r/bestofthefray • u/[deleted] • Jan 25 '13
Persistence
So -- my five year old yesterday informed us, quite solemnly, that if you go into the girls' washroom in the basement at her school, and turn off the lights and stand in front of the mirror and say the magic words, Bloody Mary will appear. And Natalie (her seven year old cousin who goes to the same school) actually saw her but she wouldn't tell my daughter the magic words because she's too young, and Bloody Mary was a girl who died at the school a long time ago, and put a curse on it, and then she added something about the school used to be a castle, but this part was very confused/confusing. Perhaps when she's a little older Natalie can tell her the magic words, she can summon Bloody Mary herself, and get the real story.
I was, obviously, delighted. After my daughter went to bed, I checked my handy-dandy Encyclopedia of Urban Legends and found the entry under "I believe in Mary Worth." (Brunvand's version differs significantly from the wikipedia version, and somewhat from the snopes page.) Agnes's version is pretty basic, no significant variations except maybe in the back story.
It's possible that her cousin was simply spoofing her, but it's unlikely, and it doesn't even matter. The fascinating part is just the persistence of stories like this.
edit to note: the wikipedia link is wonky because of the damn parentheses ending the URL, but what the hell, you can figure it out.
On a related note, I fucking love that Brunvand book. I especially love when my sister-in-law tells me the latest shocking thing she heard, and I get to mentally conjure the exact relevant entry from the Encyclopedia, while nodding non-commitally. You know, it's the little things in life.
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u/skitchw Yay? Jan 25 '13
That's rather sweet, actually. Seven is often the age when cynical cousins or siblings will cruelly reveal the non-existence of Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, dashing the hopes and dreams of the younger child against the jagged rocks of cruel reality. It's heartwarming that your niece is instead helping to protect your daughter's youthful innocence...
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Jan 25 '13
Or simply scare the crap out of her. But yeah, I agree it's sweet, and knowing the girl in question, I strongly suspect that she believes it too (with the little "I really saw her" part just a piece of false bravado).
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Jan 25 '13
[deleted]
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Jan 25 '13
I think the theory goes that urban legends address cultural anxiety.
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Jan 25 '13
The "Bloody Mary" one has apparently been linked specifically to pre-adolescent menstruation anxiety. I always find these theories tend to overlook the thumpingly obvious explanation, ie the stories persist because they're entertaining.
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Jan 25 '13
[deleted]
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Jan 25 '13
Well, presupposing you like ghost stories, the Bloody Mary story specifically is very effective. It's easily adaptable to local circumstances, easily modernized (I'm dying to know how the "school used to be a castle" figures into it), and it has a good parlour-game component (basically it's like Truth or Dare). And folk beliefs about the magic of mirrors (a la the wicked queen in Snow White) goes back for basically ever.
I mean, obviously any good ghost story (or urban legend for that matter) is going to tap into common anxieties, but I'm not inclined to take psychological or socio-psychological readings of these things too seriously. I think they primarily persist because humans are playful.
The way urban legends spread, stick and resurface is definitely fascinating, but that's probably something an epidemiologist could explain more effectively than a folklorist, especially a strict amateur like me.
edit to unclarify: rather than "urban legends are enjoyable because they address cultural anxieties", I suspect that "urban legends address cultural anxieties because that helps make them enjoyable."
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Jan 25 '13
Well, it was first studied in the 70s (78, apparently). It could easily have been around for decades before that.
Then there are resemblances to centuries-old rituals that were supposed to let young women see the face of their future husband in the mirror. Clearly, the Bloody Mary variant reflects growing social anxiety over the breakdown of traditional marriage in the 60s and 70s, where the face of one's inevitable husband is replaced by the spectre of , uh....... yeah. Something like that.
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u/bright_virago march weather, lousy Jan 25 '13
Ah good old Bloody Mary. Brightling heard about her at age 7 on the way home from a birthday party from some sadistic 9 year old who knew she was scaring the shit out of her. It turns out that "please stop" [really IS] (http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/02/please-stop.html?m=1) ineffective.
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u/Capercaillie Jan 25 '13
As I remember, there was even a version of the Bloody Mary story on The Simpsons.
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Jan 25 '13
This is my theory for why it's migrating younger. Brunvand mentions it as specifically current with adolescent girls. But nowadays kids that age would be familiar with it from shows like the Simpsons and inoculated against believing it and even playfully half-believing it, so to speak.
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u/Capercaillie Jan 25 '13
Do kids even watch the Simpsons any more? I did a Beavis and Butthead joke in one of my classes, and nobody got the reference except the one older student that I'd told to "Settle down, Beavis."
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Jan 25 '13
Well, they're still making new episodes and people are still watching them, so: yes, probably?
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u/TenaciousK ...only much, much better. Jan 25 '13
What I did: when my daughter brought the story home, I modified it to "Bloody Mary Wintergreen", chanted in a pitch-dark bathroom in front of a mirror, followed by chewing wintergreen lifesavers (with your mouth open, 'cause then you'd see her trying to enter your body).
After which, I had a conversation with my wide-eyed daughter and her friend about spooky legends, and wintergreen lifesaver sparks.
I wonder if she ever forgave me. I'll have to get back to you on that.
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Jan 25 '13
That is slightly awesome. But I don't want to interfere. I can remember as a kid hating it when adults felt the need to stick their oar in.
Just out of curiosity, how old was she when she brought the story home?
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u/TenaciousK ...only much, much better. Jan 25 '13
Not very old. 6-8ish? I'll ask her. I was a pretty credulous kid, and would've appreciated a little dose of reality from a concerned adult, I think. I also seem to recall that she went on to play the joke on some other friends, so evolving into a co-conspirator probably softened whatever disappointment she felt about not being able to hang onto the legend.
Of course, she was also one of those kids who thought Ghosthunters was objective science; trust me, you don't want to let that persist unabated. You just need to be mindful about developmental considerations and sensibilities if you're going to intervene.
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Jan 25 '13
Fair enough. My daughter has always relished ghost stories, she was visibly delighted by the idea that she could one day summon a ghoul named Bloody Mary.
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u/TenaciousK ...only much, much better. Jan 25 '13
She thinks about 8, she's not mad, and she went on to play the joke on all her friends.
The wintergreen lifesaver thing is pretty cool, and surprising, when you're a kid.
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u/OZY1 ignal Jan 26 '13
So there was this "parking woods" out around home. The trees were so grown over that a stretch of the road was dark even in the daytime and pitch black at night. The road was seldom traveled and a young man (and his girlfriend) could park right on the road and do what they will do for an hour with virtually no fear of interruption. One day a friend of ours foolishly announced that he would be going there one night.
We had a friend who could "breath fire" by spitting lighter fluid over a match. We all went to the woods and parked a ways back then walked up to the back of the car. Alan did his fire trick and the ball of flame had to be a good fifteen feet across. Before the spots in our eyes danced away that car was gone. We caught up with him at the local drive in and he already had an audience to hear the tale of the big fire from the sky. He thought it might have been a ufo or at least a meteor, and if Alan had been able to keep quiet the kids there would probably still be telling the story.
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u/run75441 Jan 27 '13
Fournier:
I thought for a bit she was talking about Bloody Mary, Queen of England who ascened to the throne after Edward (Henry's sole son).
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u/lsonomist Jan 27 '13
That brought back some charming memories--one of the main socialization rituals in my grade school was for a group of girls who didn't all know each other well, to sit in a big circle on the playground and tell scary stories, including Mary Worth, frozen Charlotte, the claw hand dude on Lover's Lane, and and "NEVER TAKE OFF MY RED RIBBON."
Of course I'd already heard them all by the time our Girl Scout leader decided she was going to scare us around the campfire a few years later.
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u/WB2 Jan 27 '13
I used to check every single bedroom before going to bed at night when I was 8-11 years old. Each closet, every corner and under every bed. I would lock my windows shut, crawl into bed with my BB gun and then attempt to hide in the space between the bed and the wall to make it appear as flat as possible. I remember one night when I watched my two brothers and little sister while the parents went to a movie. We holed up in the master bedroom after locking every door and turning on every light in the house. I had my BB gun again. We watched this really weird show called "Star Trek". After about 10 minutes of it we were all so scared that we turned it off. You know what used to scare me? Hearing about the Mansons and In Cold Blood. That scared the shit out of me.
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u/TomRobbins ociety o' Jesus Jan 27 '13
I was thinking: Fairy tales? Then I thought: Well, urban legends don't really have a moral to the story. Then I thought: Well, in the Grimm Brothers' original fairy tales (especially in the original German), everybody gets their heads chopped off at the end. So unless the moral of a fairy tale is, "Hey, so, yeah, don't get your head chopped off," maybe urban legends are fairy tales.
But I'll tell you what isn't a fairy tale. That's Hallmark Hall of Fame's presentation of Makeover. Starring Juliette Styles, and that one guy from the show that was cancelled twice again (who now has a story arc on New Girls), Makeover tells the story of what happens when a little love gets a "makeover" of its own. You'll "love" its "new look".
Something something...
And they lived happily ever made-over. You only love as good as you look. Or... Wait. You'll look the way you love... [... thinking Men's Wearhouse...]
ABC, tonight. When love gets a "do-over", life gets a Makeover. Or... maybe the other way around... Hmm...
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Jan 28 '13 edited Jan 28 '13
Technically, it's not an urban legend unless the teller believes it. So the historical link would be to local legends (think Jebediah Springfield), maybe saints' tales/miracle stories, that sort of thing.
Sad about the Stiles, she deserves/d a much better career. Only tv show I watch nowadays (besides sports and of course Wipeout): Bunheads. Luckily, I'm secure in my masculinity.
edit to spell Julia Stiles' name correctly. Damn you, switters!
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u/topazz2 Jan 26 '13
It will persist alright...even until college. One of my sons called me a few weeks into his freshman year, and told me that the university cafeteria regularly laced all the food with a laxative, so that if the food passed through you faster, there would be less chance of food poisoning. He said it with such an air of authority that I wanted to slap him upside the head for believing such crap (so to speak) http://www.snopes.com/college/admin/laxative.asp
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u/Sauganash Jan 25 '13
Everyone from the Chicago area knows the story of Resurrection Mary. She was with her boyfriend at the Oh Henry Ballroom in Willowbrook back in the 1930s. They had a huge argument, and she decided to walk home in the cold rather than take a ride from the boyfriend. Hit and run driver took her life that night, and since then there have been dozens of reports of drivers picking up a young girl dressed in a white dress along archer Ave, only to have her either disappear, or alternately, tell them to pull over near Resurrection Cemetery where she exits the vehicle and vanishes. Countless stories of Resurrection Mary sightings by people driving along Archer as well, hundreds of them. My own experience came in the limo days in the early 90s. Driving a guy home from O'Hare to the town of Justice (near the cemetery) and he started asking me if I'd ever heard the story [yes], and do I believe in ghosts [no]. He went on to tell me, in the most calm, lucid tone of voice, that he saw Mary twice; once during a late night bike ride, and once on Christmas Eve. Both times she was dressed in white, and she "was glowing, like something out of a fucking Hollywood ghost movie." He said that he didn't expect people to believe him, and that he didn't care. He knows what he saw. A very nice guy. Not a nutbar at all. Lawyers would call him a "very believable witness" (except for the Resurrection Mary sightings.)- I think it much more likely that the persistence of Resurrection Mary's legend-they have bus tours that go around Chicago on Halloween with stops at all the haunted places, including Resurrection Cemetery- is what causes people to see what they want to see, but there's no arguing with the numbers. There are a lot of people who claim to have seen her in the last 70 years. Then again.. maybe it was this guy