She waits in the mirror. Bleeding, furious, forgotten—or maybe remembered too well. In this episode, we have fun diving into the terrifying legend of Bloody Mary: where she came from, who she might really be, and why generations of kids have dared each other to call her name in the dark.
Is she a tortured queen, a vengeful witch, or something far older hiding behind your reflection? We explore the history, the ritual, the psychology, and the pop culture impact of one of the most iconic urban legends of all time.
And no, the cocktail doesn’t count.
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Sources:
Brunvand, J. H. (1991). The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings. W. W. Norton & Company.
Caputo, G. B. (2010). Strange-face-in-the-mirror illusion. Perception, 39(7), 1007–1008. https://doi.org/10.1068/p6466
Dundes, A. (1998). Bloody Mary in the Mirror: Essays in Psychoanalytic Folkloristics. University Press of Mississippi.
HowStuffWorks. (n.d.). How the Bloody Mary legend works. HowStuffWorks. Retrieved July 19, 2025, from https://people.howstuffworks.com/bloody-mary-legend.htm
Mikkelson, D. (2001, November 14). Bloody Mary. Snopes. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bloody-mary/
National Geographic. (2022, October 28). Bloody Mary: The ghost in the mirror. National Geographic Kids. https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/bloody-mary
Ranker. (n.d.). Who was Bloody Mary, really? The history behind the mirror ghost. Ranker: Graveyard Shift. Retrieved July 19, 2025, from https://www.ranker.com/list/bloody-mary-history/amandasedlakhevener
Reeder, N. (2021, October 27). Bloody Mary: Why we summon a woman in the mirror to scare ourselves. BBC Culture. https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20211027-why-we-summon-bloody-mary-in-the-mirror-to-scare-ourselves
Urban Legends: Bloody Mary. (2005). [Film]. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.
Wikipedia contributors. (2024, March 29). Bloody Mary (folklore). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Mary_(folklore)
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