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Midnight / Candle / Mirror Myth & Bloody Mary Game

theyithian said:
I always wondered about this. Should i say the words in reverse order or pronounce the letters backward, phonetically. What constitutes backwards?

I think I'll avoid both methods, thank you very much.

But if I DO say "Skrow sih lla dna lived eht ecnuoner I," does this become an acceptance OF the Devil? Is to "ecnuoner" the opposite of to "renounce?"

Or how about the standard prayer TO the demonic forces? Does "Doog ym uoth eb live" now become a "heavenly" prayer? Or does it remain a (an?) "ylnevaeh" one?

O, to Lleh with the whole thing.

Oidar Emit Dlo.
 
I checked with my son and here in The Netherlands they also know about the "Bloody Mary" ritual. But he claims it was too long ago (he's 15 now) to remember any details. There were many variations on this theme he says ...
 
In the United States the roots of "Bloody Mary" go clear back to the 19th and even the 18th Centuries. Teenage girls held "dumb suppers," in which the food courses were served in reverse order and in absolute silence, before staring into a mirror to see their future husbands. (If they saw nothing they'd die spinsters....and probbly early.)

Sometimes, apparently, an old witch was seen.

But the name "Bloody Mary" seems a VERY recent development. I learned of these rituals from older female cousins during my childhood, but never, not once ever, heard the names "Bloody Mary" or "Bloody Mary Worth" until encountering them in Professor Jan Brunvand's books.

This leads me to doubt the connections which have been postulated linking "Bloody Mary" to British queens.

But then why "Mary Worth," the harmless old do-gooder busybody of the Sunday comics?
 
I'm pretty sure the dumb supper was a European tradition before it was an American one, though the details presumably changed. When the Snork Maiden, Moomintroll, and Fillyjonk do a variation on the dumb supper, with flower-gathering, in Moominsummer Madness, the penalty of speaking before sunup is lifelong celibacy, which is why they can't answer the Hemulen when he arrests them at their bonfire of signs. He wouldn't have believed them anyway.

The connection with the historical Bloody Mary, in my experience, is usually insisted on, in America, by people who don't know who Bloody Mary was, but insist that is the nickname of Mary, Queen of Scots. When I explain about Mary and Elizabeth Tudor, Mary Stuart, and the chaos following Henry VIII's death, these people get very rude to me and claim I'm an ignorant know-it-all snob who doesn't know what I'm talking about and is trying to make them feel stupid.

In my junior high, we didn't care who Bloody Mary was, but we could always get her to come. The trick is to chant "Bloody Mary" while rubbing your closed eyes, then opening them at the end of the chant. Guaranteed freak-out!
 
PeniG said:
I'm pretty sure the dumb supper was a European tradition before it was an American one....
You're doubtless correct. Although the dumb supper in New England is supposed to date back to the late 17 Century Puritans, it didn't involve mirror-scrying, since mirrors are said to have been severely frowned on in Puritan homes. (At least that's the story as I know it.) As a fellow researcher phrased it, "Mirrors were considered the Devil's 'Televison' [sic!] but Black Magic was okay, and forgive the sarcasm."

And:

The connection with the historical Bloody Mary, in my experience, is usually insisted on, in America, by people who don't know who Bloody Mary was, but insist that is the nickname of Mary, Queen of Scots. When I explain about Mary and Elizabeth Tudor, Mary Stuart, and the chaos following Henry VIII's death, these people get very rude to me and claim I'm an ignorant know-it-all snob who doesn't know what I'm talking about and is trying to make them feel stupid.

Indeed. That's why I used "queens" in plural. It's albsolutely amazing the large percentage of highly-educated Americans who believe that the several Marys were the SAME person. And here I sit with merely a high school education....

P. S. Here's the "perfect quelch" I've used for people who've called me a "know-it-all" - "There's never a day passes when I'm not made aware of how little I know, how ignorant I am of truly important things and how very little time there is to learn even the most basic facts. But one thing I DO know, and that's that I really MUST know one HELL of a lot more than anybody who regards me as a 'know-it-all.'"

I don't use it very often, though, because I rather like living in polite society.
 
PeniG said:
I
In my junior high, we didn't care who Bloody Mary was

Yeah, I think we would have happily chanted our belief in any random name. I seem to recall one of the troop know-it-alls explaining it wasn't the Mary Worth from the funnies, but an olden days Mary Worth who was a witch.

I still don't know who she was supposed to be. I just think some little girl needed a name that sounded Salem Witch-like and dredged the blamess Mary from her memory. Bloody Mary sounds cool, but not specific enough to be really scary.

We also had a variation of the widdershins around the church ritual. In the woods at the campground we used every year there was a pile of stones that we all knew for a fact was the grave of Oliver. No one knew who Oliver was or how he came to be buried in a suburban campground, but that was beside the point. The ritual involved walking three-times counterclockwise around the grave to summon Oliver's ghost. I'm not sure what we would have done once we'd summoned him. (Sic him on the pom-pom girls maybe? :twisted: ) We never got that far since some wussy girl would always freak when the summoner was about 2 1/2 times around the grave and make it stop. :roll: Unlike most of these stories, I never heard a cautionary tale about 1950s Girl Scouts who did summon Oliver and came to a bad end. But every Girl Scout in the county knew about Oliver's grave, including some of my friends' moms
 
Gunnlod said:
In the woods at the campground we used every year there was a pile of stones that we all knew for a fact was the grave of Oliver. No one knew who Oliver was or how he came to be buried in a suburban campground, but that was beside the point.

I've also run into a handful of what might be (and probably are) called "mock graves."

There was one in a Northern Kentucky neighbor's backyard garden when I was a kid, and it sort of spooked me out having a grave so very near my own home.

But then I learned the secret. At one time it was common for stone-cutters to sell mis-cut gravestones (with an erroneous spelling or date) as paving blocks. You laid 'em carved-side down and nobody knew the difference. Or at least they pretended they didn't.

When my neighbor decided to remove his stone walkway he discovered the tombstone. So he set it up in the garden, complete with little fence, flowers and slightly raised grassy mound.
 
When I was a kid, there wasa corn field near my house where there were two grave-shaped piles of stones, one about six feet long, the other aout four feet. They had been there as far back as anyone could remember, which was only about thirty years since that's when the houses went up in the road--postwar housing boom. Of course the end of WWII seemed like the beginning of time to us kids :lol: Anyway, I made up a lurid tale of how the farmer had murdered his wife and daughter and buried them in the field. Even though I'd made up the story myself, I still used to get the creeps walking past a dusk. What if they really were graves.... :_omg:

BTW, I like the sound of your neighbor,OTR. I wonder what would have happened if he put the house on the marker? :lol:
 
Gunnlod, it's occurred to me since then that my neighbor possibly discovered the perfect way to dispose of a murder victim. Hey, everybody KNOWS that that grave's just a fake.
 
The Bloody Mary experiment has been done many times by posters to this board.
 
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slumber party

I was at a slumber party where several girls were making everyone do the "Bloody Mary"game.Three girls would push in a girl ,lock the bathroom door and would not open it untill the trapped girl called out Bloody Mary three times.The girls were terrified and would scream and cry.Before they got to me,the girl"s older brother came out of his room and made them stop.But I was ready to run out of the house before they caught me.I did not go to slumber parties after that and two of the girls are now afraid of mirrors,they remember being terrified with the other girls laughing at them
 
I have also tried "bloody Mary" because I want something to happen, but as soon as you do it without being in that "scared" mood, it feels just silly.
 
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I recently re-read 'Myths Over Miami', a justly famous piece of modern folklore, and was struck by the following:

Folklorists were so mystified by the Bloody Mary polygenesis, and the common element of using a mirror to conjure her, that they consulted medical literature for clues. Bill Ellis, a folklorist and professor of American studies at Penn State University, puzzled over a 1968 Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease article describing an experiment testing the theory that schizophrenics are prone to see hallucinations in reflected surfaces. The research showed that the control group of nonpsychotic people reported seeing vague, horrible faces in a mirror after staring at it for twenty minutes in a dim room. But that optical trick the brain plays was merely a partial explanation for the children's legend.

Part of a fantastic long-form essay:
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/myths-over-miami-6393117
 
This thread reminds me of the discussion here:

Folklorists were so mystified by the Bloody Mary polygenesis, and the common element of using a mirror to conjure her, that they consulted medical literature for clues. Bill Ellis, a folklorist and professor of American studies at Penn State University, puzzled over a 1968 Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease article describing an experiment testing the theory that schizophrenics are prone to see hallucinations in reflected surfaces. The research showed that the control group of nonpsychotic people reported seeing vague, horrible faces in a mirror after staring at it for twenty minutes in a dim room. But that optical trick the brain plays was merely a partial explanation for the children's legend.

http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/myths-over-miami.57358/
 
It's a bit limiting, though, when you think about it, the Bloody Mary thing. Relying on someone staring in a mirror and then saying your name three times is going to restrict your opportunities to manifest, and then a reputation for tearing out the eyes of the one who says it is going to limit it even further.

If I'm ever trapped in a mirror, I'm going to make sure I can be released by someone staring at the bathroom tiles and saying 'look at the state of these - now, where did I leave the Flash?'
 
Two quick questions:

1. Which Mary does the Bloody Mary ritual refer to? It's Mary Tudor, right?

2. Are there other names for this legend in different countries (apart from Bloody mary and Mary Worth)?
 
Some versions of the Bloody Mary exercise (especially those labeled "Mary Worth") provide a back story to prime the participants. All versions of the back story I've ever heard or read involve an anonymous past female with a tragic life situation. For example, I've usually heard the Mary Worth variant described as horribly disfigured.

I don't recall ever hearing any of these back story characters cited by personal name except for "Mary Worth." Beyond this, I'm confident I've never heard or read any alleged connection between the Bloody Mary figure and any particular historical figure.

Perhaps it's different in the UK?
 
I can imagine this backfiring. What if you look in the mirror and see a glass of tomato juice?
 
Interestingly, mirrors have been used for a long time for magical ends. Most recently a magical group known as the Order of Astarte used a mixture of mirrors and hypnotism to 'evoke demons' (which they see as aspects of our unconscious minds). If I remember correctly there is a practice in India which involves using two candles on either side of a mirror and staring at your face to see your past incarnations. Then of course there's the "Bloody Mary" game.

Yrs.,
D.S.Sh.
It does have a very old use in magic; from the Aztecs and Maya, to Dee to these folks who still try to evoke spirits in mirrors. Mind starts to play tricks, some would claim that's part of the magic..
https://percolate.blogtalkradio.com/the-hermetic-hour/52
 
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I did all that Lords Prayer backwards at midnight malarkey when I was quite young. Saw nothing, no Satan, no Beelzebub and not a sip of a Bloody Mary.
 
I did all that Lords Prayer backwards at midnight malarkey when I was quite young. Saw nothing, no Satan, no Beelzebub and not a sip of a Bloody Mary.
Not even Beetlejuice?
 
I recited "Mary Witchworth" a few times in a few tween bathroom slumber parties. Nothing happened except squeals because the bathroom was dark.
What I wonder about is nomenclature. "Mary Witchworth " seems good and scary, but I only heard it in my city. When I read Urban Legends, the name is usually Bloody Mary.
But the silliest version. and it's not uncommon, is that the name "Mary Worth" to summon an apparition. She's a comic busy body.
 
Some versions of the Bloody Mary exercise (especially those labeled "Mary Worth") provide a back story to prime the participants. All versions of the back story I've ever heard or read involve an anonymous past female with a tragic life situation. For example, I've usually heard the Mary Worth variant described as horribly disfigured.

I don't recall ever hearing any of these back story characters cited by personal name except for "Mary Worth." Beyond this, I'm confident I've never heard or read any alleged connection between the Bloody Mary figure and any particular historical figure.

Perhaps it's different in the UK?

I grew up in London and my recollection is that Bloody Mary was one of the Queen Mary's. My history knowledge at the time was very wobbly and so I thought there was only one Queen Mary and that was her. Thinking of it now, I can't think how or where I came to this conclusion.

Funnily enough I was talking of the bloody Mary legend with my OH at the weekend. He grew up in the Midlands and never heard of it. It made me realise that whilst it was a mainstay of my London days, the school I went to in the Midlands when we moved had different legends. So I wonder if it's a London thing?

Not sure if I ever posted this story or not before, but I remember clearly playing it in the glass door ways at school. My school was an old Victorian school with lots of buildings on site. The main school building was used by us, and the out buildings were all used as storage. One of them, the largest, had two big panes of glass in the door and meant we could peer in. We took great delight in daring one another to chant bloody Mary and told tales of the headless queen who would be seen to wander the rooms once she had been summoned. One day, when one of my frightened friends had completed the dare, we realised that there was someone moving in the room towards the door. The terror was too much and we ran screaming away.

Turns out it was the caretaker, a grumpy old man in a thick winter coat, as far from the legend as possible. But we didn't play the game after that.
 
Two quick questions:

1. Which Mary does the Bloody Mary ritual refer to? It's Mary Tudor, right?

2. Are there other names for this legend in different countries (apart from Bloody mary and Mary Worth)?
I think it refers to the mixture of vodka and tomato juice
 
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