History has plenty of accounts to share when it comes to real-life vampires.
The Blood Countess
We start with The Blood Countess, the original vampire, Elizabeth Báthory. So much so that she is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most productive female serial killer in history. A Hungarian Countess, Bathory is infamous…
With a reported six hundred murders under her belt, I daresay no woman will unseat her throne anytime soon. It is believed that, besides Vlad Tepes, she is the other main inspiration for Count Dracula.
Báthory believed the blood of adolescent and prepubescent females would keep her looking young and beautiful after she slapped a chambermaid and the girl’s blood dripped on her hand. Days later, she noticed the skin there appeared more youthful and radiant.
The Obsession Of A Noble
This revelation would spawn a monster. When she ran out of her own servants and castle staff, she began bringing girls from nearby villages. Her resulting obsession with youth caused her to murder over six hundred virgins throughout twenty years, whose blood she drank and bathed in.
Báthory met with no resistance because she took peasant girls from neighboring villages and abused her position as royalty to protect her from backlash.
She, therefore, had no legal or moral accountability, knowing that she could not be tried for her crimes even if she was ever caught. When those sources ran dry, she began attacking and killing the children of noblewomen, who had been sent to her for training as courtesans.
The townspeople had been reporting her to the authorities. But no one paid any heed until the children of nobles began being targeted. After all that time, her deeds finally became known to King Rudolf II after decades of bloody games.
When Blood Is Never Enough
When a raid on her castle unearthed the remains of over three hundred women and a diary with written accounts of over six hundred atrocities, she was taken into custody. Investigators actually caught Báthory in the act of torturing a young girl, leaving anyway to excuse the rumors and the diaries off the table. Four accomplices were arrested. Three were killed, one escaped imprisonment.
As for Báthory? Despite her horrific misdeeds, she was still a Countess. They felt a trial would be too public and embarrassing for her, so they locked her up in her room at the castle, leaving slits for air and food to be passed through. It’s rumored that she died in 1614, but her body was moved.
To this day, no one knows where her remains are located. Rumor and exaggerations claim that she still appeared to be thirty years old, even though she was over fifty at the time of her death.
Dracula Bleh-Bleh-Bleh
Dracula was published in 1897 and eventually made its appearance in 44 languages and over 250 films. What most people don’t know is that Dracula never existed. The story was a mish-mash of various vampire stories from around the world. Elizabeth Báthory was only one part of the inspiration. Another was Vlad Tepes.
Vlad Tepes Dracul was an ancient Romanian ruler. Born in 1341, he was a prince whose job was to protect his subjects from the invading Muslim Turks. He was cunning, sadistic, and came up with horrifying and torturous deaths to those he murdered.
To make his point to invaders, he used brutal and barbaric means to dispose of his enemies. To dishonor the soldiers, he would impale them on tall stakes and leave them to slowly die an antagonizing death high on a hill surrounding his castle, where all could see.
The Heresy Of A Romanian Hero
He used to bring a dining table and chair out and dine while the men died. People also say that he dipped his bread in the running blood to supposedly absorb their power and strength for himself.
The thing is, Vlad Tepes was a ruler during a time of war. What he did, he did protect his people. To survive the war, you must make your enemies fear you, and in that.
To this day, many in Romania consider Vlad Tepes a hero and a protector, not a monster. They state that he did what he had to do for the time. When it came to protecting our loved ones from slavery, torture, and death, could we honestly say there’s anything we wouldn’t do?
V Is For Vladislav
Still, rumors of the Voivoide abound, including that he arose from the dead to murder all the priests who refused him a proper burial because of his horrific deeds.
His vicious bloodlust earned him the honor of being one of history’s first documented vampires, as he lived centuries before Báthory did.
These two combined created the world’s first fictional vampire, Bram Stoker’s Dracula. But were there others? History, like mythology, contains far more.
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