Bloody Mary is a legend that has captured ghost in enthusiasts for centuries. Recently it has become quite popular on TV shows. At first I saw it on Medium or maybe it was Ghost Whisperer or both, but I did not pay much attention until I saw it yet again on a show called Supernatural. By now you all know how interested I am in ghosts, legends, and history of all kind, so I decided to do a little research on my own.
Apparently the Bloody Mary story is the classic Halloween tale or campsite scary story. However, no one is really sure who Bloody Mary is, though some people feel she was a living breathing person turned ghost, or perhaps a witch, either way she is now an evil entity. Bloody Mary has entertained or scared to death many living-breathing souls depending on how you feel about the legend and she has done it for a long time,
Now what I understand is that anyone who want to conjure up Bloody Mary can do so by repeating her name 3 times (which I understand is the most popular version), or 13 times. Some variations require repeating her name up to 100 times. What is the same in all versions is that Bloody Mary is evil and will harm anyone she comes in contact with. Furthermore, Bloody Mary can only be conjured up in a dark room, most the time it will be a bathroom, though it doesn’t have to be, and the person summoning the ghost or spirit has a candle and is looking into a mirror.
One version of the way she appears has her mysteriously materializing from anywhere in the room or by jumping out of the mirror itself. Bloody Mary’s moniker is to attack and scratch out the eyes of her summoner. Another version has it that she will drive the summoners crazy. As far as I am concerned, that is debatable because these people have to be half crazy in the first place to want to conjure up an evil spirit who is going to kill them.
Some versions of the story take it a step further by stipulating that she sucks the victims back into the mirror to the other world with her. Wasn’t that what happened to the victims in the movie Poltergeist? If not it was another ghost story for sure. What I did find out in my research was that Hollywood did use the Bloody Mary theme in movies before they started using it as a ghost theme in different TV’s series. The movie Candyman released in 1992 had the participants conjure up Candyman by repeating his name 5 times and he would materialize and come after the victims and kill them with his hook.
Where did the evil ghost or demon come from? Why would people want to conjure her up? There had to be more to the story and I just had to find out what it was.
There are a few theories about who Bloody Mary was when she was alive. The most popular one has that Bloody Mary was a living person by the name of Mary Worth. This Bloody Mary Worth was also known by the name of Mary Worthington or Mary Wales, depending on the local legend. Mary Worth apparently was severely disfigured and died in a car accident. She would come back to haunt people in order to get her revenge. Bloody Mary was also given the name Hell Mary to give the story a little more sinister feeling to it. Hell Mary’s version it slightly different, apparently this Bloody Mary was a widow who had actually killed her children, and then other versions says she was wrongly accused of killing them.
Apparently young girls love to make a game out of summoning Bloody Mary. The girls add drama to the game by claiming to the apparition that they have killed her son, or her baby. Some of them will chant over and over again, “I believe in Mary Worth.”
Some believe that these young girl games date back farther in history than the lady who died in the car accident or the widow who may or may not have murdered her children. Some legends have it that Mary Worth a witch who practiced the black arts and was executed over a hundred years ago
Building upon this theme of Bloody Mary being a witch, we have The Bell Witch Game. This game is based on the Bell Family from Addams, Tennessee. Many of you may remember the popular movie called the Bell Witch Project, a documentary about the Bell Witch of Addams, Tennessee. The witch first haunted this Bell family in 1817 where at that time, they were said to have seen some kind of rabbit with the body of dog. The animal was shot but disappeared and the carcass was never found. After the shooting the Bell family was haunted by strange noises and weird sounds. One of the daughters, Betsy Bell insisted she had been attacked by an invisible entity.
When John Bell died from seizures, they found a strange liquid substance that was positioned by his body. The Bell family cat licked up some of the substance and died immediately afterwards. The family quickly threw the rest of the liquid into the fireplace and when it was time for the funeral it is said that the Bell Witch taunted and laughed at the minister conducting the funeral proceedings. Afterwards the Bell Witch disappeared only to return to the haunt the family from 1935 to this very day.
There are other stories that say that Mary Worth was actually one of the women burned at the stakes during the Salem, Massachusetts Witch Trials. Is Bloody Mary one of the witches who came back to torment the families of her executioners? Is Bloody Mary, the Bell Witch who may have been one of the alleged Salem witches? Are Bloody Mary, the Bell Witch, and Mary Worth all the same?
Still others believe the American Bloody Mary is not old enough, the legend dates back to history’s most famous Bloody Mary. Queen Mary I of England, who reigned during the Tudor period, could not bear children and that meant there would be no heirs to the throne of England. Mary I was a ruthless barren Monarch who reigned for a five-year period. She ordered many executions and was given the nickname Bloody Mary by her subjects. Queen Mary was known to have several miscarriages and/or phantom pregnancies. It is recorded that her own personal misfortunes may have driven her insane. Queen Mary is not Mary Queen of the Scots yet sometimes the two are interchanged.
It is believed that once the Bloody Mary legend continued through time new dimensions of the story was added to enhance it. The mirror story gave it a Halloween ghost story appeal and the candles and chanting added an element of witchcraft. The Victorian era gave us the notion of mirrors being the portals to the other side.
The mirror legend was employed in Victorian times where young unwed girls would walk up the stairs backwards holding a mirror up to their face to see the whom their future husband’s would be, and if they were not so lucky they would see the devil instead. The element of spinning and chanting long associated with Victorian times and the Bloody Mary game still combined with young girls looking for their future husbands. Now cover up the mirrors, add candles and dark places, and an evil spirit and you have a great Halloween tale.
Why do young girls conjure up evil spirits? The Victorian girls were looking for a husband, what are today’s young girls looking for when they want to summons Bloody Mary, whomever she may be?
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Mary_(folklore)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Witch
http://www.castleofspirits.com/bloodymary.html
