Bloody Mary, the figure at the center of “I Believe in Mary Worth,” is a legend and accompanying ritual performed in the United States by children and young adolescents, often but not exclusively by girls. The ritual has been documented throughout the United States in its current form since the middle of the twentieth century. The specifics vary, but the basic structure of the ritual involves entering a dark bathroom alone or with friends, chanting an incantation, and running away screaming before the frightening apparition of Bloody Mary appears in the mirror. Often conducted at sleepovers, summer camps, or other situations involving a group of friends together at night, this ritual is included in a canon of related games involving fear, bravery, and the bonding of a social group. Other such games include “light as a feather, stiff as a board,” truth or dare, ghost stories, Ouija boards, and séances.
A variety of names are used in association with this ritual and its many related legends, from Bloody Mary to Mary Worth, Bloody Mary Worth, Mary Wolf, Mary Whales, Mary Walker, Hell Mary, and Mary Worthington. The name always includes some form of Mary, who suffered from violent or tragic circumstances. Sometimes Mary is an unfortunate victim of the Salem witch trials, and sometimes she is an African American or mixed-race woman. The name Mary also unavoidably invokes the biblical Mary. She is sometimes described as a young beautiful woman, or sometimes as an old hag or witch. Sometimes she has long fingernails, which she uses to scratch her victims. She is usually covered with blood and sometimes disfigured.
It is sometimes assumed that the name Bloody Mary refers to Mary, Queen of England (1516–1558), who gained the real-life nickname “Bloody Mary” for two reasons: the political/religious intrigue and bloodshed during her reign, and the tragic nature of her childbearing history, which involved at least two false pregnancies (and speculation that she disposed of the babies in some violent way). While the tragic nature of Mary Tudor may have contributed some themes to the “Bloody Mary” ritual and legend, the other names associated with the legend, and the multiple other storylines documented as backstories, discount the notion that anything is shared by the Bloody Mary from history with the Bloody Mary of the ritual, other than the name.
Indiana appears to be a particularly rich source of these tales, with “Bloody Mary Whales” being the preferred name there. Schlosser and Hoffmann describe Bloody Mary Whales as the daughter of an unforgivably evil man who intercepted escaped slaves and returned them to captivity. He loved no one but his wife, and when she died while giving birth to Mary Whales, he eventually could not hide his hatred and killed her violently with a knife. But she came back as an apparition, sometimes appearing in his mirror, sometimes living life as usual but covered in blood with a nearly severed head, and she kept whispering “father” until he couldn’t take it anymore; he hanged himself in the barn where he once had kept the slaves. This version highlights the cautionary element of the legend, as well as links to traumatic aspects of American history that are so often woven into folklore.
Many of the stories surrounding Bloody Mary show narrative ties to other types of urban myths (such as the Vanishing Hitchhiker), suggesting that multiple storylines and legends may have combined in different ways throughout suburban America. The additional piece of information that Mary died behind “this very school” or is “buried in the schoolyard” is sometimes added. The local aspect serves to make the story seem more real and therefore even more terrifying.
Specific incantations and methods for drawing the wrath of Bloody Mary are listed in oral histories collected by Janet Langlois. Phrases include “I stole your baby, Bloody Mary,” “I killed your baby,” “I believe in Mary Worth,” and others. The incantation must be said aloud a specific number of times, usually either three or ten, and often some disorienting factor is included, such as gazing at a flushing toilet a certain number of times, spinning around while chanting, or running the faucet. These water themes link this ritual to La Llorona of Mexican and Mexican American folklore, who is said to appear near rivers and lakes, as well as to Elizabeth Bathory, who bathed in blood to stay beautiful.
In one of the earliest studies of this particular ritual/legend pairing, Langlois interviewed eighty schoolchildren in Indiana to find out how prevalent the legend and game were within one school. She found that approximately one-quarter of the students had heard of either the legend or game, and about one-eighth had been directly involved or participated in the ritual in some way. Langlois described an interesting duality between the fact that the character of the legend is usually pitiful, pathetic, tragic, and a victim, and the character as embodied in the ritual is dangerous, aggressive, and inflicts her vengeance on her young observers. A disturbing but fascinating aspect of this legend is the embedded lesson for young girls: that mistreated women will, in turn, mistreat other women.
The persistence of this ritual has been interpreted in a variety of ways by folklorists: as a form of bonding/hazing among adolescent girls that serves to solidify their young bravery against potentially frightening futures and their collective misgivings about their changing role in society as they become women; as a direct association with the oncoming of their menstrual cycles (often Mary has a bloody, mutilated face, or she is said to have caused a friend of a friend’s face to start bleeding); or as a fortune-telling device. The latter relates directly to other rituals performed by young women in nineteenth-century England and the United States, which involve trying to predict when and whom they will marry by walking backwards up a dark staircase with a mirror and a candle. The rise in popularity of Spiritualism, séances, spirit photographs, and other rituals in the American Northeast in the nineteenth century may be a direct predecessor of this contemporary suburban ritual.
Robin Potter
See also La Llorona or Weeping Woman; Ouija; Supernaturalism in Legends and Folklore; Vanishing Hitchhiker
Further Reading
Brunvand, Jan Harold. 2012. Encyclopedia of Urban Legends, Updated and Expanded Edition. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.
Catlin-Dupuy, Sarah. 2008. “Bloody Mary.” In Encyclopedia of Women’s Folklore and Folklife, edited by Liz Locke, Theresa A. Vaughan, and Pauline Greenhill, 1: 53–54. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Dundes, Alan. 1998. “Bloody Mary in the Mirror: A Ritual Reflection of Pre-pubescent Anxiety.” Western Folklore 57 (2/3): 119.
Erickson, Carolly. 1978. Bloody Mary. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
Langlois, Janet. 1980. “Mary Whales, I Believe in You.” In Indiana Folklore: A Reader, edited by Linda Dégh. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 196–224.
Schlosser, S. E., and Paul G. Hoffman. 2012. Spooky Indiana: Tales of Hauntings, Strange Happenings, and Other Local Lore. Guilford, CT: Globe Pequot.