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

I’ve just discovered a charming version of the Bloody Mary story over on the American Folklore web site.

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.

[div tale]…Then the little girls in the village began to disappear, one by one. No one could find out where they had gone. Grief-stricken families searched the woods, the local buildings, and all the houses and barns, but there was no sign of the missing girls. A few brave souls even went to Bloody Mary’s home in the woods to see if the witch had taken the girls, but she denied any knowledge of the disappearances.[/div]

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

It really is amazing how long a good Urban Legend can survive out there in the wild!

When I first wrote about the Perfumed Bandits email hoax we were living in a different century. It was November 1999, and the same email that has gone on to cause so much concern and alarm around the world was making its way into unsuspecting email inboxes for the very first time.

And this email didn’t mess about. It went straight for the psychologic jugular and didn’t let go, delivering its payload of anxiety and alarm to a host audience that was still trying to adapt to the idea that not everything you receive in your inbox is true or real. Even if it claims otherwise in very big letters…
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There’s nothing quite as enjoyable as a well-told Ghost Story, and some of the scariest stories don’t rely at all on monsters and sudden surprises.

Take, for example, the tale below – something spooky is said to happen on the campus of Adelaide University, in South Australia. Something to do with the professor who died late one night on the 6th floor, and who is rumored to be there still.

If only in spirit…

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I can’t think of a better place to begin this blog than with possibly my favorite urban legend / ghost story of all time — the completely spooky tale of Bloody Mary!

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?

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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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