The Vampire Countess
The story of Lady Bathory is a strange and grisly real-life vampire tale. She was born in 1560, and was a countess in Hungary. She was said to be very beautiful with an angelic complection. It's also certain she was very cruel.
This countess was obsessed with her looks. She wasn't going to trust her beauty to a plain old jar of cold cream. The countess got the idea that applying human blood to her skin would make her more beautiful.
She got this idea one afternoon while her chamber maid was combing her hair. The servant pulled too hard so the countess slapped her. After washing away the blood on her hand, she noticed her skin was smoother and younger looking.
Many peasant girls were kidnapped to increase the countess's blood supply. The girls ended up dead because of this horrible idea. One lucky girl managed to escape before the countess could turn her blood into a beauty pack.
English: Bram Stoker (1847-1912), novelist born in...
Count Felix Graf von Luckner smoking a pipe next t...
Count Felix Graf von Luckner, right, and an uniden...She was able to get to the authorities and tell all.
The judge could not believe how hideous the countess's crimes were. He had a tough time coming up with a punishment for her, but finally he decided to have her imprisoned in her bedroom. The windows were bricked up, and so was the door, with only a slot left for food and water to pass through. The countess lived this way for several years, before she finally died.
The countess was actually convicted of witchcraft, not of being a vampire. But her strong association with blood earned her the nick name of the Vampire Countess of Hungary.
Derived from the Greek word for "bloodlessness", anemia is a blood disease in which the red-cell count is unusually low. Red cells are the carriers of oxygen throughout the...