by Eva Howlings A few years ago a friend decided that a bunch of us should travel to Slovakia to celebrate Halloween at the ruins of Cachtice Castle . Most of us had never heard of Elizabeth Bathory and when he explained she was a Hungarian countess and the world’s most prolific serial killer, we thought it was a fun idea. Walking among the ruins, a few of us felt that we had to get out of there. We didn’t bother to explore the place and as we ran down the path, some of us felt our eyes drawn down the steep hillside to where it ended in a pile of rocks. We became nauseous and scared - and surprised by our reaction. We couldn’t get back to the car fast enough. Having arrived safely at the car did not make us feel any better
 Cachtice Castle
 Elizabeth Bathory
This is where she went too far. Killing your peasants is one thing but when you go after young ladies from better families - well, it’s just not done. Some documented acts committed by Elizabeth include: forcing a 12 year old girl who was caught trying to escape into a cage “built like a huge ball, too narrow to sit in, too low to stand in” and swinging it between two walls so metal spikes jutted into the cage… her flesh was torn to pieces.”
 One accomplice testified that on some days Elizabeth had stark-naked girls laid flat on the floor of her bedroom and tortured them so much that one could scoop up the blood by the pailful afterwards. A young maid-servant who did not endure the tortures well and died very quickly was written out by the countess in her diary with the laconic comment 'She was too small...'
Although villagers knew what was happening they were powerless to do anything because of Elizabeth’s standing. Finally in 1610, the parish priest of Cachtice and some monks living in Vienna complained to the Viennese courts about the cries emanating from Bathory's castle. When her estate was investigated, she was caught in the act of torture and numerous dead victims were found.  By this time most of her victims had already been hurled from the towers to the rocks below, to be devoured by wolves - the very same rocks that made us ill to look at the day before. Some victims were even mutilated and disposed of in transit. That long carriage ride from one castle to another was just too boring - why wait with the blood letting until you reach the destination? These bodies will never be accounted for, but the official record sets the death toll between 50 and 700 - all of them women, all sexually tortured.
The explanation at the time was that the countess bathed in their blood for its healing and beautifying effect. But this is just what people convinced themselves because they thought it was impossible for any woman to have such eroto-sadistic tendencies. Today we know women can be just as sadistic as men. Today we glorify it. Now Elizabeth is the heroine in films like Countess Dracula, Curse of the Devil and Immoral Tales where she is played by Paloma Picasso . She stars in an erotic comic book series and is the namesake of a Swedish death metal band . Closer to home, a Czech/Slovak film entitled Love Story Bathory directed by the Slovak Juraj Jakubisko and featuring a cast of veteren Czech actors is due out in March or April of this year.  Her end came when King Matthias had no choice but have investigators check up on the situation and they caught her in the act, with one girl dead and another dying nearby. She was never taken to trial because of the repercussions it could cause - for one thing her nephew was the ruler of Transylvania and may have retaliated. Instead, she was bricked into a single room at her castle and fed through a hole in the door. She was found dead there three years later.
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