I don't celebrate Halloween but I do like to read about people. I sometimes wonder what makes their minds work. Sometimes I can't begin to figure it out. I am going to tell you about one person that was a Monster. A real Monster. Elizabeth Bathory was born into a family of nobility in Hungary in 1560. By all accounts she was a normal child but as she approached her teen years, she began to change. She became Evil. I suppose that we will never know if it was NATURE or NURTURE because her family and most of the people that surrounded her were evil as well. Her uncle Stephan Bathory was a king of Poland and he was known for his cruelty. Scholars say that most of her family was deranged. Elizabeth's aunt was a witch. One of her uncles was an alchemist and devil worshiper. One of her brothers was a well known pedophile of the time. Her nurse from childhood, Ilona Joo, practiced Black Magic that called for the sacrifice of children for their bones and blood. Ilona Joo was with Elizabeh until the end of their lives. I suppose if Elizabeth was ever going to be "normal", she didn't have a chance. At 15, she became pregnant out of wedlock and her family quickly arranged for her to marry Count Nadasdy, of Hungary who was thought to be insane. Her husband taught Elizabeth his special games and tricks of torture. The Count loved spreading honey over a naked peasant girl. He would then have the girl chained up outside where bees would sting her to death. His favorite game though, was freezing girls to death during the winter. He would watch while servants were ordered to pour water over the girls naked bodies outside until the water hardened and she became unable to move and died. We have to remember that in the 1500's Nobility RULED the lives of the people in the village. Servants couldn't say no or refuse an order or they risked being killed. Elizabeth became known as "The Bloody Lady of Cachtice" after the Castle in which she lived. Scholars say that Elizabeth was a narcissist and changed her clothes several time a day. She spent hours staring into mirrors and making her servants tell her that she was beautiful and "looked Young". Elizabeth kept many male lovers while her husband was away fighting wars but she was also a lesbian. They had four children when Count Nadasdy fell ill in 1601 and was confined to his bed until his death. Some say that Elizabeth poisoned him. Pretty young women and children began to disapper from neighboring villages but no one was brave enough to speak out. Rumor says that villagers reported screams from the castle. The story says that Elizabeth's reign of terror began when a servant girl was brushing Elizabeth's hair and accidently pulled it. Elizabeth became enraged and reached behind her to slap the servany girl. She got The girl's blood on her ring and rubbed it into her hand. Elizabeth thought that the blood made the skin on her hand appear younger and so it began. Elizabeth began to have the peasant girls in neighboring towns brought to the castle "to work". If they refused, they were knocked unconsious and brought anyway. Finally the crop of town girls ran out and Elizabeth was forced to resort to the torture and killing of girl children from "lesser nobility". Elizabeth frequently tortured the girls herself. When their clothes became bloody, she would order them changed and renew the beatings. Court testimony later said that Elizabeth would sometimes sew a servant girls' mouth shut after she had been forced to eat strips of her own flesh. After the disappearance of one young woman from a "good family" was reported, authorities were forced to act. In 1610, King Mathias The Second of Hungary sent a team of men to Castle Csejthe to investigate. Reportedly, 9 girls from aristocratic familes had disappeared. When the party of men reached the Castle, the door was ajar and they went inside. Court records stated that cats were running rampant in the castle and the men smelled an overpowering odor of decomposition. They went down into the dungeon where they discovered prison cells full of young women and children. They bore the marks of repeated beatings and bleedings and were begging to be rescued. The men found Countess Elizabeth and confined her to her room until her fate could be decided. As she was kept in her rooms, officials searched the Castle for evidence. They came upon the bodies of young girls everywhere. Many had no arms or eyes. One blackened body was in the fireplace not fully burned and quite a few were buried in very shallow graves aound the castle. One man in the rescue party gave evidence that "they watched in horror as dogs ran around with parts of girls in their mouths". Elizabeth did not attend her trail and did not testify. She remained in her Castle rooms and declared her innocence. Hundreds of people, sometimes as many as 35 a day testified against her. They included the families of the missing girls, the servants and the victims that had been rescued
that night. A dwarf that had worked for Elizabeth for 16 years claimed that the women were taken from the towns by force if they didn't agree to come willingly. They were promised jobs and money. The girls had been chosen for "the softness of their skin". Elizabeth's childhood nurse, Ilona Joo, admitted that SHE had killed around 50 girls. She liked to apply red hot pokers in their mouths and up their noses. She liked to slit the skin between their fingers open. Testimony said that even when Elizabeth was ill, the servants brought girls to her bed so that she could slap and bite them. Sometimes she bit them until they died and the male servants ate their flesh. Only one servant refused to testify against Elizabeth, and for that, her eyes were put out and her breasts removed before she was burned at the stake. Finally, Elizabeth was convicted of 80 counts of murder although a paper was found in Elizabeth's writing that had the names of 650 girls written on it. The servants that participated and her nursemaid were ordered executed. In the end, beause she was nobility, Elizabath was ordered imprisoned for life in a small set of rooms in her Castle. The entrances and the windows were walled up except for slits for food and air. After 3 and a half years, when she was 53, Elizabeth died. She has been called a vampire and the worst serial killer in history. She was a monster. I'm afraid of monsters.

When I am Old......

I shall wear turquoise and soft gray sweatshirts....
and a bandana over my
silver hair...And I shall spend my Social
Security checks on Sweet
Wine and my dogs....And sit in my house on my
well worn chair and
listen to my dogs breathing.

I will sneak out in the middle of a warm Summer
night and take my dogs
for a run, if my old bones will allow...and when
people come to call, I
will smile as I show them my dogs...and
talk of them and about
them..The Ones so beloved of the past and the ones
so beloved of
Today.

I will work hard cleaning up after them and
mopping and feeding them
and whispering their names in a soft, loving way. I
will wear the
gleaming sweat on my throat, like a jewel and I will
be an embarrassment
to all...and my family..who have not yet found
the peace in being free
to have dogs as your best friends...

Those friends who will wait, at any hour, for your
footfall...and
eagerly jump to their feet out of a sound sleep, to
greet you as if you
are a hero. With warm eyes full of adoring love and
hope that you will
stay and kiss their dear sweet heads..and their
big, strong necks..
and whisper to their very special company.

I look in the mirror....and see I am getting old...
This is the kind of
woman I am...and always have been..Loving dogs is
easy, they are part of
me, accept me for who I am, my dogs appreciate my
presence in their
lives....When I am old this will be important to
me...You will
understand when you are old.... and if you have dogs
to love too.....

I was watching something on TV last night about how to keep kids safe on Halloween. They went through the list...Always walk with an adult...examine your candy... THEN they gave the name of a place that will x-ray candy for kids before they eat it. I was filled with a sense of sorrow. When I was little, my mom would send us off ( myself and three siblings) trick or treating for miles. We didn't even leave the house until it was dark. We had NO adults and would eat our candy the whole time we walked. It never occured to anyone that there could be poison or razor blades in it. Our costumes were homemade and our candy bags were usually an old pillow case or brown paper sack from the grocery store. I really feel sorry for kids now. Some towns ( this one) have things to do at shopping malls and churches to keep kids out of danger. There are REAL monsters out there now. The kind that snatch kids and that wILL put bad things in their candy. Almost every year, we read in the newspaper of some kids that have died or been seriously hurt because of it. Halloween IS scarier now. There really are things 'that go bump in the night". Another thing is that I don't even buy candy anymore. It's just too dangerous where I live to open your door to strangers. How crazy is that? How tragic? Times have changed now. Even for goblins... There is something wrong with that. Very wrong.

Hi everyone, I wanted to say thank you for all of the sweet comments and PMs that I got from everyone. I have spent time in prayer and deep thoughts and I simply can't let other people dictate how I feel. I would like to be perfectly honest and say that I DO not believe the hospital reports that we have been getting. They DO NOT make sense. I also am not sure how someone can go to another persons blog and post. Do they give out thier passwords? That's the bad thing about lying. You can't always remember what you have said to whom and it gets messed up. I got two messages from one person that said differant things. Amazing how that works..... The thing that really bothers me is the GOOD people, kind people are falling for the lies. I'm done with this topic. I have confronted the people/ person that I KNOW is lying and got an even weirder response. I will leave it to them to worry about how they are percieved and who they will have to answer
to. I just DO NOT want anyone thinking that we are stupid. And that we all fall for the lies. Enough. I have spent enough energy worrying about this. I have come to realize that there are good and honest people on this blogstream and that's who I will give my time and energy to. Hopefully, I'll be back tomorrow with a better post. One that isn't as cryptic and one filled with differant things. Take care all and thank you once again. You all are loved.

I am going to stay off of Blogstream for awhile and regroup. The last few days I have had a very heavy heart. When I first came here I had been betrayed by two people that I once loved very much. It has happened again. I was welcomed here and felt loved. This is SUCH a warm and loving group and I felt as if I had "come home". We care about each other, I would even say that we love each other in many ways. It's not easy to get to know people here. Especially since it's so anonomyous. I trust people. I trust what they say and I suppose that all of us feel closer to some than others. I know that we have been lied to here recently. I just KNOW that. I wrote a letter to the person and told them that I was aware that they were not being honest and asked then to tell me why. No one owes me anything..even an explanation. HOWEVER, when I have been told something bad had happened to someone that I care about, I expect that to be true. Finding out that it's not is devestating.I haven't gotten a reply from this person. I don't think that I will. I don't know how anyone could justify doing something that bad. That wrong. To know that people here care and to take advantage of that is.... I can't even find the word. So... I have to figure out how to handle it when I care about people. When I beleive people. I don't want the actions of one person to destroy that in me. I need some time to pray and reflect. I will miss you all..