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Bloody Mary (folklore)

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Bloody Mary is a ghost featured in modern folklore. She is said to appear in a mirror when her name is called ten times, depending upon the version of the story, often as part of a game or dare..

One of the more common ways participants attempt to make her appear is to stand before a golden edged mirror in the dark and repeat her name three times, there are many variations including chanting more than three times, chanting at midnight, spinning around, rubbing one's eyes, running the water, or chanting her name thirteen times with a lit candle.[citation needed] In some versions of the legend, the summoner must say, "Bloody Mary, I killed your baby."[citation needed] But some people in the modern world believe that Bloody Mary was a witch and she was murdered for it.[citation needed] In these variants, Bloody Mary is often believed to be the spirit of a young mother whose baby was stolen from her, making her mad with grief, eventually committing suicide.[citation needed] In stories where Mary is supposed to have been wrongly accused of killing her children, the querent might say "I believe in Mary Worth."[citation needed] This is similar to another game involving the summoning of the Bell Witch in a mirror at midnight. The game is often a test of courage and bravery, as it is said that if Bloody Mary is summoned, she would proceed to kill the summoner in an extremely violent way, such as ripping the face off, scratching the eyes out, cutting the head off, driving them insane, bringing them into the mirror with her or scratching their neck, causing serious injury or death.[citation needed] Some think if she doesn't kill the one who had summoned her then she will haunt them for the rest of their life. Other versions tell that if one chants her name thirteen times at midnight into a mirror she will appear and the summoner can talk to a deceased person until 11:08 a.m, when Bloody Mary and the dead person asked to speak to will vanish. Still other variations say that the querent must not look directly at Bloody Mary, but at her image in the mirror; she will then reveal the querent's future, particularly concerning marriage and children.[1]

Divination rituals such as the one depicted on this early 20th century Halloween greeting card, where a woman stares into a mirror in a darkened room to catch a glimpse of the face of her future husband, while a witch lurks in the shadows, may be one origin of the Bloody Mary legend.

Bloody Mary is typically described as a child-murderer who lived in the local city where the legend has taken root years ago, somewhere in the west. There is often a specific local graveyard or tombstone that becomes attached to the legend and a destination for legend trips.[citation needed]

There are many myths on the origins of Bloody Mary, one such myth claims that the story started in the city of Portsmouth, New Hampshire in 1666. Mary of Portsmouth, as she is called, was an orphan child who taunted the town by saying, “gaze into the mirror and your fictional horrors will turn to truth” as she held up a mirror. According to this myth, an angry mob, who accused Mary of being a witch, went to Mary's camp and mysteriously found her dead body with deep scratch wounds to the face and her eyes ripped out of their sockets.[citation needed]

On the other hand, various people have surmised that the lore about taunting Bloody Mary about her baby may relate her tenuously to folklore about Queen Mary I, also known as "Bloody Mary", whose life was marked by a number of miscarriages or false pregnancies.[2] As a result, some versions of the tale make Bloody Mary the queen driven to madness by the loss of her children. The mirror ritual by which Bloody Mary is summoned may also relate to a form of divination involving mirrors and darkness that was once performed on Halloween.[citation needed] While as with any sort of folklore the details may vary, this particular tale encouraged young women to walk up a flight of stairs backwards, holding a candle and a hand mirror, in a darkened house. As they gazed into the mirror, they were supposed to be able to catch a view of their future husband's face.[citation needed] There was, however, a chance that they would see the skull-face of the Grim Reaper instead; this meant that they were destined to die before they married.[1][3]

The legend of Bloody Mary has served as inspiration for a number of movies and television shows dealing with the supernatural.[2]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Ellis, Bill (2004). Lucifer Ascending: The Occult in Folklore and Popular Culture. University of Kentucky Press. ISBN 0-8131-2289-9.
  2. ^ a b "Urban Legends Reference Pages: Bloody Mary". Snopes.
  3. ^ Hutton, Ronald (2001). Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-285448-8.
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