I tried it one time as a kid, by myself, and didn’t see anything but my own apprehensive face.
And Bloody Marys are revolting. Waste of perfectly good vodka. They frighten me far more than dead women in mirrors.
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As long as they continue to distill single malt I won’t be desperate enough to mix vodka and tomato juice.
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I tried the mirror thing…got scared out of my wits. Got an IRS agent instead of old Mary.
Preteen girls at slumber parties aren’t known for their keen grasp of European royal history.
I started a thread awhile ago about childhood fears you haven’t outgrown, and one of mine is Bloody Mary. Like Obsidian Flutterby, I know intellectually that no such apparition will appear, but I still can’t be on front of a mirror in the dark, ever. As a wise Flash cartoon character once said, “It gimmie the jibblies.”
Funny this should be mentioned now, I just moved back into halls at uni, and each room has a sink with a large mirror over it. I’ve had to move my bed so i cant see it when I’m trying to sleep, and rig up a kind of curtain to go across the little alcove that the sink/mirror is mounted in. I know it is stupid, and only a myth, but still…
No Bloody Mary is an Urban Legend.
But there are THREE witches you can summon in a mirror if you say their names 100 times in a row starting at midnight.
Do you want to try?
Go to the mirror and and say 100 times Ima, Edie, Ot.
Someone (don’t remember who) told me a version of that story when I was 8 or 9. Scared the willies out of me (so badly, in fact, that to this very day the willies have never come back). As I heard it, Bloody Mary was the wife of Satan. Otherwise, the same basic legend. Go in the bathroom, turn out the lights, say her name a few times, look in the mirror, BOOO! Never tried it myself. Much too chicken.
Gotta confess, though. That story went along so well with my traditional Catholic upbringing that it continued to scare me well into my teens. Okay, twenties. All right, all right. I’m 32 years old and stand 6’ 3" and only recently developed the ability to look at the bathroom mirror at night without getting the shivers.
Yeah, I know. The monster under the bed says “hi” and wants you all to know that he misses you.
I am so getting the kids to do this next nephew/cousin slumber party.
Kizarvexius it was only recently that I was able to outgrow fear of something underneath my bed. Seriously.
At least now I can walk around my house after midnight without pissing in my pants every five steps. Great progress made on that front.
At a childhood sleep-over, one of my friends told the story of Bloody Mary and none of us were quite brave enough to give it a shot.
After that party I got to thinking about it. One night I went into the bathroom without anyone’s knowledge, summoned all my courage, turned out the light, and spoke the name aloud the specified number of times. As I was saying the name, I remembered calming myself down in preparation for what I might see. Then…nothing. Nothing at all. Hmm…
After that I felt so brave and started testing myself to see if I could do more things I was always afraid of. Such as opening the curtains at night when you were almost certain someone would be looking at you from the outside, walking in the pony barn when you knew spiders were on the ceiling, opening the little side door in Grandmom’s attic even though you were almost certain there were ghosts in there. Whew…that was some scary shit.
Ahh Bloody Mary. During summer vacations when all my cousins were together we used to share horror stories. My oldest cousin Terry always dared us little ones to go into the bathroom and try to “summon” Bloody Mary. The worst thing that ever happened was my parents catching us and scaring the crap out of us. My parents were sick people, they knew we were telling scary stories so they would sneak outside and make noises until one of the little ones wet themselves. Soon my children will be old enough for me to tell them the legend, I wonder if they will try it.
I realized later that it would probably work better if you call the third witch Dorothy and then later say to call her by her nickname Dot.
Tell them to start slow and then speed up.
Never heard of it before this thread. My granddad was a twisted guy. He once ran a fishing line from his bedroom around the back of the house to the screen on the window that the boys (my dad and brothers) slept in. Late at night he’d pull on the line to make it sound like someone was trying to get in.