Who was Loana the bloodthirster and how did she die?

“Loana the Bloodthirster”, also known as Loana or Leona was a young Romanian woman who is famous for dying of drinking her own blood. It sounds incredibly spooky and the backstory is even more so. There is one picture of her that’s also haunting and at the same time, intriguing. It’s the picture of her dead, lying on her couch after reportedly drinking her own blood in a sort of pagan ritual, but we’ll get to that soon. First and foremost, just look at her picture. It is the year 1909!

Probably we’ll never know the 100% real events behind this woman’s photo and tragic demise, but we can always tell the commonly-known story of her death and life. Loana the Bloodthirster, who could very well be part of a vampires’ story, was just a girl living in the second biggest city of Romania, Timisoara. Loana Constantinescu by her real name practiced Zoroastrianism, an ancient religion originating in ancient Persia which is still pursued by millions today, but mostly in East Asia. Since Timisoara’s majority population were Christians, Loana’s spiritual approach to life was seen as heretical, evil, inappropriate, you can imagine it.  She was persecuted by her neighbors who were convinced that she was a witch, she drank the blood of the local children and would speak with Satan and the evil spirits from the afterlife.

How did Loana the bloodthirster die?

The October 21, 1909

On this day, the general panic reached its peak and a group of vigilantes or just madmen, dragged her out of her home and beat her in the street. She managed to come out alive from this and was hospitalized with severe wounds and lacerations. Although she was seriously injured, she chose to check out of the hospital only after 2 days and go back home. The reason is unknown, there is no myth or legend as to why and what happened in these almost two days in the hospital. The real myth begins after that, because the next day after she left the hospital, she was dead.

She was found dead in her apartment with some bizarre cuts on her arms and legs and a serious amount of blood in her stomach. Apparently, she was part of a ritual in which she drained her body for blood and then drank it. The death happened because of the extensive loss of blood and the shock of ingesting a huge amount of blood which triggered cardiac arrest. When the authorities descended in her apartment, they also found some strange occult things, effigies, herbs, symbols, and an altar.

Loana the Bloodthirster’s revenge

This is the spookiest part of all. One year after her suicide, the two ministers who organized the community against Loana, picturing her as a witch and a friend of Satan, died from a rare blood-borne kind of illness. Other members of the vigilante group which crashed Loana were met with untimely ends: one of them died after a tree fell over him, another perished in a fire together with his wife and children. There are also stories about people who shared Loana’s picture online. They woke up with severe bruises on their arms and legs and the horrible nightmares only stopped when they deleted the image from their Reddit account.

Now we don’t know for sure if this is Loana’s picture, we don’t know much about her, only the legend told above. She was a normal 27-year-old woman living in Timisoara, Romania or maybe she was a bloodthirsty vampire, not from this world. Who can say? Her story, though, is terrifying and worth telling on a chilly, December night with friends out. Sweet dreams!