There's something about a ghost story that has captivated people for centuries, everyone has a ghost story or some strange occurrence that can't be explained. Today we look into one of the most famous ghost stories, Bloody Mary.
The origins of the Bloody Mary are a complicated web that we will be looking at today. The conjuring of Mary is one we all know well, usually at a sleepover under the cover of darkness usually at midnight, the witching hour, one person is chosen to enter a dark room alone with a mirror (usually a bathroom as they don't have much natural light) and has to say Bloody Mary three times. Reports vary as to what happens next some say that Mary will appear in the mirror and scratches you, either to harm you or to mark you with her curse where bad things will befall you and there is the version where Mary will appear and kill you.
The name of Mary is sometimes different, some reports have her name being Mary Worth, Mary Worthington or Mary Johnson. Other times she is called Bloody Bones or Hell Mary and there are versions where she is called Black Agnes, Black Aggie or Svarte Madame, which seems to come from the Swedish woman in black.
Mary's story is usually a tragic tale, some have her a witch who was executed for practising black magic, other times she was a woman who lost her baby and more recent versions have her as a vain woman who spent much of her time looking in mirrors who was then killed in a terrible car crash. In any version, Mary is always the result of some sort of tragic and violent end. She is commonly shown with missing eyes or blood running down from her eyes almost like she is crying blood.
One interesting origin of the Bloody Mary legend is it's similarity to a parlour game played a few centuries earlier. Like Bloody Mary a person chants into a mirror and a ghostly image would appear, but this game is one less chilling as the ghostly image would show who that person would end up marrying.
Now we will look into one popular theory that Bloody Mary is in fact Queen Mary I of England. The life of Mary is quite a sad one, she was the only surviving child of the infamous King Henry VIII and his first wife Catherine of Aragon, the King famously had six wives (he beheaded two of them) in his obsessive quest for a male heir. After Henry divorced Catherine to marry Anne Boleyn he effectively bastardised Mary, claiming the marriage had been incestuous and illegal as Catherine had been married to Henry's late brother. After Anne gave birth to their daughter Elizabeth (the future Queen Elizabeth I) in September of 1533, Henry and his Parliament had 17-year-old Mary illegitimized and removed her from the line of succession and denied her access to her mother who had been sent to live away from court and never saw her again. Mary was reinstated in 1543.
What earned Mary the nickname of Bloody Mary was all down to her religious views. Mary was a very devout Catholic and during her reign attempted to reverse the English Reformation, where the Church of England broke away from the authority of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church. She burnt approximately 300 religious dissenters at the stake. Mary also fits into the mother element of the legend as Mary, not unlike her father, greatly desired an heir.
Aged 37 and unmarried, Mary knew she needed a child to secure her reign, she married Philip of Spain in July 1554. Mary was thrilled to announce she was expecting a child in 1555, and as was custom in those times women near the end of their pregnancies went into the birthing chamber a few weeks before their due date but when Mary did not give birth it was assumed the Queen had simply mixed up her due date. It was then that Mary's stomach started to shrink and the doctor told her this was the start of labour so, once again the Queen returned to the birthing chamber. On the 30th April, the bells rang and celebrations were had following the news that Mary had given birth to a son. But there was no son and no baby. Mary died childless and Philip ended up deserting Mary spending much of his time in Europe. It is now believed that Mary had a phantom pregnancy, where the mind tricks the body into believing it is pregnant. In modern times such things are caught early due to scans but of course at the time such things were not available. So it is said that Queen Mary will appear holding the baby she never had after summoning her in a mirror.
Another theory is that Bloody Mary is the murderous Elizabeth Bathory, who famously was obsessed with her looks and believed that the blood of young women would keep her young and beautiful. She butchered women who were hired as servants and drained their blood so she could bathe in it. Eventually her family found out what she doing and was imprisoned until her death in 1614.
The true origins of Bloody Mary will never be known as the story has been told too many times with too many embellishments. We at Apollo's Raven think if we had to chose who Mary really was then Elizabeth Bathory would be our pick as Elizabeth certainly would fit the bill for a vengeful spirit with a penchant for blood but urban legends will always continue to change, who knows what Mary will be in a hundred years or if she will still exist.
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