Ghost Story of Bloody Mary :: Ghost Stories Urban Legends

Bloody bloody shameI remember enacting an urban ritual with my friends back in middle school. Giggling and squealing, running in and out of the bathroom, not really believing but still terrified by the possibilities. It was less a story with a moral than it was just a sleepover prank. Needless to say I wasnt surprised that when I asked a roommate to relate an urban legend to me over lunch one solar day that she chose that of Bloody Mary.The storyteller is a 20 year old woman studying psychology at the University. She transferred to school after one semester at some otherwise college. She is of French descent and her parents speak French at home. She has conservative to moderate political beliefs and is Lutheran, although does not regularly attend religious services while she is at school. She is in a long distance relationship with her boyfriend of two years who is in the Navy and stationed at Virginia Beach. When prompted for a story she was initially hesitating but finally resp onded with, Bloody Mary, I guess.Youre supposed to like, go into the bathroom in front of the mirror and turn around verbalise Bloody Mary three times. Then shes supposed to come.I asked what happened after that and she replied with a mouthful of food, She kills you. This story was told it seemed, with the assumption that I should know the story. As if it was more a matter of public knowledge than a personal story. This was an accurate assumption on her part as not only had I heard the story many times before, but I also found frequent references to it online. The narrative from my storyteller differed slightly from others I read online, be it the number of times Bloody Mary was chanted or supplementary actions that were or were not included, each story had slightly different elements.Bloody Mary is often confused with Mary I, the queen of England from 1553-1558 who restored Roman Catholicism to England, which resulted in many Protestants being burnt at the stake as heretics. While she was referred to as Bloody Mary, in very few variations is it the queen who appears in the bathroom mirror (Mikkelson & Mikkelson). Some stories identify Mary as a woman specific to the storytellers own community, such as a girl killed in a local car crash or other such tragic accident. In other cases Mary is just a woman of myth an executed witch, a woman murdered on her conjoin night, a mother who killed her children, some tragic or horrific figure that appears in a mirror upon being summoned (Bloody Mary person).