Who is Erzsebet Bathory?
Erzsebet Bathory, sometimes called the Blood Countess, Bloody Countess, or Bloody Lady of Cachtice, was a Hungarian Countess around the turn of the 17th century who tortured and murdered as many as 600 or 700 women according to some counts, while some sources list a much lower number, between 35 and 60. She is a controversial figure, as her history has been the basis of much legend and fictionalized accounts, and it is often difficult to separate fact from fiction in her story. Nevertheless, she stands as one of the most famous female serial killers of all time and is nearly as important as Vlad Tepes in vampire lore. The most famous story about Erzsebet Bathory, though undocumented and widely disbelieved by scholars, is that she bathed in the blood of her virgin victims in order to preserve her own youth. A highly unlikely legend holds that she violently slapped a maid one day and observed that her skin looked younger and whiter where it had been splashed with the maid’s blood, thereb
