Episode Transcript
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(00:10):
It was Megan's 12th birthday and she was so excited to celebrate it with a sleepover.
Megan was always very shy and timid when it came to taking risks.
She promised herself that with the end of sixth grade and junior high looming in the future,
(00:31):
she was going to come out of her shell.
Megan invited her five closest friends for a sleepover for her June birthday.
They ate pizza and had ice cream cake.
It was really a great birthday as the evening carried on her mom announced it was time to get some sleep.
(00:53):
But the giddiness of too much pizza and sugar kept the girls awake.
Cammy was Megan's BFF.
They probably clicked so well because they balanced each other out where Megan was shy and timid.
Cammy was outgoing the life of the party and the thrill seeker with the lights out and the girls all armed with their flashlights.
(01:21):
Cammy asked if they had ever heard the legend of Bloody Mary.
Well,
she began,
my cousin's best friend said that a girl was brutally murdered in the woods behind her elementary school.
She said that the girl was taking a shortcut home from school and when she didn't get home,
(01:43):
her mom called the police,
they found her body a few days later covered in blood and holding a mirror.
Her name was Mary.
Now legend has it that she haunts mirrors.
You go in front of a mirror and say bloody Mary three times and she will appear.
(02:06):
That's not true.
Said Megan,
even though her heart was pounding and feeling goose bumps rise on her arms.
It is so said,
Cammy,
not appreciating being called out.
Then why don't you try it?
If you don't believe Cammie further challenged,
I'm not doing it.
(02:26):
It's stupid.
Megan said,
hey,
you told me you are going to be bold in junior high and stop being so mousy.
Her best friend had her there.
She knew she would never live it down if she backed down.
Now,
besides,
she did promise herself that she would not back down from a challenge besides it wasn't true.
(02:51):
She tried to convince herself standing with more courage than she felt.
She headed to the bathroom.
She noticed the shake in her hands as she walked and hoped that no one else could tell while the other girls were giggling.
She felt truly terrified.
She shut the door and heard the footsteps of her friends running over to listen behind the door.
(03:18):
Any thoughts of pretending to do it left her mind at that moment,
she knew that they would be able to hear.
She held the flashlight on her face and looked at her eerie reflection.
She began to speak the words,
Bloody Mary.
(03:39):
Bloody Mary,
bloody Mary,
her hands trembling more with each iteration of the words.
She dropped the flashlight in the sink and stared in horror at the blood soaked reflection of a woman she recognized as not her own.
(04:25):
Welcome to Psychology of the Strange the podcast that delves into the depths of human psychology to explore the obscure and mysterious aspects of the human mind.
I'm your host Tara Perreault.
And together we'll embark on a journey to unravel the complexities behind the strange and unexplained phenomena that captivate our imaginations.
(05:04):
Bloody Mary.
Bloody Mary.
Bloody Mary.
The story I told you of Megan's birthday was an act of fiction,
but it is a ritual performed by thousands,
if not millions of people across the globe.
(05:26):
The story is told mostly by prepubescent Earls at a sleepover or around a campfire.
It usually starts with a story heard from a friend or a cousin,
someone familiar that tends to give it validity to the claim.
It's always about a girl named Mary.
(05:47):
Sometimes Mary,
we Mary Kay.
Mary Worthington,
which gives credibility to the legend because it's based off of a real person.
The exact words and ritual are different too.
In some stories,
you have to say her name three times and in others,
(06:08):
it's 13.
I have to admit I played this game several times as a child morbidly curious if I could make this bloody Mary appear yet at the same time,
terrified that she would,
when I heard it,
I was told to go into the bathroom lit only with candles,
(06:29):
spin in a circle three times and repeat bloody Mary three times and then stare at my reflection.
Although I was never sure if I was supposed to say it,
then spin,
spin while saying it or spin after saying it.
So of course,
(06:50):
I tried it all three ways.
One of those times I thought I caught a glimpse,
I felt truly scared for the first time doing this ritual.
I had a distinct feeling of someone watching me even after I left the bathroom rather quickly I might add,
(07:11):
I kept staring at the bathroom door afraid it would fly open and standing there would be Bloody Mary to carry me off.
Needless to say I had nightmares for quite a while after that.
It's funny how a small glimpse that was probably nothing more than me being dizzy,
(07:33):
spinning in a circle and my unfocused eyes or maybe I finally got the ritual right and made Bloody Mary appear.
If my fear were the only scale to measure the truth,
then it was absolutely real.
But fear is a funny thing and can skew the most sane people into believing the unbelievable.
(08:23):
The legend of Bloody Mary may have arised from Mary Worth,
a witch that lived in the 18 hundreds.
This was during the Civil War in America and Mary lived in a tiny cabin outside of a town deep in the forest.
The townsfolk were suspicious of a woman living alone.
(08:44):
And so far from the rest of the population,
wild rumors were spread in hushed whispers over sewing circles and other gatherings.
No matter the time period,
the urge to gossip has always been in our culture,
especially when it came to someone who was a bit different and didn't quite fit into societal norms.
(09:11):
Mary enjoyed wild crafting and tending to her garden outside her home.
She would often make tinctures and herbal remedies and sell them to the locals while the gossip kept most people away.
There was no denying the usefulness of her herbal remedies.
(09:35):
Some believed it was witchcraft that granted the healing power to her tinctures.
The most devoutly religious members of the community shunned her not wanting to get them or their animals cursed around this time,
young girls and slaves started to go missing and the whispers continued that it was due to Mary Worth without any solid proof.
(10:01):
They remain nothing more than a rumor.
A few brave people ventured to her cabin to confront her after their search through the woods led them to her homestead.
She denied any knowledge of the girl's disappearance.
They did notice one small change in Merwe,
(10:22):
her usual elderly and haggard appearance seemed to be slightly more youthful and feminine,
which only fueled the rumors more the wife of the town's Miller had purchased a tincture from Mary.
We to treat a bad ear ae one evening as she lay in bed in excruciating pain from her ear,
(10:46):
she placed a few drops of the remedy in her ear to help relieve her suffering.
Her daughter started to complain of the strange music that only she could hear.
After assurances from her mother,
there was no music or noise but the young girl continued to be entranced by the tune.
(11:10):
She started to follow the sound and would not stop.
Even with her mother pleading with her to stay.
Her mother yelled for her husband to stop their daughter.
The Miller enlisted the help of a few neighbors as he tried to chase his daughter,
yelling at her not to go into the forest and to come back.
(11:34):
But the daughter gave no response and continued in her trance toward the sound.
It was then that the Miller saw an eerie light up ahead as he got closer.
It was none other than Mary were standing next to an old oak tree holding what he described as a glowing wand that she was pointing towards the house.
(12:00):
He yelled and screamed for his daughter to stop and yelled threats and curses at Mary.
Mary lowered the wand and the spell was broken.
The daughter stopped in her tracks,
turned to run back to the house.
The farmer and the Miller were now convinced,
(12:21):
seeing the proof of her dark witchcraft with their own eyes.
They gave chase after Mary Worth though she ran.
She was no match for the mob that had started to chase her.
The Miller quickly loaded his pistol with silver bullets and fired his gun.
Catching Mary in the hip.
(12:42):
Mary was dragged,
kicking and screaming.
They tied her to a stake.
The townspeople quickly built a bonfire around her after they lit the fire.
Mary Worth cursed the villagers.
If anyone dare utter her name in a mirror,
she would return and exact her revenge.
(13:05):
The villagers returned to her home and found rows of unmarked graves,
confirming their belief that she had stolen the Children to use their blood to make herself more youthful.
But the legend doesn't quite end there.
Many years later,
a farmer and his wife bought Mary Worth's property.
(13:29):
They knew of the legend when they bought the house,
but they were not believers.
They built their home on the remains of old Mary Worth's property and cleared out the land with the intention of building an oat field.
One day as the new owner was working,
he found a stone that he thought would make a great stepping stone to put in front of his house.
(13:55):
This proved to be a tragic mistake.
Odd things started to happen around the house.
Dishes would fly off the shelves.
They would find themselves locked into the house for the barn.
They began to believe in the legend of Mary Worth and were terrified that maybe the stone he had found had marked Mary Worth's grave site.
(14:22):
He desperately searched for the original site of the headstone.
But years of trying,
he could never locate the exact placement of the stone.
In 1986 the house burned down.
It was suspected as arson since that day,
many others have tried to rebuild on the property but always the house would burn down.
(14:50):
Now,
a Catholic school is built adjacent to the property and Mary Worth is said to haunt the bathrooms.
(15:11):
Another origin story for this blood soaked mystery woman is that she is really the ghost of a beautiful but terribly vain woman by the name of Mary Worthington.
According to the legend,
a terrible accident left her disfigured.
She felt as though she was unable to carry on without her former beauty.
(15:36):
She killed herself in the 19 sixties.
It is difficult to find the origin of where the legend of bloody Mary began.
On one hand,
it became a ghost story,
an urban legend of sorts,
but some psychoanalysts have suggested it might have its origins with the start of puberty.
(16:00):
It is quite popular with young girls right around the age of the onset of menstruation.
The game could be a way to come to terms with the woman that they are becoming and the death.
If you will of their girlhood,
there are truly so many different origin stories and different iterations of the game worldwide.
(16:24):
But the chilling effect of seeing a monstrous face soaked in blood remain.
But there is a perfectly logical explanation for seeing the ghost of Bloody Mary.
The more you stare into a mirror,
the more likely you are to see things that aren't there regardless if you have any prior knowledge of some ghostly apparition like Bloody Mary or not.
(16:52):
This is in part due to the troxler effect.
The troxler effect was first proposed by a philosopher and physician Paul Vital Troxler in 18 04.
The basis of this effect is when you stare at the same object for a prolonged period of time.
(17:12):
There comes a point when your brain adapts or gets used to the unchanging stimuli as a result,
your neurons cancel out the information and the image often appears blurry,
faded or distorted until you blink or look around when it comes to stimulation.
(17:34):
The brain is greedy.
The brain is constantly being fed a stream of information from the sensory organs like the eyes,
the ear,
skin,
nose mouth,
you get the idea while it is doing this,
it's assessing cross referencing,
filing and refilling much of this is done without us noticing and your conscious mind only receives portions of this information that your brain deems immediately necessary.
(18:08):
Think of a ticking clock that goes silent after a few minutes,
the clock hasn't stopped ticking.
Your brain just decided that you don't need to know about that right.
Now,
I bet while you're listening to this podcast,
you're not noticing the feel of your clothes against your skin.
(18:29):
With all the different stimuli that our brain receives,
we would become overloaded if some sensations aren't blurred to the background.
When the reverse is true and stimuli is halted or dampened,
the brain has been known to hallucinate in response to the newfound lack of stimuli.
(18:51):
The troxler effect experiment showed that when the brain stops receiving any new input,
it begins to make substitutions.
Some scientists have compared hallucinations associated with the troxler effect akin to taking LSD.
In Troxler experiments.
(19:11):
People have reported seeing their face become distorted to the point of being demonic.
They have also claimed to see objects,
people and animals in the mirror.
Another part of this phenomenon is a theory proposed by Giovanni Caputo known as the strange face in the mirror illusion.
(19:34):
Giovanni Caputo is an Italian psychologist who performed an experiment in 2010 where he asked 50 people to go into a dimly lit room and stare at their own reflection in a mirror for 10 minutes.
At the end of this process,
they were asked to report what they saw.
(19:56):
66% reported seeing huge deformations of their face and 48% also saw fantastical and monstrous beings.
Others described seeing the face of a parent,
some of whom were deceased,
the face of an animal or the face of an old woman or a child.
(20:21):
There are some that believe that by staring into the mirror,
we get a peek beyond the veil and see another reality layered around us always there but not perceivable.
Until we are truly looking.
Could the art of staring into your own reflection induce a deep meditative and trance like state that allows you to see the extra stimuli that our brain deems unimportant from years of conditioning.
(20:55):
The science behind the effect of seeing the morphed images in the mirror might be scratching the surface of something more ethereal that we still don't understand.
Something not quite quantifiable with the tools we currently utilize.
That.
However,
is a topic for another time,
(21:18):
I invite you if you're brave enough to try these theories in the comfort of your own home,
no chanting bloody mary required.
Stare at your face in a mirror in a dimly lit room.
Do you notice any changes?
Let me know your experiences.
(21:53):
Thank you for tuning into Psychology of the strange.
Make sure you subscribe to wherever you stream your podcast so that you never miss an episode until next time.
This is your host Tara Perreault signing off.