If you’re a fan of scary stories about the Bloody Mary ritual, you might enjoy resonanttantei’s fun retelling of a group of friends calling on Bloody Mary, and the terrifying results.

You can read the full story at: “Bloody Mary Bloody Mary Bloody Mary….oh crap” (note: language may be a little unsuitable to some in some places).

After a while, we summoned up our courage and went back to school, went into the bathrooms and of course, since I’m the “Legend Tripper” I had to say what we do.

I liked resonanttantei’s idea of being a “Legend Tripper”, and while I don’t know exactly what he intended to convey with the term, I thought it was perhaps meant to be a way of describing someone who’s something of an expert in various legends, but who also may be just a little bit unpredictable with it as well.

Jake being the bravest, looked up and his eyes went BIG. I looked up as well, I gasped and I almost screamed. Cori took her hand and covered mine. “Don’t scream, don’t..” She said to me.

Photograph courtesy of peskymac

In this rendition, Bloody Mary is a witch who lives in a forest and who lures children from a nearby village to use them in black magic that will give her back her youth.

Predictably, things don’t go well at all for the wicked witch once the villagers discover that she has been lying, and she is burned alive for murdering their children.

Before she dies, however, Bloody Mary curses the village, and to this very day anyone who chants her name three times in front of a darkened mirror will summon her vengeful spirit from the grave.

You can read the tale in full over at: Bloody Mary: A Scary Urban Legend from Pennsylvania Folklore

I’m sure most of you are familiar with the story in one form or another from your childhood years. Sometimes the name changes [1], sometimes the details of the ritual changes, but in most cases the core elements of the story remain largely the same.

To summon Bloody Mary you have to go into a bathroom at the stroke of midnight and stand in front of the mirror with a lit candle and with the lights turned off. You chant her name 3 times, “Bloody Mary… Bloody Mary… Bloody Mary…” and then you shout, “I stole your baby!”

And then… in the mirror… you will see the face of a horribly disfigured woman — and she’ll claw your face with razor-sharp nails, leaving you just as terribly mutilated as she is!

Egad, what could be creepier than that!

It’s easy to imagine that some form of this ritual has been performed an endless number of times by children from vastly different backgrounds in the decades since it made its way into popular folklore.

But what about the legend itself?

A look at the legend

It’s interesting that for such a widely told and retold story, detailed descriptions of who Bloody Mary was, and why or how she came to haunt mirrors, are unusually scarce. In a way, this scarcity of detail may well lend to the ritual’s flexibility and adaptability to new audiences and new locations.

In some versions a very basic story is given that she was once a young mother whose baby was stolen from her. She went mad in her grief and eventually committed suicide, and this explains why, in those versions where the ritual calls for you to cry out that it was you who stole her baby, she will attack you from the mirror.

In other versions she is described as a young woman who simply died a tragic and gruesome death, while in still others almost no background story or explanation is given. In many of these the ritual concludes simply with the statement, “I believe in you!”, and by declaring your belief you allow Bloody Mary to appear in the mirror.

Most versions of the ritual, however, do have at least several things in common.

A mirror is an essential prop in every version I’ve encountered thus far. Usually the ritual is conducted in gloom or darkness, with the only source of light often being a candle, adding to the eerie ambience. Most versions require an element of chanting and repetition [2], and many versions conclude with a taunt or affirmation.

And, lol, it probably goes without saying that just about every version has a spookiness-factor somewhere in the neighborhood of “Watching Candyman at home, alone, in the dark.” [3]

Behind the mirror

Jan Harold Brunvand’s third book devoted to urban legends, The Mexican Pet, mentions the work of Indiana folklorist Janet Langlois, whose article “Mary Whales I Believe In You: Myth And Ritual Subdued” appeared in Indiana Folklore in 1978. Langlois theorized that the Mary Wales story originated from a Mexican supernatural tale, entitled La Llorana – a story in which a young mother drowns her children and then goes mad from despair, eventually killing herself and haunting others.

Noted folklorist Alan Dundes suggests that many aspects of the Bloody Mary ritual suggest an unconscious expression of fear and anxiety on behalf of pre-adolescent girls facing the onsent of puberty and menstruation. He cites the popularity of the ritual amongst girls of that age, along with versions of the tale collected from girls who have told or been told the tale in which poorly-defined warnings that “blood will appear” are mentioned.

Using Dundes’ theory as a starting point, you could equally suggest that the Bloody Mary ritual more readily expresses anxiety about issues of virginity than menstruation, depending on the exact age at which the tale generally becomes popular amongst girls. Certainly the elements of fear, pain, the appearance of blood, and the common theme involving a baby, lend themselves as much to this interpretation as to that of Dundes’. And, of course, it’s entirely possible that the Bloody Mary ritual may well express a range of developmental anxieties amongst girls, some of which might be more centered on issues of social conformity, than of physical changes and rites of passage.

Boys, of course, aren’t immune to the story either, though their experiences with it – such as what age they first heard it, whether or not they participated in a recreation of the ritual, the popularity of the tale among social groups of boys etc – tend to be more varied.

Regardless of exactly why the tale is so enduringly popular, it’s obvious that it touches on common themes of fright and anxiety in childhood that often last well into adulthood. In fact, over the years I’ve communicated with a number of adults who will admit that while they ‘know’ the story isn’t true, the last thing they could ever bring themselves to do would be to go into a darkened bathroom with a lit candle to stand in front of a mirror and chant the name of Bloody Mary.

Through the mists of time

Back in the days of the ULRC, the entry I posted on Bloody Mary was, without a doubt, the most popular and controversial topic on the site.

It generated a great deal of comment and feedback from many people wanting to share their memories of when they first heard the tale, and also much scathing criticism from those who were certain the story is true.

I hope that tradition continues over here on ulblog.org. If you have a memory of the Bloody Mary ritual, or a variant of the tale you’d like to share, or you’d just like to send some death threats because you disagree about whether Bloody Mary is real or not, please feel free to use the comment and feedback links.

Actually, lol, thinking about it, it might be best if the death threats were sent via the feedback link.

Some further reading:

If you’d like to learn more about Bloody Mary, the following links are worth visiting:

• The Face In The Mirror
• Bloody Mary on Wikipedia) – examines both the historical Bloody Mary (ie Mary I, Queen of England during the 16th century) as well as the folklore tale.

Footnotes:

1.	I’ve encountered the story using the name Bloody Mary, Hell Mary, Mary Worth, Mary Whales, Mary Wolf, and Black Aggie, just to name a few.
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2.	Sometimes requiring you to chant Bloody Mary’s name 3 times, sometimes 9, 12, 15, or 21 times and so on.
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3.	If you’ve never seen this movie, it borrows heavily from several popular Urban Legend / scare stories, with Bloody Mary being the most obvious tale from which it draws inspiration. It’s also a pretty scary movie as well!
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