Elizabeth Bathory: The Countess who murdered women for fun and was said to have bathed in their blood to make herself more beautiful : The Blood Countess
The Blood Countess
Camille Paglia is famous for the incendiary pronouncement: "There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper." Paglia's point is that men, rather than women, are found at both the positive and negative extremes of human endeavor.

It may be true that the world has not seen a female Mozart. However, the other part of the equation is tragically false for women may have indeed produced a great monster. Countess Elizabeth Báthory may have been a butcher far more terrible than Jack the Ripper. In fact, the crimes attributed to her would make her one of the worst mass murderers in history.

Legend tells us this very rich, beautiful and high born woman tortured and murdered some 650 young women and bathed in their warm blood to keep herself beautiful. Was this horror story true? And if it was, why did she do it? And finally, did she ever pay for this carnage?

Torture as a Hobby

The Bathory Crest
(Dennis Bathory-Kitsz)

The Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Báthory, born in 1560, lived most of her life in the late Sixteenth Century. The Báthorys were an especially highly placed, well connected, and powerful noble family. Stephen Báthory, a supporter of John I of Hungary, was made governor of Transylvania. His younger son, Stephen Báthory, became king of Poland in 1575. His brother, Christopher Báthory, succeeded him as prince of Transylvania

Elizabeth was the niece of Stephen Báthory, the king of Poland. Her family promised her to Ferencz Nádasdy when she was only ten and married her to him at fifteen. In keeping with custom, Elizabeth Báthory kept her birth name because her family was more powerful than her husband's.

She departed sharply from custom in her sexual behavior. During her betrothal, but before meeting her future husband, Elizabeth probably became pregnant and secretly delivered a child. She arranged for the infant to be adopted out and paid hush money to anyone who knew of her pregnancy. During her marriage, she indulged herself with male lovers while her husband was away--which was often since Ferencz Nádasdy was a professional soldier.

Nádasdy may or may not have known of his wife's murders but he was a cruel man himself and tortured servants when he was home (though he may not have tortured them to death). He had a maid who was supposedly "lazy" stripped naked in front of male servants, then smeared with honey and forced to stand for a full day while bees and insects bit and stung her.

The Countess had her own, very peculiar streak of cruelty toward servants--if they were female. Báthory punished them by placing a piece of paper between a woman's toes and setting it on fire. She chastized suspected thieves by heating a coin, then forcing the culprit to hold it until it sizzled a mark in her palm. If a servant failed to press the Countess's garments adequately, a hot iron would be held to her face until she was scarred for life. These treatments often resulted in death but that was neither surprising nor disappointing to the callous Countess.

Soon, and concomitantly with these stern punishments, Báthory pursued torture as a hobby. The infliction of humiliation (girls in their teens were routinely forced to strip naked in the presence of male serfs), terror, pain, and death was an exciting pastime similar to gambling or sports for Elizabeth Báthory. It is likely that as many as 650 women and girls, some as young as twelve years of age, lost their lives to her bloodlust.

One of the most striking, and troubling, things about this real-life horror story is its female-on-female character. All the murder victims were female. Most of the guilty, whether as procurers or torturers, were also women. That women were the procurers may be explained on practical grounds: in a sex-segregated world: women are more likely to mingle freely with each other and trust an offer of employment or hospitality from another woman.

Men did play parts in this tragedy. One torturer, a dwarf nicknamed Ficzkó, was male. Other men served as means to humiliate women (who were forced to parade nude in their presence) or to degrade them after death (soldiers who had no idea what they were eating were fed flesh of murdered females).

We cannot know what the feelings were of the men who watched peasant women forced to strip: they may have enjoyed this sadistic show but, then again, they may have been appalled but helpless to do anything about it. If the latter, they must be considered Báthory's victims as well. The men who were tricked into cannibalism were unequivocally victims. It is noteworthy, however, that she had no male murder victims.


Edge of Death Tower
(Dennis Bathory-Kitsz)

How did Báthory get away with waging a femicide for over three decades? The deaths of enough women to populate a village could not have been a complete secret--and, indeed, it was not. What's more, many women and girls survived with faces and palms displaying the evidence of her cruelty.

To understand why Báthory got away with her crimes for as long as she did, we need to understand the position of peasants in her country at the time as well as the privileges accorded high birth. There had been a Hungarian peasant uprising in 1524, a generation before the Countess's birth. It had been crushed and the rebels subjected to truly diabolical punishments. Their leader was "roasted alive on an iron throne and his followers forced to eat his flesh before they themselves were broken on the wheel and hanged." (McNally)

During Báthory's day, McNally explained, "peasants were in general treated quite harshly, servants were often recruited by force and usually subjected to bodily punishment by their Hungarian overlords. They were considered chattel and had no real rights...A peasant could sometimes leave the service of the lord, according to the law, but in practice this did not happen, since the lord could accuse the peasant of some crime and have him convicted by the courts."
The story of why Báthory's decades long crime spree was ended is highly ironic. There were three factors which contributed to her downfall. The first is that she started preying upon young girls and women of the lesser nobility. The second reason is that (perhaps because her atrocities had gone unremarked for so very long) she became sloppier in her disposals: she sometimes just tossed corpses out of her carriage to rot and be eaten by wolves. The third, and probably most important reason, for her arrest is that running a murder factory was becoming expensive (she had long ago killed off the young serf women who "belonged" to her estates and was having to send her henchwomen farther and farther afield to recruit the unsuspecting), so Báthory began pestering the King for payment on loans he had taken from her late husband. It was the King's desire to cancel these loans (under their law, they were no longer active if the person to whom money was owed was in prison); in large part, that led him to demand Báthory be arrested.

Here the modern reader is likely to experience suspicion. After all, Elizabeth was never allowed to appear at her trial and answer the charges--and she maintained her complete innocence until the end of her life. The accomplices who testified against her had been tortured.

Was this entire story trumped up so that King Mathias would not have to pay a bill he owed? That is extremely improbable since literally "hundreds of witnesses...testified at the investigations before and after the formal trial." Such a vast conspiracy, involving hundreds of people, "is not a likely prospect given the conditions of those times."

However, it says much about her society that none of the primary factors leading to the end of Báthory's crimes was horror at femicide per se and that one of them was a big honcho's desire to get out of a debt which he legitimately owed.


Erzebet's (Elizabeth's) Tower
(Dennis Bathory-Kitsz)

The privilege of high birth still held in the matter of punishment. The Countess's underlings were tortured and executed while Báthory herself was sentenced to imprisonment in one room at her own castle. She was walled up there, living in darkness and solitary confinement until her death a couple of years later.
The Vampire Legend
A major, significant, and lasting alteration in the Báthory story took root as she passed into legend--she became a vampire. According to the vampire myth, Countess Báthory was a very beautiful and vain woman. One day a servant girl was fixing her hair and pulled it too tight. The hot-tempered noblewoman punched the girl's nose, drawing blood. After washing the blood off her hand, she thought the skin where it had been looked fresher and younger. She then commanded other servants to kill the hapless girl and drain her body of blood so she could bathe in it.

Exactly when in her life this fateful incident occurred varies according to the account. In some, she wanted to retain her youthful complexion to please her husband and is quoted as saying, "It is my duty to be good to my husband and keep myself beautiful for him. God has shown me how to do this so I would be unwise not to take advantage of the opportunity." Other Báthory chronicles say she was an aging widow concerned about keeping up her appearance to catch a second husband.

In any event, the legend has it that the Countess murdered hundreds of young peasant girls, then bathed in tubs of their blood because she believed that the blood of young maidens (or "virgin blood") was a miraculous anti-wrinkling agent. In some stories, Báthory is said to have drank blood as well as bathed in it.

Professor Raymond T. McNally traveled to Bycta in Slovakia to research Dracula was a Woman, his study of the Countess's life and legend. He examined the archives of the court of inquiry held before the actual trial as well as the trial documents themselves. In neither is there any mention of tubs or pools filled with blood, nor blood drinking per se. There are reports of the Countess, in a frenzy, biting chunks of flesh from women. The blood was ingested along with the flesh but these were instances of werewolfism or cannibalism rather than vampirism.

How did the myth of the blood-drinking and bathing countess start?

When she was finally imprisoned, King Mathias II, the Báthory family, and the nobility in general, wanted to just forget the foul deeds of Elizabeth Báthory. Thus, the records of the court of inquiry and her trial were sealed and locked away from public examination. The King forbade even the mention of her name. Of course the silence was only a public one; there was no way to prevent people from talking in private about such a strange and horrifying character -- after all, so many peasants had relatives who had fallen to her bloodlust.

When Father Laszlo Turoczy wrote Ungaria suis cum regibus compendio data (Hungary, A Dated Compendium with Its Kings), it was the early 1720s. The infamous Countess had been dead over a hundred years so Father Turoczy was able to include her life and crimes in his chronicle. He obtained copies of the trial documents--but he also drew upon stories he had been told by peasants. At the time, a vampire scare was spreading across Europe and the word of mouth tales reflected the contemporary terror, Professor McNally believes.

This writer would like to suggest a second explanation for the vampire legend and its tenacious hold on the public imagination: it seemed to reconcile the enormity of her crimes with the fact of her gender.

Murder, especially when committed on a massive scale and for pleasure, is, with some reason, generally thought of as the province of the male. Vanity, on the other hand, is considered the classically "feminine" fault. Bathing or drinking blood seems a macabre parody of the lengths (radical, life-threatening diets, painful cosmetic surgery, etc.) to which women routinely go to look beautiful.

Concomitantly, the vanity/vampiric motive for Báthory's crimes flatters the male ego by declaring that a woman would mass murder to catch a new husband or keep her present husband happy. Indeed, the latter version of the myth makes Báthory a kind of “Fascinating (or Total) Woman” gone gynocidally berserk.

A third, and related factor, in the durability of the vampiric myth is that her supposed belief in the magical properties of "virgin blood" also appeared to explain the sex of Báthory's victims. In all periods in recorded Western history, including the present, "female virgin" has been a redundant phrase.

Which brings us to the question: why did the real countess murder only other females? The answer is, of necessity, speculative and we must look to the explanations given for the same-sex choice of victims in the far, far, more common case of the male serial murderer who murders only other men--Gacy, Corona, Berdella, Dahmer, et. al. It is theorized that in the murderer, violent impulses, and the need for dominance and control over another person have become fused with sexuality; thus, a heterosexual man murders women, a homosexual man, other men.

Another theoretical factor often included in the explanation for male-on-male serial murder is that the murderer despises his homosexual desires and so avenges himself against those who attract him or share those desires. That is, the male victims are representatives of the traits (effeminacy, weakness, cowardice, etc.) the murderer most fears in himself.

Were sexual and murderous impulses fused in Báthory? Yes, but since she was bisexual rather than lesbian in her preferences, we might ask why only her lesbian sexuality was fused with brutality. It is possible that she despised her lesbian desires and not her heterosexual ones and, thus, sought to destroy those who aroused the "unnatural" yearnings.

Additionally, as a woman herself, she knew the special humiliation that other females would feel at being paraded naked in front of men and thus may have gotten a special thrill out of this psychic torture.

The Countess was a sexual sadist on a grand scale. Former FBI profilers John Douglas & Mark Olshaker address this kind of sadistic killer in their book The Cases that Haunt Us “….the motivation for the act [of murder] can be summed up in three words: manipulation, domination, and control. These are the elements that give the perpetrator a heightened satisfaction that he does not achieve from anything else in his life.”

Perhaps, as a character in Andrei Codrescu's Blood Countess speculates, Elizabeth Báthory despised being a member of the "inferior" sex. She may have felt that by a kind of sympathetic magic she could "avoid pain by causing it.” Thus, she inflicted torment and death on others "in retribution for their being women."

Báthory bears a striking resemblance to the Wicked Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. A servant testified at her trial that the Countess made incantations to her mirror and would gaze into it "for over two hours at a stretch." In the unexpurgated, not-for-children tale, the Queen asks that Snow White's heart (or lungs and liver) be brought to her. When the man ordered to murder the young lady returns with the same items from a deer, the Queen commits what she thinks is an act of cannibalism. This is akin to the blood-drinking Báthory of myth--and the biting Báthory of history. When the Wicked Queen's "crime was exposed, slippers of iron were heated in a fire until red hot, and the queen was forced to put them on, and to dance until she dropped dead." Much more severe than Báthory's actual punishment, it would have been poetic justice for the woman who burned faces and hands for trivial infractions.
Was Dracula a Woman?
Along with Vlad the Impaler and Gilles De Rais, Báthory served as model for Bram Stoker's Dracula. In major ways, Countess is closer to Dracula--in both her reality and her legend--than is the better known Impaler.

The fictional Dracula clearly represents sexual temptation. When Stoker's Dracula greets Jonathan Harker, he speaks as the voice of sin when he says, "Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own will!"


Ingrid Pitt played Bathory in the movie Countess Dracula
(Dennis Bathory-Kitsz)

The Count of the classic novel lives with a harem of three young, pretty women. When they approach Jonathan Harker, he is overcome with fear and sexual longing: "I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips." The Count discovers the women hovering over Harker and responds with words of transparent homosexual jealously and possessiveness, shouting "How dare you touch him, any of you? …This man belongs to me!" Hollywood's various Draculas have become ever more explicit and pronounced in their sensuality.

The crimes of Countess Elizabeth Báthory (like those of Gilles de Rais) were sexually motivated. Vlad the Impaler, by contrast, was a sexual puritan whose gruesome punishments were designed to root immorality out of his country. Though Vlad had plenty of victims of both genders and, thus, may be in some sense less sexist than Báthory (or de Rais, who murdered only boys), his moral purity campaign was particularly harsh against women. Women who were sexually active outside wedlock, whether unmarried non-virgins, adulteresses, or "unchaste" widows, were punished in the following grisly manner: "Dracula would order her sexual organs cut. She was then skinned alive and exposed in her skinless flesh in a public square, her skin hanging separately from a pole or placed on a table in the middle of the marketplace."

Stoker's Dracula finds youth in blood: "[In his coffin] lay the Count, but looking as if his youth had been half-renewed, for the white hair and mustache were changed to dark iron-gray; the cheeks were fuller, and the white skin seemed ruby-red underneath." This is like nothing about Vlad but resembles the Báthory legend (though not, as we have seen, her actual history).

The story of Countess Elizabeth Báthory continues to be distorted through the prism of sexist prejudice. In many accounts -- some quite recent--her atrocities are conflated with her lesbianism.

Daughters of Darkness revolves around a Countess Báthory. The story has been transferred from sixteenth century Transylvania to Belgium in, of all times, the 1930s. The film is described on the World Wide Web as an "underground cult hit about honeymooning couple becoming involved with lesbian vampire." In sharp contrast to the real Countess (who had such an extraordinary animus toward her own gender), this Countess Báthory conspires with the young woman to murder the male of the triangle.

In Dracula Was A Woman, a book published in 1983, Dr. McNally lists the bizarre and unstable sorts who comprised Elizabeth's relatives. He includes -- in terms that manage to be both redundant and oxymoronic--that "her aunt Klara was a well-known bisexual and lesbian."

Valentine Penrose's The Bloody Countess, published in 1970, says that Báthory "had another secret which revealed her nature at its most profound, one she owed to her heredity and to her stars…She was thought to have been…a lesbian."

He goes on to inform the reader that "in matters of the female horoscope, every evil aspect which Mercury receives from the Moon…exacerbates the tendency towards homosexuality. That is why the lesbian is often sadistic too; the influx of the masculine and warlike Mars is at the bottom of this, and a woman born under this sign, influenced by the cruel spear of Mars, does not shrink from wounding, particularly in love, whatever is young, loving, and feminine." Penrose then discusses her aunt's lesbianism and remarks that "all the Báthory's [sic] manifested a marked taste for monstrous and unnatural acts of lust."

In The Essential Dracula, the Countess is said to have "indulged her unappetizing interests of lesbianism, witchcraft, sadism and vampirism." Apparently, lesbianism is a "depraved dabbling" right up there with murdering women to bathe in their blood (the author accepts the vampire myth). This book was published in 1992. That lesbianism could be lumped in with murder in our era demonstrates how pervasive and stubborn are the myths which still warp our perception of evil by women.

SOME VAMPIERSSSSS SHIT "Throughout the ages, some human killers have been fascinated and obsessed by the blood of their victims.Here are some of history's most notorious vampire killers
First, I think it best to define the essence of the vampire (fictional) before attempting to define the Essence of the Vampyre (magical). In this way, I hope to invite discussion and/or debate on the topic, and to hear from other magicians' experience with this type of magic.

The word "essence," as defined by my Random House Dictionary, is "the basic intrinsic constituent or quality of a thing." It also means "the substance obtained from a plant or drug, by distillation or infusion, and containing its characteristic properties in concentrated form."

When examining the "essence of the vampire," or that which is distilled once we remove various authors' character nuances and personalities, we find certain things in common in most every vampire story: the fact that a living victim had been bitten and killed by a vampire and is now basically a walking corpse with supernatural powers. These powers included turning into mist and shapeshifting, invisibility, mesmerism, superhuman strength, immortality and, of course, a murderous bloodthirst.

In 1819, Dr. John Polidori distilled even further the literary vampire's essence by replacing the ghoulish appearance with an aristocratic one. He further fashioned the personality of his vampire character after the infamous English Romantic poet, Lord George Gordon Noel Byron (1788-1824), for whom he had worked for a time and had grown to dislike by the time he wrote his story. Suddenly, the classic myth of the vampire had become something intriguing and sexually appealing to readers rather than horrific, and the beginnings of the Vampyric archetype was born.

Polidori was the first to utilize the new spelling of "Vampyre," and Polidori's main character, Lord Ruthven, also had the characteristic bloodthirst, as well as more elegant and appealing characteristics. Novelists from then on continued to utilize this breed of vampire in increasingly sexually oriented stories (including Bram Stoker's _Dracula_). Later, screen writers would develop this idea even further with the sensual movie version "Dracula," starring Frank Langella.

For magicians, this Vampyric Essence can be experimented with in many ways. Distilled even further by removing the two remaining negative traits of the vampire, bloodlust and the animated corpse theory, we have an extremely sensual, sexual, aristocratic, magically and physically powerful Being. If one learns to emulate the powers of the vampire while keeping strongly in mind the intrinsic elegance and "Aristocracy of the Blood" that has developed within the archetype over the years, we now have the ingredients for a magical personality/persona known as the Vampyre.

How can these legendary powers be emulated? With only a little magic, imagination and dedication, it is quite easy, actually. "Superhuman" strength can be developed via weight training, using various strengthening and flexibility exercises. "Invisibility" can be learned by studying certain martial arts, such as Ninjutsu. "Shapeshifting" can be accomplished via pathworkings, trance states, and lycanthropic magic, as well as astral projection. Mesmerism can be learned by studying mesmerism and hypnotism, and also through psychology. The "Command to Look" can be practiced by experimenting with styles of dress and cosmetics, and via a projected Will.

Regarding immortality -- well, there are about as many beliefs regarding this as there are individual magicians. Some believe that immortality is achieved by strengthening the Will prior to Death. Some believe "psychic" or "life force" vampirism is necessary. Some believe that all human spirits are already immortal. Some believe all human psyches survive death, but then must know how to survive the "second" or "astral death." The method of this most alluring of the Vampyre's powers must be defined and explored by the individual magician according to their own studies.

Any of these traits taken alone for study and eventual perfection give on an interesting little power to add to their magical "arsenal." However, if one is truly studying the "awakening" of the Vampyric Essence and spends time developing each and all of these various talents, we have the makings of a very powerful magicians. Study never ends, of course, and each new "power" gives the magician just one more tool for self-awareness and evolution. This in turn strengthens the Vampyric talents, which again in turn empower the magician's evolution. This is the evolutionary Path of the Vampyre. (Complexities, and even dangers, of the Path beyond this simple description exist, of course, but are beyond the scope of this post.) The study of the Vampyric Essence is not for everyone. It is merely another Path for personal evolution. The concepts seem to resonate well with some personalities, while the image and archetype are abhorrent to others. Those on this particular magical Path tend to recognize one another, sometimes even before the other magician knows they would find this method intriguing. This is what is known as being "of the Blood." Vampyres tend to recognize kindred spirits.

Your individual Vampyric Essence is what you make of it. Each Vampyre, like each magician, is unique. The Vampyre may be seen as the next stage of human evolution, as the practice of magical Vampyrism (as opposed to vampirism) forces one to transcend common lower human traits and cultivate an aristocratic bearing, eloquence, and pride in Being.

The Path of the Vampyre is based on personal evolution. It's methods and trappings are sometimes Gothic-Victorian, though without the restriction and repression of these times in history. Emphasis is placed on the love of life, and conversely, the Understanding that Death is not to an experience to long for, but is merely a moment of great change. Vampyres tend to believe in immortality of the psyche, and live their lives based on this knowledge. And with this realization of the reality of continual evolution, an ever higher and exhalted state of Being is continually sought.
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WHY IT BEGAN ---

They swept across the Bosphorus and into Eastern Europe with a vengeance, conquering the squabbling Slavs with ease. With them, they brought their middle eastern civilization, and some of their beliefs, but mostly they brought suffering. Suffering in the form of syphilis, leprosy, smallpox, tuberculosis... and God Himself seemed to turn against them, sending flood, earthquakes, and plague.

Wallachia struggled under the heel of the Ottoman Turks for decades at the end of the 14th century, until Mircea the Great, allied with Sigismund of Luxembourg, led a crusade against the infidel in 1395. But the dynasty their saviour established was often more terrible than the Turk. The House named Bassarab whelped four generations of despots, beginning with Vlad.



VLAD I

Sent to the court of Sigismund at an early age, he was inducted into the secret society of the Order of the Dragon in February 1431. For this honor, he was addressed by the landed lords of his homeland as Vlad Dracul, or Vlad the Dragon, and for evidence carried around his neck, on his shield, and on his coin, the image of a dragon hanging on a double cross.

But, the common folk did not understand the importance of the honor given by the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. They only understood that the icon entertained by the house of Bassarab was identical to the orthodox image of the devil. And, since the word "Dracul" could be translated either "dragon" or "devil", it was not difficult for them to believe that Vlad was in league with dark and terrible forces.

He returned from the Roman court with the staff of office of Prince of Wallachia and governor of Transylvania, establishing his headquarters in the fortress of Sighisoara. From there, in 1434, he began his campaign to affirm his right to the throne and to remove the Turk from his lands. In 1436, he entered the capital of Tirgoviste and became Vlad I of Wallachia. His rule was short, bloody, and troubled. Forced by the death of Sigismund, his most powerful ally, in 1437, he signed a treaty with the Sultan Murad II of Turkey, going so far as to aid him in his raids on Transylvania, spilling the blood of his own.



VLAD II, CALLED TEPES (THE IMPALER)

While still in the bosom of Sigismund's protection, Vlad Dracul sired three legitimate sons, the second of whom was also named Vlad, born in December 1431. He was groomed from childhood as a prince of the blood: proud, cold, and unfeeling. His political science was that a prince should be feared rather than loved, and he carried that philosophy into his adult life.

Fascinated as a boy by death, in the form of hangings of criminals at the Jewler's Donjon near the castle where he grew up, Vlad the Younger soon showed himself a cunning and devious child. He avoided the fate of one of his brothers, who was buried alive by the boyars, or landowners, of Wallachia, as Vlad I's popularity waned.

Held by the Turks after his father's death, he served in the Turkish army as an officer, learning the art of torture and impalement. Finally escaping from the Sultan's forces, he hid away in Moldavia until, with the aid of a force put together at great effort, he was able to reclaim the Wallachian throne in 1456, at the age of 25. His ascent to the throne was greeted by the arrival of a comet in the skies over Europe, an event of dread for most, but for Vlad an auspicious sign. He worked its image into his coin, the Wallachian eagle on the reverse to remind the carrier to whom the comet referred. He fortified Bucharest against the return of the Turk, solidifying the resistance begun by the boyars Janos Hunyadi and Michael the Brave.

To cement his power, he had to remove the boyars from their lands. In the spring of 1457, on Easter day, he took a force and surrounded the boyars at feast. He took their wives and children and impaled them around the feast tables, then chained the men and carried them away as slave labor on his new palace.

Vlad's rule was harsh and cruel, the threat of impalement a constant deterrent to crime and disloyalty. A typical story of the time recalls this in vivid detail:

"Having asked the old, the ill, the lame, the poor, the blind, and the vagabonds to a large dining hall in Tirgoviste, Dracula ordered that a feast be prepared for them. On the appointed day, Tirgoviste groaned under the heavy weight of the large number of beggars who had come. The prince's servants passed out a batch of clothes to each one, then they led the beggars to a large mansion where tables had been set... The beggars had a feast that became legendary... Most of them became dead drunk... and became incoherent, they were suddenly faced with fire and smoke on all sides. The prince had ordered his servants to set the house on fire... the doors were locked... When the fire naturally abated, there was no trace of any living soul."

The tales of Vlad Dracula's cruelty became legendary. Romanian folklore holds hundreds of horribly graphic descriptions of punishments he meted out on his subjects for crimes, real and imagined. He is accused of the deaths of 40,000 to 100,000 people, and not just by impalement. He employed strangling, hanging, burning, boiling, skinning, roasting, and burying them alive. He is known to have ordered cannibalism on prisoners.

At the end of his haunted life, Vlad Dracula is supposed to have been buried at Snagov, under the monastery he helped rebuild, on an island in the middle of a lake. The forest of Vlasia surrounds the lake, whose still waters were said to have been witness to atrocities committed by Dracula there in the ancient monastery.



HOW IT WAS CONTINUED ---

Although the last of the Bassarabs, Prince Constantine, died in 1658, the memory of the viciousness and pure evil of the family endured in legend. The simple folk of Moldavia, Wallachia, and Transylvania, lived in constant terror of the vampyr, the ghosts of men like Vlad, whose bloodlust was what kept them alive even after their time on this world had expired. It was difficult for outsiders to understand the depth of this fear, ingrown to the region, without firsthand experience of its manifestation. As the region passed from one political regime to another, the people went about their lives steeped in the past, permanently stunted in their psychic growth by the trauma of the rule of Vlad the Impaler. After Dracula's death, books on his exploits were circulated widely in Europe, their sales and popularity for a while rivalling even that of the Bible.



COUNTESS ERZSEBET BATHORY OF HUNGARY

The year 1610 was a bloody one for the inhabitants of the Castle Csejthe. Authorities, led there by a young woman who claimed to have been abducted, attacked, and barely escaped with her life, found within its walls the remains of hundreds of girls and young women. The owner of the castle, the Countess Erzsebet Bathory, was accused of having drunk and bathed in the blood of nearly 650 virgins, in the hope it would rejuvenate her. Her accomplices were tried and beheaded, but the Countess was condemned to be walled into her own chambers, where she was kept, fed through a small hole in the wall, until her death in 1640.



PETER PLOGOJOWITZ

In 1725, in the village of Kisilova, a man named Peter Plogojowitz died. Ten weeks later, he was back, supposedly responsible for the deaths of others. In the next several years, the beginnings of the actual vampire legend as we know it today, would be formed.



ARNOD PAOLE

He claimed to have been bothered by a vampyr, and to have eaten earth from its grave and smear himself with its blood to escape it. Yet, when Arnod Paole died from an accident around 1730 in the village of Medvegia, he was shortly afterword supposed to have been responsible for at least 4 more deaths. At the behest of the authorities, his body was exhumed, and he was found, after 40 days in the grave, to be in a passable state.

In a fit of paranoia, the authorities exhumed all the bodies in the cemetery. Of the 20 or so bodies recently deceased (within the past 8 weeks), they discovered 11 were in a state of apparent vampirism. The bodies had apparently grown new skin, hair, and nails, and fresh blood was discovered in them when

dissected. Paole had apparently been very busy, and indiscriminate in his favors, victimizing a child of 8 days as easily as a woman of 60 years.



DR. JOHN POLIDORI'S "THE VAMPYRE"

In 1819, the "New Monthly Magazine of London" published a story entitled "The Vampyre" and attributed its authorship to Lord Byron. Shortly thereafter, it was discovered that the author had actually been Byron's doctor, John Polidori (1795-1821). The sexual nature of this tale was titilatting to the usually cold

British demeanor and set the stage for the seductive nature of the vampire tales to come. In appearance, the vampire, named Lord Ruthven, was gentlemanly and handsome, yet his temperament and deportment was most passionate and violent.



JAMES MALCOLM'S "VARNEY THE VAMPIRE"

In the middle of the 18th century Britain was inundated with what were called "Penny Dreadfuls." These mini-novels were like the comic books of today, though uncensored, and had an avid following. The character of "Varney the Vampire" (1846) starred in over 800 issues of these books, taking the readers through tales of horror, sex, and violence, and furthering the vision of the vampire as a blood-sucking monster who hypnotized his victims into submission.



"THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER"/ THE KNIGHT AZZO VON KLATKA

He was of the race that "turned night into day, and day into night," commanded wolves, and despised humankind. The author of his story is as unknown today as it was in 1860, when the story first appeared, but bits of his personality endure in today's vampires.



BRAM STOKER'S "DRACULA"

Drawing on the sources readily available in the last decade of the nineteenth century, including information provided by Arminius Vabery, a researcher for the British Museum, Abram Stoker (1847-1912) filled out the details of the nightmares that tortured his sleep and rendered the masterpiece Dracula in

1897. Written in the epistolary style peculiar to his time period, it has never been equalled for instilling horror in the reader.



WHERE IT STANDS ---

The appearance of Dracula at the turn of the century was taken as an announcement of the true nature of the vampire. Few changes have been wrought on its image since then, although recently attempts have been made to soften the vicious core of its image into a more palatable fare.

With the coming of motion pictures, the vampire found a new audience. From the genius of Murnau's "Nosferatu" (1922) and Browning's "Dracula" (1931) to the latest efforts by such diverse talents as Rice, Coppola, and King, the vampire leaps at us from the printed page, art, and motion picture. It has become a fixture in the imagination of modern civilization, the symbol of the darkness that resides within all of us.



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V A M P I R E S ( F A C T O R F I C T I O N )


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Imagine that the year is 1790. Adults and children alike are draping strings of garlic, as well as crosses above and around their doors. They do this because they fear that a vampire will come for them in the blackest of night. Many questions have been asked about the origin and the definition of the vampire. There are also various types and vast amounts of opinions about them as well. Many myths and legends like this have plagued mankind for centuries. The vampire has many definitions describing it. There are also various types and vast amounts of opinions about them as well. The vampire, also known as the walking undead, has been around for many, many years and is probably one of the oldest creatures in the world. Doctors and scientists have even discussed actual medical conditions that may have lead to the belief in vampires.

Among all the creatures and monsters in literature and folklore, the vampire seems to be the most mysterious:

"Throughout the whole vast shadowy world of ghosts and demons there is no figure so terrible, no figure so dreaded and abhorred, yet dight with such fearful fascination, as the vampire, who is himself neither ghost nor demon, but yet who partakes the dark natures and possesses the mysterious and terrible qualities of both" (Summers 1).
The World Book encyclopedia defines a vampire as "a corpse that supposedly returns to life at night to suck people's blood" (Vampire 268). The word 'vampire' seems to catch the attention of people throughout the world. Many people wonder about where the word originated, and very few actually know. The name itself has never been satisfactorily explained:

"In its form of vampire [South Russian upuir], it has been compared with the Lithuanian wepti = to drink, and wempti; wampti = to growl, or mutter, and it has been derived from root pi [to drink] with the prefix u = av, va. If this derivation is correct, the characteristic of the vampire is a kind of blood-drunkenness" (Summers 19).
So, as one can notice the word "vampire" is quite complicated in some ways. Stories of vampires have also been around for centuries. There have been stories as far back as 600 BC about vampires in Ancient Greece, but most of the tales told today began in the late eighteenth century. "In China Tsze-Chan reported in the 'Tsachwen' the existence of vampires in 600 BC. This idea was also prevalent in ancient Babylon and Assyria" (Florenescu 164). Stories of vampire-like creatures have come from many parts of the world. "Most vampire tales originated in Eastern Europe and Balkan countries, such as Albania, Greece, Hungary, and Romania" (Vampire 268).

The vampire has many different names and callings. For example, a vampire might be referred to as a revenant or the classic walking undead. "With a persistent sense of the fitting (and deplorable sense of taxonomy), European scholars have commonly referred to these, and to the undead in far-off cultures-for example, China, Indonesia, the Philippines-as 'vampires' as well" (Barber 2). "Other vampires throughout the world include the Hantu which is Malaysian and the Aswang which is from the Philippines" (Pedigo n. pag.). These two types of vampires are bodiless heads trailing entrails behind them.


During the 20th century people have become fascinated with the idea of vampires. Some individuals even believe that they themselves are true vampires. This is what is known as vampirism. It is the belief that one must act like a vampire no matter what. There are also the common cases of 'false vampirism'. "Within this group of 'false vampires' there is another species, Megaderma Lyra, which is known to devoir birds, other bats, and even mice" (Florenescu 173). The bat or vampire bat has also been associated with the vampire in many ways:

"Perhaps because it sucks blood and is a dark creature. However, to be quite technical, contrary beliefs of most naturalists (Androvindi, Shaw, Currier, Buffon, Gervais, Hensel, Goeldi, Darwin), the vampire bat is no blood-sucker' it laps up blood with its tongue and consequently, in the strict sense, represents a false kind of vampire" (173).
"Because of the association with blood (whether sucked or lapped) and generally because of the fear they both inspired in men, the mythical vampire from the Old World was then mentally linked in popular imagination and mythical literature with the blood-sucking bat of South America" (173).
There are many other types of fake vampires all over the country. Examples of this would be the over-gothic, the role-player, and the Ricean. "In the Gothic scene, the vampire has his very special and unique status. It is a figure representing a very special form of Gothicism that is directly related to the middle of the 19th century" (Sasha n. pag.). This mythological vampire has his own attractiveness. "He is aristocratic, attractive, has good manners and is a supernatural being which again can fly, shapeshift and burns in the sun or at the sight of holy symbols" (Sasha n. pag.).

Then there is the role-player. Role-playing is basically when you pretend to be something you're not; acting. There are a lot of computer games and Internet sites and chats that allow people to role-play. A popular role-playing game is Vampire: The Masquerade. "These vampires are highly attractive (sexually), have superhuman powers and are in every way desirable" (Sasha n. pag.). Last but not least, the Ricean. Anne Rice, a well-known novelist, has written many best selling novels including Interview with The vampire. Many, many people have based their vampire beliefs on Anne Rice's vampires from her novels. Perhaps because her idea of a vampire isn't what people think of when they think of vampires. "He has become quite human. He lost his unlikely traits such as the affection to holy symbols, the shapeshifting and the ability to fly. Yet, he is still a supernatural being, neither dead nor alive" (Sasha n. pag.).

When people think of a vampire, they probably think of someone who has been bitten, died and then risen from his or her grave to prowl the night. Probably the most common of all the vampires is the classical. This type is the best known, most likely and most occurring variety. "A classical vampire is someone who has met another vampire (the circumstances of this encounter are beyond discussion) and who has been changed by him. This normally happens by a mental initiation and/or by the exchange of blood" (Sasha n.pag.).

The classical vampire then leads to the inherited vampire. The inheritor is a human being who carries the genetic sequence of a classical vampire, but who needs to be activated by some outer influence. "This can be an extreme physical shock such as an accident or surgery with physical trauma and/or high blood loss as well as a regular charge by a classical vampire" (Sasha n.pag.). The idea of actually carrying a genetic sequence of a fictitious being is a little far fetched. But then again, are vampires really fictitious?



One of the other most popular vampires that are heard of is the folkloristic vampire. "The aforementioned 'Folkloristic vampires' are a group of psychologically unstable persons who developed both the need to act like vampires (in the way they believe vampires act) and certain habits that often lead them directly to jail or security lock up in mandatories" (Sasha n. pag.). Most of them tend to react to garlic, holy symbols and the sun in a very specific way. Some of them even claim to fly. "They often stick to dress codes including black suits and capes and sleep in coffins" (Sasha n. pag.).

The last vampire, and probably the one that not many people think of when they think of a vampire is the Psi-vampire. The Psi-vampire is very different from the aforementioned varieties, as he is not a physical vampire, meaning not dependant on the consumption of blood, but a mental vampire. "Psi-vampires do not feed on blood but on mental life energy of a person" (Sasha n. pag.). As one can notice, the Psi-vampire is quite different from the classical, inherited, and folkloristic.

In the 17th and 18th centuries there were numerous ways to tell if someone was a vampire or going to become one. "When a vampire's teeth are remarked on at all, it is usually as the observation that children born with teeth are destined to become vampires" (Barber 44). That observation would have brought attention to anyone, seeing as no child is born with teeth. So of course it made people wonder whether this child is a vampire because they had no other explanation. Some vampires do not even use their teeth to draw blood. "Zelenin, for example, reports the belief that the Russian vampire has a pointed tongue, which he uses to puncture the skin of his victims" (Barber 44).

There are many superstitions about vampires. "It may be merely a corollary of this rule that in Eastern Europe alcoholics are regarded as prime candidates for revenants" (Barber 29). "People who commit suicide, die violently, or are condemned by their church supposedly become vampires" (Vampire 268). This all leads back to the church and the devil in one way or another. "In Christian mythology the dragon is also specifically the evil symbol of Satan, which can also correspond with Dracula's evil image" (Florenescu 176). "But not just the Christians believe that the vampire is linked to the devil. In the imagination of the Romanian people, devil and vampire are inextricably bound together" (Florenescu 176).

Along with the signs of how someone can tell if a person is a vampire or not, there is the appearance of the vampire. Many people derive their idea of vampire appearance from the movies. "The vampires of the movies, too, are usually tall and thin, with pale, usually narrow faces, which sprout a pair of very prominent canine teeth" (Barber 40). The canine teeth are probably the most looked at characteristic of the vampire. In describing the appearance of the vampire, Montague Summers says that "the lips which will be markedly full and red are drawn back from the teeth which gleam long, sharp, as razors, and ivory white" (Barber 44)(see Appendix A). Anne Rice describes one of her vampires through the eyes of Lestat, the main character in her novel The Vampire Lestat:

"My vampire nature reveals itself in extremely white and highly reflective skin that has to be powdered down for cameras of any kind (3)".
Anne Rice also explains how Lestat would look if he hadn't had enough blood and the one thing that can prove he isn't human:

"And if I'm starved for blood I look like a perfect horror - skin shrunken, veins like ropes over the contours of my bones. But I don't let that happen now. And the only consistent indication that I am not human is my fingernails" (3).




In history there are many 'famous vampires'. Ones that no one has ever really thought about. Vlad Tepes for example, otherwise know as Count Dracula is very well known. "Dracula enjoyed watching blood flow; he apparently liked to eat among his bleeding victims" (Florenescu 174).

Another well known vampire or vampiress is Countess Elisabeth Bathory. "In the 16th century there dwelt in Hungary a terrible ogress, the Countess Elisabeth Bathory, who for her necrosadistic abominations was known as 'la comtesse hongroise sanguinaire'" (Summers 63). She was known as the Blood Countess. "'The 'Blood Countess', known for her habit of bathing in the blood of animals and young females that were slain for her in masses. She had the idea that this blood would keep her young and beautiful" (Sasha n. pag.). As anyone can plainly see Elisabeth was incredibly vain, but she was soon caught and walled up in a prison. She died there a few years later.

A common question is 'How can a vampire be killed?' That is an excellent question. "The classic method of killing a vampire is to drive a stake through his heart" (Barber 71). Staking is either considered mechanical or magical. "We see this in the choice of wood out of which to make the stake: in the north - Russia, the Baltic - the appropriate wood for the purpose is ash" (Barber 72). "And the staking of the vampire, while it has become virtually a symbol for this procedure, is just one of the many methods of ending the threat from the dead" (Barber 3).

Garlic has also been known to drive away vampires from a person or home. "Beyond its medical curative, garlic, in popular practice, is used as a spiritual 'talisman'; allegedly the vampire cannot stand its smell" (Florenescu 170). Crosses and holy symbols can be used as well. "If all these measures fail, one has to resort to the ultimate instrument of vampire destruction, which is used sparingly and reluctantly because, quite apart from repulsiveness of the act, it entails desecration of the hallowed ground of the dead" (Florenescu 171).

Scientific studies show that illnesses and diseases such as the plague and haematophilia may have been the start of the vampire craze. "It might be noted that the presence of blood, especially at the lips, may be one of the circumstances that associated the vampire with the plague. The pneumonic plague causes the victim to expel blood from the mouth, and the combination of visible blood with unexpected and quite sudden deaths may have contributed to the relief that vampirism was responsible for this disease" (Barber 42).

Another disease, possibly explaining Vlad Tepes is haemotodipsia. "Beyond the case of the person who enjoys seeing blood flowing during coitus, there is a further aberration of erotic blood lust known as haemotodipsia. Such persons desire, not only during the act of coitus, but at other times" (Florenescu 174). Other medical conditions include Xeroderma Pigmentossum and Porphyria. These diseases are very severe. The skin develops no melanin so that there is no protection from UV light and its aggressive rays. "The person suffering from these diseases easily get burned in the sun up to 3rd degree or produce skin cancer after spending only minutes in the day/sunlight" (Sasha n. pag.). One could only imagine a Romanian farmer in the 18th century witnessing a person actually being burned alive because of this horrendous disease.

There are also diseases that may have been linked to vampire attack victims. An example of this could be anemia. "Anemia is a blood disease in which the red-cell count is unusually low" (McKaig n. pag.) The symptoms of anemia include a pale complexion, fatigue, and digestive disorders. This may have brought people in the 18th century to think that a person with anemia was a vampire seeing as he was marked with a pale complexion and he had trouble eating food.

Some people see vampires as misunderstood creatures. Others view them to be very beautiful. One thing's for sure, no matter what the opinion is the vampire will be around for a very long time. Whether it's the word, the types, or even the diseases, the vampire is still the magical creature many people seem to be fascinated with.

1047
First appearance of the word "upir" in a document referring to a Russian prince as "Upir Lichy", or wicked vampire.

1196
William of Newburgh's "Chronicles". It records several stories of vampire like revenants in England.

1428
Vlad Dracula, or Vlad the Impaler, is born.

1477
Vlad the Impaler is assassinated.

1484
The Malleus Maleficarium, known as the witch hunter's bible, is written by Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger. The topic of how to hunt and destroy a vampire is discussed.

1560
Elizabeth Bathory is born.

1610
Elizabeth Bathory is tried and convicted of killing several hundred girls. Her sentence is life imprisonment.

1614
Elizabeth Bathory dies.

1679
A German vampire text, "De Masticatione Mortuorum", is written by Phillip Rohr.

1727-1732
Arnold Paole unleashes his vampiric terror on the town of Meduegna.

1734
The word "vampyre" enters the English language. 1748 - The first modern vampyre poem, "Der Vampir", is published.

1813
A vampire appears in Lord Byron's The Giaour.

1819
John Polidori's "The Vampyre," is the first vampire story in English is published.

1847
Bram Stoker is born.

1872
In Italy, Vincenzo Verzeni is convicted of murdering two people and drinking their blood.

1897
"Dracula" by Bram Stoker is published in England.

1924
Fritz Haarmann the "Vampire of Hanover" is arrested, tried and convicted of killing more than 20 people in a vampiric crime spree.

1931
Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi, is released.

1932
The movie "Vampyr," directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer, is released.

1936
"Dracula's Daughter" is released.

1943
"Son of Dracula", stars Lon Chaney, Jr., as Dracula.

1962
The Count Dracula Society is founded in the United States by Donald Reed.

1964
"The Munsters" and "The Addams Family"; television shows with vampiric characters.

1965
Jeanne Youngson founds The Count Dracula Fan Club.

1970
Sean Manchester founds The Vampire Research Society."In Search of Dracula" by Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu is published.--Stephan Kaplan founds The Vampire Research Centre.

1976
The first of the Vampire Chronicles, "Interview With the Vampire", by Anne Rice is published.

1979
Frank Langella stars in the remake of Dracula.

1980
Richard Chase, the so-called Dracula Killer of Sacramento, California, commits suicide in prison.

1985
"The Vampire Lestat" by Anne Rice is published and reaches the best seller list.

1988
"The Queen of the Damned" is published by Anne Rice.

1991
Vampire: The Masquerade," the vampire role-playing game is released by White Wolf.

1992
"Bram Stoker's Dracula" directed by Francis Ford Coppola opens. --Andrei Chikatilo of Russia, is sentenced to death after killing and vampirizing 55 people.-"The Tale of the Body Thief" by Anne Rice is published.

1994
The film version of Anne Rice's "Interview with the Vampire" opens with Tom Cruise as the Vampire Lestat and Brad Pitt as Louis.

1998
Blade is released into theaters. Pandora by Anne Rice is published. The Vampire Armand by Anne Rice is published.

1999
Vittorio the Vampire by Anne Rice is published.

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