After visiting so many peaceful and friendly castles, now I would like to show you one which is a bit more eerie. When I was putting Csejte (in Slovak: Čachtice) on the wish list, my only reason was the geographical closeness and the fact that based on the pictures it seemed to be a nice castle with a lot of remaining towers and walls...

...then it turned out that the most famous land lady of the castle was no one else but Erzsébet Báthory herself! Me and my friends were sure about that for our entire lives that the infamous countess, the widow of military leader Ferenc Nádasdy (the 'Black Bey') was living in Transylvania.

Most probably we had this mistake and thought so, because the Báthory family had a very strong political position in the Principality of Transylvania (another member, István Báthory even succeeded to become the king of Poland), and Erzsébet is a similar pop cultural character to Count Drakula who is also connected to that region. 

The terrifying myth says that Erzsébet Báthory lived in the castle alone while her husband was participating in military campaigns against the Ottomans.

She was very vain, sadist and bored, thus she committed a lot of cruelties on her servants, particularly on the female ones. She did not want to get old and broke all the mirrors in the castle not to see herself aging and she was looking for the secret of everlasting youth. 

Once Erzsébet slapped her maid and a drop of blood splashed on her face. In the following day, she noticed that she did not have wrinkles on the spot where the blood fell, which made her realize that she should use the blood of young girls (particularly virgin girls) to keep herself young forever.

Therefore, she tortured and killed more than 600 young girls and hurt many other people that made everyone in the neighborhood fear her.

Apart from that, she practiced occult studies meaning black magic and witchcraft and she was in touch with the Devil and terrible creatures from the Underworld.

She also kept young boys and girls as lovers and harvested the life energy of others through pain, exactly like a vampire. What is more, she prepared blood baths for herself in a tub from the poor girls’ blood.

Well, at least, this is the myth. Although it is very exciting and creepy, the truth is that Erzsébet Báthory is most probably one of the greatest victims of historical records, because her personality was totally different and, unlike Vlad Țepeș, she did not deserve to be pictured as such a cruel person.

In fact, she was a religious and humble woman helping many people in need, and she even used her castle as a hospital and recovery center for them!

So how is it possible that she has such a bad reputation nowadays? Since she did not support the Habsburg emperor and had a lot of attractive properties, she was accused for treason and portrayed as a tyrannic, cruel land lady in order to confiscate her lands she had and inherited from her husband.

Finally she lost almost everything and many of her castles and lands were given to those who were loyal to the Austrians.

In spite of the fact that the mythical character of Báthory is a perfect material to merchandise a castle and build a successful brand around it, I have to admit that it did not really work out.

Although Csejte castle was very charming and offered a great view on the top of a long cliff, there were only a few sculptures and painting of the countess and one smart idea – a local red wine was named Báthory’s blood (Bathory Krv). 

There was a plexiglass sheet near the castle showing the lines of the original building which was at least three times bigger than its ruins today.

One of the saddest things for me as a passionate for art and architecture is seeing that proud, old and ancient cites and buildings just vanish like if they had never existed, so I hope that there is a thing somewhere like a heaven for destroyed castles and palaces where all the wonders of human creativity and monumentality gather...

Fortunately, there are castles in much better conditions that can show the beauty and majesty of the medieval times with all of its richdom.

There is another legendary castle near Čachtice that has a fascinating story: it’s the castle of Beckó (in Slovak: Beckov), also known in Hungarian as Bolondóc (more or less: ‘Foolsborough’ or 'Jesterborough' in English), which even Hungarian novelist Kálmán Mikszáth wrote about. (By the way, he also wrote about Csejte castle.)

According to the legend, there was a powerful landlord (voivode) in the region called Stibor (Štibor , Ścibor), a nobleman of Polish origin. Once he organized a hunt, and many important people were participating, such as the bishop of Nyitra.

Stibor invited his jester, Beckó to entertain the hunters, and he performed his very best making the people laugh and enjoy the event. Therefore, the voivode told Beckó that he could ask for anything as a gift in return.

‘Build me a castle, more beautiful than the one in Visegrád’ – said the jester, and so it happened. Stibor ordered his soldiers to stop everyone near the area and no matter if they were merchants, pilgrims, students, travelers, peasants or lords, they had to work on the construction for 10 days. Soon the castle was built and it was so magnificent that the voivode himself fell in love with it.

‘I tell you a thing, Beckó. Please give me this castle I have built for you and ask for something else in return.’ – said Stibor . The jester was thinking and finally he just needed so much of gold he could take on two chariots and also that the castle should be named after him forever. Thus, he became immortal in a way. 

However, the voivode had a terrible end, when he had a wedding celebration for his son for one year and one day in the new castle. He had his servant killed on the first day of the party and made him fall in an abyss, because he slapped Stibor’s favorite hunting dog. 

Then, on the last day, when the voivode was resting in the garden of the courtyard, a snake bit his eyes off, and the blind, panicking Stibor ’s started running.

Finally, as a divine punishment, he fell in the same abyss where he pushed his servant one year before, but his soul, all together with his evil wife’s, Dobrochna’s one, flies above the castle in the shape of a raven as long as Beckó exists in the world.

Even though the legend is very tragical and scary, Beckov itself is a lovely little town with cute, colorful mansions and houses, while it also had a significant Jewish community, which’s cemetery can be seen at the slopes of the castle hill even today.

Unfortunately, we arrived too late and could not enter, but I hope it was not my last time in that incredible place. For sure a dream came true for me by visiting another legendary location that will be included on my upcoming book on Slavic mythology.

A last note for Stibor is the fact that just like Báthory, history books and chronicles were not so merciful and kind to him. He was not better or worse than any other counts at that time, and he was a member of the Order of the Dragon as the knight of King Sigismund of Luxemburg.

He was indeed the owner of Beckó castle that was in reality built much before his times and used to be a property of Máté Csák (not so surprisingly). The Transylvanian ties are not missign either, because Stibor of Stiboricz was the Voivode of Transylvania twice at the turn of the 14th and 15th century.

There is also a crossover, one the topic of Drakula appeared: the Transylvanian castle of Törcsvár (Castelul Bran) was also one of his properties at some point, so his character as the cruel land lord in his lonely castle is a far away relative of Drakula’s, although the vampire count is usually identified with Wallachian prince Vlad the Impaler.

It is sort of weird and funny that I chose castles following my instincts and ended up at the most infamous horror figures of Central Europe: Drakula, Báthory and Stribor. Last, but not least: if you have good eyes, you will notice, that there are some exceptions among the illustrations not exactly fitting the topic: they are from our previous trips to Tapolcsány and Magasmajtény.

Unfortunately, the conditions were very poor and the time was limited to shoot more pictures in Csejte and Beckó, and to be honest, in spite of the excellent legends and stories, these genious opportunities are underused by the locals and both the castles of Čachtice and Beckov mostly meant a bunch of empty ruins with small museums.

I do not like overhyped touristic destinations, so I am not saying they should be the same kind of commercial attractions as Törcsvár or Bajmóc, but it was interesting to see that some abandoned, unknown castles in this part of Slovakia we saw had more mythical vibes than these two famous locations.

There is another castle left on the list which is from a separate trip. If you are curious, which one it is, check out my next article to know!