSI has brought us into the realm of policework. Now they are examing king tut and if he were murdered....if Erzsébet becomes a mainstream figure there will be so many different theories of how she was, what she did and a lot of people will throw it way out of context.

I think she was a truly amazing woman...She reminds me of Vlad Tepes or Jack the Ripper....a name that will be forever known in history...

She was an amazing woman. What amazes me the most about her, is how most of the nobility knew about what she was doing but did nothing to stop it because she was almost untouchable. Craziness!

The Countess bathed in the blood of the virgin women because she believed that the blood of a pure young lady would, in fact, keep her young and beautiful. It is said that when the towns folk heard what was going on in the castle, that they walled her up inside of it. They left her in a room with only a slot large enough to have food slid into her. Eventually, they had heard word that she had died, but when they knocked down the barracade that they had keeping her in the room, they found nothing but animal bones. They could not find any of her remains...

Honestly I didnt know much about the beloved Countess until I met my girl friend. After what I have learned, I think has to with a bit of madness, a fear of death, and a really wacked out blood fetish.

Gothic Romeo

poor woman, driven mad by her obsession of staying forever young.

A movie would be awsome I can't wait. I think she was insane and lord knows what else.

the bytch was crazzy that is all to it....
but i loved her story...

The movie sounds like it would be interesting, but yes she was a very evil woman.

My 7th grade history teacher had a book on the most evil people in history and it had her in it. She would stick needles under her servants finger nails if they didn't do what she wanted when she wanted.

She would as you know kidnap virgin girls and kill them, drink and bath in their blood, all in hopes of staying young forever.

When she was found out about it she was able to get out of it many times but eventualy she was put in the tallest room of the highest tower and eventualy died. A guard slid open the slot to take a look at the infamous Elizabeth and found that she had died.....starved of virgin blood.

I am in agreement that a movie that portrays Bathory as a victim of men is not true to history. Painting her as anything other then insane, sociopathic mass murderer is almost an insult to her memory.

Her motivation was simple she wished to extend her life and retain her beauty. She proceeded to slaughter, according to some estimates, 600 or so young girls, so that she could bathe in their blood. Simply put she was a serial killer.

Just for you Vlad:

(Sung to the chorus of Tomorrow)

Redundant, Redundant
This thread is redundant
It only can go so long.

Ok so I’m not as creative as Vlad. There is much good information, but nothing new has been posted in about a month. Rest in peace.