A young woman awakens, confused to find herself alone in an unfamiliar room. Clearly, she has engaged in sexual activity but doesn’t see her partner. She moves cautiously into the bathroom, her head throbbing from a colossal hangover. The woman screams and faints dead away when she reads the horrible message scrawled across the bathroom mirror in lipstick: “Welcome to the world of AIDS!”
Like many legends, the stories of “AIDS Mary” and “AIDS Harry” developed as cautionary tales designed to scare young people away from reckless sexual behavior. The basic legend, of course, provides a variation on the famous “Typhoid Mary” accounts of the early 1900s that featured a cook who moved from household to household in the New York area carrying the disease with her with tragic results. Irish-born Mary Mallon received the moniker “Typhoid Mary” after infecting at least forty-nine people with typhoid, three of whom died. However, in Mallon’s case, she didn’t intend to spread the disease, at least not at first, and had no symptoms of it herself. The infections ceased only after health officials confined her for decades.
The modern version first appeared in 1986 and was dubbed “AIDS Mary” by Dan Schroeder of the Chicago Sun Times. The “AIDS Harry” story developed later to warn males about the risks of promiscuous sexual behavior. The “AIDS” story features a calculating HIV host who spreads the virus intentionally to as many people as possible. The concept of an HIV carrier deliberately infecting others appeared in an episode of the NBC drama Law and Order: SVU. The episode, “Quickie,” from 2010, relates the case of a bitter man who meets women all over New York via a website that sets up those interested in only “quickie” sexual liaisons without any emotional attachment. When the women meet with the seemingly attractive and charming man, he knowingly infects them with the virus. In 1998, Law and Order aired “Carrier,” about a man who wanted to infect as many women with the AIDS virus as he could before he died himself.
As such stories often do, the “AIDS Mary” tale morphed into later versions with increased detail to heighten the horror. Variations of the legend developed featuring female victims who traveled to tropical locations on vacation or for spring break. These stories included the chilling detail that after a week-long fling with a stranger, the woman receives a small package from her lover as a memento of their time together. Following the instructions to open the package on the plane ride home, the victim discovers that the package contains a small casket with the fateful message “Welcome to the world of AIDS!” written on an enclosed note. Interestingly, the revised version was later changed to state that the package contained coffee with the note inside. Jan Harold Brunvand suspects that the coffee variation developed as a mishearing of the word “coffin.” The coffee version often includes the explanation that the coffee is used to cover the scent of drugs that might be smuggled inside a package of coffee, merging the scary “AIDS” story with the tale of a hapless tourist innocently smuggling drugs into the United States from an exotic locale.
Like urban legend horror stories that warn of the dangerous effects of new technology (tanning beds, microwave ovens, etc.), the “AIDS” warning tales are born of fear. When people first learned of the deadly disease, it was commonly misunderstood, so myths about its dangers developed along with scientific discoveries about its effects and treatments. Versions of the story have been reported worldwide, including a variation from Italy that Brunvand (2001) reports in Encyclopedia of Urban Legends. The myth in Italy adds a grisly twist to the package the victim opens on the plane home. Along with the note, the horrified woman discovers a dead mouse or rat in the package.
Later versions of this legend developed as stories spread about innocent people being injected with the AIDS virus in dance clubs, movie theaters, or other public places as well as tales of vending machines with AIDS-infected needles jabbed into coin return slots. These accounts, while terrifying, feature stories of victims who didn’t engage in risky sexual behavior with strangers, so these variations don’t function as cautionary tales parents can tell children to deter them from having sex with strangers. The later stories offer accounts of victims going about their usual business and tragically being infected through no fault of their own.
While no actual accounts of the legend have surfaced, some people have intentionally tried to infect others with AIDS, although without the accompanied message on a mirror or in a note. Louisiana doctor Richard J. Schmidt injected his former lover Janice Trahan with HIV, explaining to her that he was administering a B-12 shot. After repeatedly warning Trahan, his girlfriend of ten years, that he would kill her if she ever left him, he followed up on his promise with the shot after she defied him and left when he refused to divorce his wife. Scientists later traced the version of the virus to Schmidt, and he was convicted of the attempted murder of Trahan, who is now HIV positive. Schmidt is currently serving a fifty-year sentence.
Linda Urschel
See also AIDS-Origins Traditions; Conspiracy Theories; Racism in Urban Legends; Urban Legends/Urban Belief Tales
Further Reading
Altman, Dennis. 1986. AIDS in the Mind of America. New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday.
Brunvand, Jan Harold. 2001. “AIDS Mary” and “AIDS Harry.” Encyclopedia of Urban Legends, 5–7. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.
Dye, Lee. 2013. “Scientists Use Virus to Trace Assault Suspect.” October 17. ABC News Go.com.
Goldstein, Diane E. 2004. Once upon a Virus: AIDS Legends and Vernacular Risk Perception. Logan: Utah State University Press.
Grmek, M. D. 1990. History of AIDS: Emergence and Origin of a Modern Pandemic. Translated by R. C. Maulitz and J. Duffin. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.