Throw the name Elizabeth Bathory into your favourite search engine and you will quickly find superlatives like “history’s most prolific female serial killer” and leading questions like “Was Dracula Woman?” She is a figure with a reputation so terrifying that her name has been endorsed by Black Metal bands as a suitably evil band name. In 1611 the Hungarian Countess was imprisoned for allegedly torturing and killing as many as 600 young maidservants. It was not long before a vampire-like legend grew up around Bathory. But did she really bathe in the blood of virgins to remain forever young? Tune-in and find out how medieval dragon slayers, the elixir of life, and a whole lot of inbreeding play into the story.

Works Cited

Codrescu, Andrei. The Blood Countess. Quartet, 2007.

Craft, Kimberly L. Infamous Lady: the True Story of Countess Erzsébet Báthory. Creatspace, 2014.

Elsberg, R. A. von. Elisabeth Báthory: (Die Blutgräfin). Ein Sitten- u. Charakterbild. Schottlaender, 1904.

Huntuckian. “The Bloody Countess?” Notes on Hungarian History, 21 Jan. 2015, notesonhungary.wordpress.com/2014/05/31/the-bloody-countess/.

McNally, Raymond T. Dracula Was a Woman: in Search of the Blood Countess of Transylvania. Hamlyn Paperbacks, 1985.

Thorne, Tony. Countess Dracula: the Life and Times of the Blood Countess, Elisabeth Báthory. Bloomsbury, 1997.