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of spears covered in impaled bodies, many still living, covering the royal lands of Dracula. This is what earned Vlad his official last name, Tepes, which means "The Impaler" in Romanian. When the Turkish reinforcements arrived they were horrified when they discovered the forest of their countrymen impaled and screaming in agony. Many retreated. Those that moved forward were treated to a very grand show. When they arrived in the outer courtyard of Vlad's estate he had his servants carry out a table, a chair, a loaf of bread, and a bowl and set them in the center of the impaled forest. With the Turkish looking on Vlad had his servants drain the blood of the impaled into the bowl. He personally sat at the table and dined, making a meal of the loaf of bread, and dipping the chunks of it into the bowl of his enemy's blood before consuming it. This is what inspired the legend of Vlad Tepes being a vampire, an incident that exploded into an urban legend as it was passed from one person to the next at campfires. The Turks retreated. Unbeknownst to them the Romanian army was weak and had been nearly decimated by the first attack, had the remaining Turkish soldiers pressed on they could have taken the throne of Romania that day.

One of the next famous historical vampires was Elizabeth of Bathory. Coincidentally she really was a descendant of Vlad Tepes, born in Hungary about 100 years after Vlad's death. Her husband was a nobleman, often off fighting in wars, which left Elizabeth in charge of the estate. She also suffered from a severe form of Narcissism, obsessed with her own beauty. At some point her obsession became a full blown psychosis and Elizabeth began to believe that she could stop the aging process by bathing in and drinking the blood of virgins. The Bathory estate began to hire as many beautiful young townswomen as possible to work as the estate, particularly virgins, and often from destitute families. Each new servant would work for a time before they were eventually taken to the upper chambers of the castle where Elizabeth, with the aid of her head servants, would torture the young girls and drain them of their blood so that she could bathe in it. This continued for years, slowly draining the area of young women. When her husband died Elizabeth was free to indulge in her delusions without having to hide them, which made her careless. Eventually news of the strange happenings at the Bathory estate reached the ears of the Emperor of Hungary himself. On December

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