• Some of my friends, five of us, cramped ourselves into a small bathroom in my friend Cathryn's House. We ended up saying Bloody Mary (more like chanting it) about 20 times or so for anything to appear. When we did finally see something it started out as a green glow then the darkened portrait of a face became more visible, by that time half of us were screaming so we knocked each other down trying to get out of the bathroom and then I flipped on the light. It was a welcome relief. When I was about 9 years old, I went to a friend's for a birthday/slumber party. There were about 10 other girls there. About midnight, we decided to play Mary Worth. Some of us had never heard of this so one of the girls told the story.

    Mary Worth lived a long time ago. She was a very beautiful young girl. One day she had a terrible accident that left her face so disfigured that nobody would look at her. She had not been allowed to see her own reflection after this accident for fear that she would lose her mind. Before this, she had spent long hours admiring her beauty in her bedroom mirror.

    One night, after everyone had gone to bed, unable to fight the curiousity any longer, she crept into a room that had a mirror. As soon as she saw her face, she broke down into terrible screams and sobs. It was at this moment that she was so heartbroken and wanted her old reflection back, that she walked into the mirror to find it, vowing to disfigure anybody that came looking for her in the mirror.

    After hearing this story, which was told very scarily, we decided to turn out all of the lights and try it. We all huddled around the mirror and starting repeating "Mary Worth, Mary Worth, I believe in Mary Worth". About the seventh time we said it one of the girls that was in front of the mirror started screaming and trying to push her way back away from the mirror. She was screaming so loud that my friends mom came running into the room. She quickly turned on the lights and found this girl huddled in the corner screaming. She turned her around to see what the problem and saw these long fingernail scratches running down her right cheek. I will never forget her face as long as I live!! Bloody Mary - Two faces About 100 years ago or so there was a woman named Mary. One day she had a terrible accident and her face was scratched so badly that she bled to death. But her spirit could not rest. Bloody Mary roams the world as an evil ghost. If you stand in front of a mirror in the dark and say her name three times, you will see her horribly mangled face appear. If you don't turn on the light and run away as fast as you can she will try to scratch your face off.

    The story of the ghost who appears in a mirror when summoned has been told many times in countless variations. Children, following the directions provided in the version they heard, have been trying to contact Bloody Mary for at least 30 years now, perhaps for much longer than that. There's something about the story that makes it almost a tradition at slumber parties and summer camp, or basically anywhere a group of youngsters get together away from the watchful eyes of adults.

    How many different versions of the story are there? Why are there so many? Is there any way to know what the original story was? Why do some people believe they have actually seen Bloody Mary? And what is the fascination in actually trying to summon up an evil spirit?

    In an attempt to answer some of these questions, I have compared 100 different versions of the legend and others that seemed closely related. The stories were collected personally from individuals who were raised in various parts of the United States and also from postings in Internet newsgroups over the last six years. The newsgroup postings were written by people of various ages from across the country and also Great Britain. I do not think any one geographic area or age has been over represented, except for the fact that the stories are overwhelmingly from an English-speaking background within the last 30 years.

    There was a wide range of rituals used to summon the spirit, as well as vast differences in opinion on who she was and why she appeared. About the only constant element was that a mirror was used in the ritual, and even that was not present in all the versions. Of course, without the mirror, it becomes difficult to know if a story is related to the Bloody Mary legend or not, except in cases where the name or some other identifying element was included.

    Who is She?

    Folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand, best known for popularizing the term "urban legend," titled this story "I Believe in Mary Worth." Folklorist Janet Langlois wrote an essay about the ritual that was published in 1978, after interviewing Catholic school students about the spirit they called Mary Whales.

    Of the 100 versions I collected, the name Bloody Mary was by far the most prevalent, appearing about 50 percent of the time (47 of the accounts). Of course, "Bloody Mary" is more of a description than a name, so it's possible that the term could have been chanted in the ritual to summon the ghost while believing her real name to be something else.

    The name Bloody Mary was linked to a number of different people, including a historical Bloody Mary (Queen Mary Tudor of England), Mary Queen of Scots (probably mostly due to confusion with the other queen), the Virgin Mary (in these cases she generally does not display any menacing qualities), Mary Magdalene, a witch burned at the stake, an axe murderer, a child killer and "the crazy woman who lived down the street," among others.

    Mary Worth was the name mentioned 13 percent of the time. That is almost 75 percent less frequently than Bloody Mary, which makes it a distant second place. It is significantly more common than any other reference, however. I don't know if that is due to actually being a common version told from person to person or if Brunvand's books artificially increased the popularity of the name in peoples' recollections. It may also be related to the comic strip character who had the same name but a completely different temperament.

    The third most common entity mentioned as being summoned in a mirror by a ritual was the Devil himself, in five of the stories. Interestingly, in three of the stories in which the spirit's name was Bloody Mary she was specifically described as being a close relative of Satan (wife, sister or daughter), which might indicate an overlapping of the two different traditions.

    In fourth place with only three instances were confused references to the Bell Witch of Tennessee, which belongs to an entirely different legend.

    In another 25 of the accounts--an amazing one out of every four of all the stories--a name was given that either appeared in only one other story or just that once. Clearly this is a legend with a large number of variations.

    Mary Whales, the name mentioned by Langlois, must have been a strictly local version. It did not show up at all in the accounts I collected.

    The remaining seven stories either did not give a name for the spirit or did not even have a ghost or entity mentioned. In these cases it was some part of the ritual that seemed genuinely close enough to the typical Bloody Mary account to be included for comparison purposes.

    Candle in a darkened roomThe Ritual

    The methods used in summoning the face in the mirror are even more diverse than the names. This is probably because these could change more rapidly with a participant's whims or pure convenience. A friend of mine said when she was growing up she had heard that Bloody Mary would only appear on a Friday. When I asked her if this was some part of the legend or why she thought this would be the case, she said it was probably just that the party she was at when she was told this had been held on a Friday. Consciously or unconsciously, children can and do modify the details to best fit their situation.

    The two most common elements in the ritual are the mirror in a darkened room and repeating a chant a certain number of times. In about a third of the cases the words only needed to be spoken three times, although five, ten, 13 and 100 times were also popular.

    Saying the words only three times doesn't at first glance seem like it would lend itself to much suspense, if scaring each other were one of the motivations involved. But once you've seen a group of boys throw a helpless younger child into a darkened bathroom and scream "Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary!" before the kid could escape, you realize that having to repeat the words any more times than that would take some of the fun out of it. Even the strongest and meanest kids can only hold the door shut for so long before the pure panic of the trapped child would be too much to handle.

    On the other end of the scale, chanting anything 100 times in a darkened room seems only like a sure way to put people to sleep. At least you could be certain that anyone who finished the whole thing was very determined to have something, anything, happen for their trouble, even if they had to fib a little about what they experienced.

    The words that must be recited vary quite a bit. In many cases you just use the spirit's name. In others you would say, "I believe in Mary Worth," "I don't believe in Mary Worth," "I hate Mary Worth," "Bloody Mary, come to me," or even "Bloody Mary, I got your baby" in those versions where the legend mentioned someone either killing or running away with her child. You might also be able to use the words "Bloody Mirror" or "Hell Mary." Sometimes the invocation was reciting the Lord's Prayer backwards.

    Other aspects that can be involved include lighting candles, spinning around in circles or holding hands. The candles are probably more of a necessity for seeing in a darkened room than part of the ritual, although candles have been associated with magic for many years. Spinning around in circles seems like both an aspect of certain old witchcraft spells and also a way to make you disoriented. Holding hands is common to seances and similar ghostly events.

    Some minor things mentioned among the components of the ritual in certain variations include splashing water on the mirror, rubbing your eyes or holding a knife. (Incidentally, if anyone is reading this trying to plan their next slumber party, I very highly recommend that you don't have a knife anywhere near you. Usually there is a scared panic with everyone trying to escape the bathroom, and a knife could very easily lead to a tragic accident.)

    The most frightening story in the collection actually didn't even have a ritual. That's right, some people say that if you walk by a mirror in total darkness, regardless of whether you are trying to summon her or not, Bloody Mary will get you.

    I knew I left my hall light on all the time for a reason.

    What Happens

    Most of the time the kids are too scared to actually complete the ritual. And who can blame them, based upon the things that supposedly could happen.

    The most common end result in the stories is that you'll see Bloody Mary's face in the mirror, and she'll try to hurt you somehow.

    The attack could be scratching you with her fingernails or claws, tearing your face off with her teeth (some tales say she was a cannibal), attacking you with a knife, chopping off your head (this element appears when Bloody Mary is linked to British royalty), pulling you into the mirror so you'll never escape, cutting out your eyeballs and stealing them (in these versions she no longer has any eyes herself), forcing you to cut your own throat, scaring you so badly that you die of fear or relentlessly haunting you in any reflected surface from that point on.

    Sometimes the end result is supposed to be much less threatening. Maybe you'll just see what she looks like in the mirror. Once in a while you can ask her questions that she will be compelled to answer for you. Sometimes nobody shows up and the water in the bathtub will turn into blood, or you'll see scars on your body that aren't there, or you can see into the future, or sometimes you'll even get toys or candy.

    On the occasions when a group does finish the ritual, usually nothing out of the ordinary happens. Sometimes, out of fearful confusion or pure mischief, the participants will say they actually saw something in the mirror. Some kids, while telling the story to others later, like to display a normal scratch or scar and say that Bloody Mary did it.

    Different Faces

    While some think the story may have originally been inspired by a person who actually existed at some point, it just doesn't seem likely. For one thing, the vast majority of legends with a reputed historical basis have fewer and fewer facts behind them the closer you look, even in cases where the different versions of the tales agree with each other to a large degree on many key points. Then compare that to the Bloody Mary figure.There isn't much even a majority of people can agree on--not her name, not how she died, not how she became associated with mirrors, and not even if she is covered in blood or not. Without finding some new evidence we will have to give up the idea of locating a true-life Bloody Mary.

    Faced then with sorting through the folklore for answers, we can dispense with the obvious dead ends first.

    Two of the 100 tales I collected for this analysis featured the dead spirit of a man called the Candyman. Clive Barker's movie of the same name, about a killer with a hook for a hand who is summoned in much the same way as our witch in the mirror, was adapted from his short story "The Forbidden." Both are based upon reworkings of urban legends, not the other way around. It is a testimony to the author's skill that so many people now think there really was a Candyman, much like some believe in the historical existence of H.P. Lovecraft's fictional Necronomicon.

    One of the more amusing anecdotes of the bunch was about Mary Wolf. The story evidently was spawned from a confused retelling of the Mary Worth story. This was the only version that featured an animal jumping out of the mirror, biting and clawing anyone in its path.

    Kids in San Antonio had a version with someone called the Donkey Lady, who was supposed to be half human and half donkey. This story reportedly was famous enough in the city that someone set up a phone number you could call to listen to her voice cackle "heeee hawww" at you.

    Deer Woman, judging by the name at least, could have been from the same branch of stories. In this case, you would summon up the spirit of Deer Woman by shouting her name three times near a particular bridge. She supposedly appears as a ball of blinding light (a feature of Native American shapeshifting legends) and then attacks all who dared to call her.

    The Green Man exists farthest along this path away from the core story. By name alone it seems like it could be some offshoot of European fairies and pagan gods with the same name. It was probably only meant to refer to the fact that he was green colored. Supposedly the Green Man--in this story a wild hermit, ghost or strange unidentified creature--glowed in the dark like phosphorescence and would appear at night to curious teenagers who parked along a certain lonely stretch of road. I almost didn't include this story among those collected for this comparison because I didn't recognize it as a Bloody Mary tale. But the fact that it was an entity that young people would go looking for even though they were warned against it as well as the ties to the Deer Woman story seem to suggest some sort of (admittedly tenuous) relationship.

    Each of these variants are, in my opinion, clearly away from the central identity of Bloody Mary. I don't think that animal forms, nature or strange hermits had much to do with the legend's origin.

    A few versions of the story talk about a figure known only as Maria, who differs from the more typical figure in a couple of ways. You would say "I hate Maria" three times in the mirror and she would come to kill you that midnight if you were asleep or sometimes the next night. Her face was half that of a beautiful woman and half bare skull. It may just be a coincidence, but death deities in Mexico and Central America sometimes had the half skull appearance. If these tales came from near that region it could indicate a mixing of two traditions. On the other hand, those sorts of details are not all that complex and could have been created spontaneously as well.

    Blurry faceSome Bloody Mary versions, specifically the ones in which she kills her children and comes hunting for them, bear a striking resemblance to the Weeping Woman legend of Mexico and the surrounding area. Tales of female spirits who come to harm other people's babies and children because they no longer have their own can be traced back to the Aztecs and appeared in many other cultures as well. The Greek Lamia and Jewish Lilith figures are just two of the more widely known examples. None of these stories seem to have too much to do with mirrors or summoning someone's image, so appear to be another case of two separate folklore branches influencing each other.

    Some of those who use Ouija boards to try to contact spirits of the dead talk about a girl named Veronica, who went mad from the process and killed herself with a pair of scissors. It is said that she sometimes comes to kill those who don't take the board seriously, or perhaps sometimes if you use it the wrong way. As a kind of an afterthought some also say that if you call for Veronica three times while in front of a mirror at midnight, you will see her there, with the scissors still sticking into her neck.

    The story of Veronica, even without the mirror aspect, is obviously very similar to Bloody Mary. In both stories a female spirit appears and usually attempts to harm those foolish enough to try magic spells or summonings of some sort. Assuming that Bloody Mary is intended to scare children away from some occult practice, our culture has mostly forgotten what it was we were supposed to be afraid of in the first place.

    Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall

    Mirrors and reflections in general have always been held in fear and awe, and consequently been linked to the supernatural (for more on this topic, see the article titled The Soul as a Reflection). Mirrors, like small bowls of water or crystal balls, were thought to be able to reveal the future or give a vision of distant locations, including at times the land of the dead, if used with the proper rituals.

    More recently, young females (typically, although occasionally a male would perform a similar incantation) would attempt certain spells that were intended to reveal the identity of the person they would marry. Sometimes the girl would eat a red apple and brush her hair at midnight in front of a mirror and be rewarded with the image of her future husband. Other ritual actions include brushing one's hair, looking back over one's shoulder, spinning in circles, using a knife to cut an apple or many others.

    Some of these spells did not include the use of a mirror, and would reveal the potential spouse either by name somehow or in person at the end of the ritual. Examples include reciting the alphabet while twisting the stem of an apple so it snaps when you've reached the first letter of the person's name or simply pulling petals off of a flower while saying, "She love me... she loves me not."

    While most of these spells are either forgotten or not practiced, you will run into them occasionally in popular culture. The flower petals superstition is still practiced but not usually taken seriously. Both the mirror and the apple, although modified in use, can be seen in many versions of the Snow White fairy tales, including Disney's animated movie.

    Some people believe the Bloody Mary legend and all of its offshoots are mutated versions of these mirror rituals. Some of the modern stories even include aspects of the earlier traditions. A number of tales said you could use a small bowl of water instead of a mirror. Some versions claimed that you could call up the ghosts of any dead person by reciting their name the required number of times in the mirror. One person even mentioned that the reason for summoning Bloody Mary was so she could answer questions with her vast otherworldly knowledge, and that the most popular question was who you were going to marry. Another said calling Mary Worth in a mirror for some reason would show you an image of your future husband, though she could not explain why this might be other than Mary Worth was supposed to have been a witch who could cast spells for you of this kind.

    One of the versions of the chant was simply, "Bloody mirror, bloody mirror, bloody mirror." This, and the idea that you were supposed to find out who you were going to marry, may have been all that was necessary to create the name Bloody Mary as the person you were summoning. Other aspects of the tales as well as related folklore both point to an even more complex origin.Scarred and bloody face

    The Banshee

    Looking through various cultures' legends and mythology for stories about creatures who are forced to answer questions when captured reveals that it is a not uncommon concept. Some of the better known examples include forcing the Irish leprechaun to reveal the location of his pot of gold, compelling genies or djinn to do as you wish when they are released from their imprisonment, and, in Homer's Odyssey, capturing the shape-changing sea god Proteus to learn the fate of fellow Greeks after the Trojan War.

    One such creature who bears a direct resemblance to Bloody Mary is the Bean Si, more commonly referred to as a banshee, which is known by a huge variety of names in the British Isles. There are a dizzying amount of different stories concerning this figure. Some tales describe the creatures as fairies, ancestral ghosts, demons or old hags. A completely separate article would be needed to cover them in any detail.

    What concerns us here is that a banshee, aside from being a powerful female spirit whose physical appearance often corresponds to how Bloody Mary is typically described, usually foretells the future in some fashion or another. The common banshee tale has one show up to warn of a death or injury in the family, but once in a while, such as with the story of the bean nighe, someone could capture them or otherwise trick them into revealing specific information about the future. This could be the link that ties the ghost of a woman to the mirror enchantments, the two main aspects of our Bloody Mary legend. There are a couple other pieces of evidence that point to this idea.

    In some tales, Bloody Mary dies and is mutilated by a carriage accident. There is a ghost in England called Pearlin Jean who dies in the exact same manner, showing up to haunt the family involved in her death with her face and shoulders drenched in blood. And in many similar tales a woman wronged by a male member of a certain family returns as a ghost periodically to warn of a impending death, or, as some say, to cause one.

    Also, there are some modern Bloody Mary-type stories that give her a name that is either very similar to or exactly the same as some banshee figures. These include Black Aggie, Black Agnes, Aunt Aggie, and Black Abby. I am sure there must be others as well. One of the more famous witch-hag figures that either descended from or helped create the banshee legends, depending upon who you ask, is the Black Annis (who is actually called by some of the names mentioned above in some variations). She was a giant blue-skinned woman who liked to eat children and others who wandered too close to her cave. She was also related to a whole line of bogey spirits who were used to scare young children away from dangerous areas. Jenny Greenteeth lived in shallow pools of water, Rawhead-and-Bloody-Bones snatched up those who wandered alone in the dark, and even the Wailing Woman of Mexico, mentioned earlier, was sometimes thought to frequent shallow irrigation ditches to drown lost children.

    The two problems with the Black Aggie connection are that it is such a small percentage of the Bloody Mary tales and that those versions are usually thought to have been confused with a completely separate line of stories.

    In this other set of tales, Black Aggie is the name of a statue in a graveyard that supposedly has glowing red eyes and has been known to kill kids who enter the cemetery late at night, usually as an initiation ceremony for a sorority or fraternity. In a sense, we are still sort of talking about the same story. Young children or teens get to together to test their courage doing something that violates superstitious taboos.

    But as much as I'd like to believe the Black Aggie statue stories are an offshoot of a Bloody Mary tale that links the legend to the Bean Si myth, there is an additional piece of evidence which would indicate that the statue story arose primarily by itself. The gravemarker which has been identified as the one where the tale was originally created is for a man named Felix Agnus, a Civil War general for the Union side. The name Agnus very easily could become Aggie. This is most likely where the name of the statue came from.

    The most logical link between Bloody Mary and old banshee tales has most likely been explained away, but the rest of the evidence is still quite strong. There is an additional theory, though, that could explain the transformation of stories concerning mirror enchantments into a killer ghost woman. Depending upon whether you believe the banshee connection is valid or not, this could either be the primary or a contributing cause of the current legends.

    Speak of the Devil and He Shall Appear

    Toward the beginning of this article it was mentioned that the third most common figure mentioned as appearing in the mirror when summoned was Satan, or the Devil. There is much to the modern tale that can be seen as a religious warning to scare children away from black magic. If so it doesn't appear to be working, judging by the number of kids trying strange things in front of a mirror these days.

    Some of the rituals to call up the devil include calling upon him by name, saying the Lord's Prayer backwards or, most interestingly, chanting the words "Hell Mary."

    "Hell Mary" is clearly a corruption of the famous "Hail Mary..." used in the Catholic church to call upon the Virgin Mary for assistance or guidance. We obviously have some sort of confusing interaction going on here between modern religious beliefs and the mirror ritual. As further proof, some people, leaving off the part about physical attacks or danger, say the individual you are calling in the mirror when you say "Bloody Mary" is actually the Virgin Mary.

    Could all of this have been the result of some Catholic priests warning people away from calling upon Mary's support with an unapproved ritual? Or perhaps even reactions from Protestant religious leaders against the idea that you should be calling upon Mary for help instead of Jesus? Could it be that strict parents considered any attempted spells with a mirror to be reaching out to Satan himself? Or are all of these theories dead ends?

    Obviously it is impossible to answer those kinds of questions, as we do not have the kind of written records we would need to come to a definitive conclusion. All we can do is weigh the evidence and decide for ourselves which seems the most reasonable. But, before you decide to link either the Virgin Mary and/or the mythical banshee as an essential part of the explanation of the Blood Mary legend, there is yet another theory to consider.

    Don't Trust What You See

    Assuming that you believe the Bloody Mary story originated with parents or the church trying to scare kids away from calling up ghosts or the image of their future spouse by linking the practice to satanism, how do we account for there being a female in the mirror? After all, the Devil is typically thought to be a male, any husband-to-be would most likely be a man, and there isn't much reason to believe that boys looking for wives in the mirror were of any significance to the development of the folklore.

    Even more importantly, what about the girls who claim to have actually seen a woman looking back at them?

    Most of the people who say they saw someone in the mirror are probably just trying to frighten other kids, or trying to sound like they have something special to say, but there are people who honestly think they saw something. We can chalk a lot of that up to the combination of fear and confusion one experiences in a darkened room while attempting to call up the spirit of a dead person, which is unsettling to most people. Certainly the versions that include spinning around in circles and rubbing your eyes are intended to increase the level of disorientation.

    But, when all is said and done, the primary reason someone would see a red-colored distorted female face is that there is one or more girls holding flickering candles in the dark in front of a mirror.

    What else would you expect to see? Hope you like it enjoy!