WEBVTT - Short Stuff: Bloody Mary 0:00:04.280 --> 0:00:07.760 Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck, 0:00:08.000 --> 0:00:12.160 and we're joined today by our resident ghost, Bloody Mary. 0:00:13.039 --> 0:00:15.440 That's right, And we just did a weird thing and 0:00:15.480 --> 0:00:18.360 recorded our ads first. So I just had the urge 0:00:18.400 --> 0:00:22.880 to say, if you like Bloody Mary, you're gonna love 0:00:23.000 --> 0:00:26.920 this Bloody Mary. Uh, you won't love Bloody Mary, because 0:00:26.920 --> 0:00:29.760 that is a scary kid's game. It seems like a 0:00:29.800 --> 0:00:31.760 lot of girls do this, but I know some boys 0:00:31.800 --> 0:00:34.239 who have done it as well. I have where you 0:00:34.880 --> 0:00:37.520 stand in the mirror, and there are variations we'll talk about. 0:00:38.159 --> 0:00:40.120 You look in the mirror, it's darkened room, Maybe you 0:00:40.159 --> 0:00:42.880 got a candle going. If you're lucky, and you say 0:00:43.479 --> 0:00:47.919 the words bloody Mary a certain amount of times, sometimes 0:00:47.920 --> 0:00:51.920 thirteen per region. Sometimes you turn in a circle thirteen times. 0:00:51.920 --> 0:00:53.800 I've never heard of that. I would fall over. That's 0:00:53.840 --> 0:00:59.040 the Parma Ohio method. And then, depending on how skilled 0:00:59.080 --> 0:01:02.279 you are at your incan patians, Bloody Mary may kill you, 0:01:02.720 --> 0:01:04.960 may reach through the mirror and pull you into the 0:01:05.000 --> 0:01:09.640 other worlds, may claw your face and eyes out, or 0:01:09.959 --> 0:01:12.240 you may just die of fright or maybe nothing at all, 0:01:12.480 --> 0:01:14.760 or she may just be standing there glowering at you, 0:01:14.840 --> 0:01:17.360 really mad that you you brought her to this mirror, 0:01:17.400 --> 0:01:20.000 but you can't do anything about it, right, like the 0:01:20.080 --> 0:01:23.679 ladies kids. Yeah, either way, you're gonna go running out 0:01:23.720 --> 0:01:26.480 of this bathroom and you're gonna be talking to your 0:01:26.520 --> 0:01:29.160 friends about what you saw and we'll talk about it later. 0:01:29.240 --> 0:01:32.039 But in a weird, a weird way, like they're correct 0:01:32.120 --> 0:01:38.000 when they say they saw something strange. Right, Uh, possibly, Okay, 0:01:38.200 --> 0:01:41.800 we'll go with yes. So what's the deal? Where did 0:01:41.800 --> 0:01:44.400 this thing come from? So that's the other thing about it. 0:01:44.400 --> 0:01:47.920 It's not just a game, but there's there's because there's 0:01:47.960 --> 0:01:49.800 like a legend wrapped around it, and the legend is 0:01:49.880 --> 0:01:52.920 kind of evolving and changing regionally and over time. Like 0:01:52.960 --> 0:01:57.480 you were saying, it actually constitutes a piece of American folklore. 0:01:57.560 --> 0:02:00.400 They're pretty sure it's American, right, and they've atually been 0:02:00.440 --> 0:02:03.200 studying it here they're like kind of sporadically. But the 0:02:03.200 --> 0:02:05.760 first person to actually put it pen to paper about 0:02:05.800 --> 0:02:10.320 it was a folklorist named Janet lang Law LANGLOI That's 0:02:10.320 --> 0:02:13.600 where I'm going with Langloy, great last name, look wise 0:02:13.720 --> 0:02:17.760 tough to say, you know what, I prefer lang La. 0:02:18.600 --> 0:02:20.480 You could say it like that. It's even harder to 0:02:20.720 --> 0:02:25.520 langla wa right, it almost looks like Shammy but with 0:02:25.560 --> 0:02:28.960 an owl. Oh man, Shammy confused me for the first 0:02:29.040 --> 0:02:32.840 thirties something years in my life. Why is everybody staying 0:02:32.880 --> 0:02:34.760 it like that? I knew what a Shammy was, but 0:02:34.800 --> 0:02:37.120 I never put the two together. Yeah, I know exactly 0:02:37.200 --> 0:02:40.200 what you mean. But this lady's last name is not Shammy. 0:02:40.280 --> 0:02:45.440 It's Langlois and florist. Like yeah, and I think she's 0:02:45.440 --> 0:02:48.160 sort of just I mean, it was around, but she 0:02:48.280 --> 0:02:50.400 was the first person to kind of start writing about 0:02:50.440 --> 0:02:53.960 it a little bit. And it turns out like, because 0:02:53.960 --> 0:02:57.120 it's regional, there are a bunch of different names besides 0:02:57.160 --> 0:03:02.760 Bloody Mary Hell Mary Is and Mary Worth is hysterical. 0:03:03.960 --> 0:03:06.560 That's a full on comic strip. It is one of 0:03:06.600 --> 0:03:09.919 the weirdest comic strips ever. Yeah, what was the deal 0:03:09.960 --> 0:03:12.480 with that? It's like Mark Trail, I don't know. At 0:03:12.600 --> 0:03:16.080 least Park Trail was appealing to kids. Nothing about Mary 0:03:16.120 --> 0:03:18.680 Worth had any appeal to kids, Like they would just 0:03:18.720 --> 0:03:21.400 be like, what what is this? I don't understand any 0:03:21.480 --> 0:03:24.079 of this. It was a comic strip, a soap opera 0:03:24.080 --> 0:03:27.400 comic strip for grown ups. Very bizarre or was it 0:03:27.440 --> 0:03:31.080 for grown ups? Totally? And then there was also I 0:03:31.080 --> 0:03:34.760 think Apartment three E was a very similar kind of 0:03:35.720 --> 0:03:37.960 comic strip that I might have the apartment number wrong, 0:03:38.000 --> 0:03:40.360 but it was like that, No, thank you, give me Garfield, 0:03:40.400 --> 0:03:42.040 to give me Beatle Bailey, give me a wizard of It. 0:03:42.760 --> 0:03:46.120 Don't forget high in Lois Bloom County. I could do 0:03:46.200 --> 0:03:51.320 this all day zits remembers It's did a comic featuring us. 0:03:52.160 --> 0:03:55.040 Oh yeah, of course that was awesome, But Bloody Mary 0:03:55.040 --> 0:03:56.320 has nothing to do with any of that. But we 0:03:56.360 --> 0:03:58.200 should do it on comic strips. That's a great idea. 0:03:58.320 --> 0:04:00.800 I can't believe we haven't. I knew we did comic books, 0:04:00.800 --> 0:04:03.120 but not comic strips. We should definitely check that as 0:04:03.120 --> 0:04:05.440 a great idea. We'll wind it out here with a 0:04:05.440 --> 0:04:08.280 few more names that I like. Black Angus is another, 0:04:09.000 --> 0:04:15.120 and then black Actus, Varte Madame hit What does say 0:04:15.160 --> 0:04:22.360 black Angus, black Agnes You're right right, So they're different 0:04:22.440 --> 0:04:25.880 names for the same spirit that you can conjure from 0:04:26.000 --> 0:04:29.440 the from your mirror if you do this right. Um, 0:04:29.480 --> 0:04:31.960 And there's a few of those names kind of stand out. 0:04:31.960 --> 0:04:34.000 A couple of them really. The first one Bloody Mary. 0:04:34.040 --> 0:04:36.680 That's the one I always heard. And if you read 0:04:36.680 --> 0:04:39.720 about Bloody Mary, a lot of the people who are 0:04:39.760 --> 0:04:43.320 writing about Bloody Mary trace her to Queen Mary, the 0:04:43.360 --> 0:04:45.800 first of England, who ruled from fifteen fifty five to 0:04:45.880 --> 0:04:48.800 fifty eight. And she was actually called Bloody Mary because 0:04:48.800 --> 0:04:54.080 she was a Protestant killer. That's right. Uh, she ordered 0:04:54.120 --> 0:04:56.839 the death of many Protestants to be burned at the 0:04:56.839 --> 0:05:01.160 steak and other grizzly forms of death. But here's the thing, like, 0:05:02.120 --> 0:05:04.480 it's probably not on account of her that we say 0:05:04.520 --> 0:05:08.520 bloody Mary, because she wasn't doing the actual killing, and 0:05:08.560 --> 0:05:11.640 in the folklore, like it's really Bloody Mary doing the killing, 0:05:11.680 --> 0:05:13.640 and she like bathes in the blood of children and 0:05:13.680 --> 0:05:19.080 stuff like that. Right, So, um, that doesn't really jibe. 0:05:19.360 --> 0:05:22.040 It more jibes with somebody else, a woman by a 0:05:22.040 --> 0:05:25.760 totally different name, Elizabeth Bathory, the Countess of Blood I 0:05:25.760 --> 0:05:28.279 think they call her, who actually is reputed to have 0:05:28.400 --> 0:05:32.400 killed many many peasant girls herself and actually did probably 0:05:32.480 --> 0:05:35.159 bathe in their their blood. And she may actually be 0:05:35.200 --> 0:05:38.960 the most prolific serial killer in history. So there's like 0:05:39.000 --> 0:05:41.440 maybe we're talking we're looking at like a mishmash of 0:05:41.560 --> 0:05:46.599 different names traits characters, or it could just be totally coincidental, 0:05:46.720 --> 0:05:49.640 or they don't really know where this thing came from, 0:05:49.680 --> 0:05:52.640 is what I'm saying. Or it was based on Mary 0:05:52.680 --> 0:05:56.800 Worth the sup Upper Comics adult. Right, she's got really boring. 0:05:56.839 --> 0:05:59.080 As the comic strip went on, she's like, no, might 0:05:59.120 --> 0:06:02.440 as well start killing kids, right? Uh? Should we take 0:06:02.440 --> 0:06:04.480 a break? I think so? All right, let's take a 0:06:04.480 --> 0:06:06.120 break and we'll talk a little bit more about some 0:06:06.160 --> 0:06:08.880 of the variations, and believe it or not, there's sort 0:06:08.920 --> 0:06:40.800 of a little real science to this one too. Okay, Chuck, 0:06:40.839 --> 0:06:42.880 you talked about variations. One thing you can do is 0:06:42.920 --> 0:06:46.440 spinning a circle thirteen times. Another one is you can 0:06:46.520 --> 0:06:50.080 chant her name a certain amount of times. Another variation 0:06:50.240 --> 0:06:52.880 is where you actually prick your finger and make it 0:06:52.920 --> 0:06:55.440 bleed and then you press fingers with the person you're 0:06:55.480 --> 0:07:02.080 doing this with and chant, don't do that kids, it's hardcore. Yeah. Um. 0:07:02.120 --> 0:07:05.800 And then there's also uh saying I believe. I saw 0:07:05.839 --> 0:07:08.599 in a few variations that you say like Merry Worth, 0:07:08.800 --> 0:07:14.760 I believe, Mary Worth, I believe, and that's the chant 0:07:15.320 --> 0:07:21.320 and a a kind of matronly well dressed animated woman 0:07:21.360 --> 0:07:26.920 appears in your mirror and says, what's the bother? Uh? 0:07:26.960 --> 0:07:29.200 And you know this is kind of thing that's done 0:07:29.200 --> 0:07:33.480 its slumber parties and sleepovers. Uh. The kids all, you know, 0:07:33.560 --> 0:07:37.440 think they see something, they get scared, their imagination takes over. 0:07:38.280 --> 0:07:41.200 But supposedly there was a little real science to this 0:07:41.320 --> 0:07:44.400 and that. In two thousand and ten, a researcher out 0:07:44.440 --> 0:07:49.679 of Italy name Giovanni Caputo did a little experiment where 0:07:49.680 --> 0:07:53.000 he had people star into a mirror in a dimly 0:07:53.080 --> 0:07:56.360 lit room for ten minutes and write down what they saw. 0:07:56.720 --> 0:08:01.240 And out of the fifty test subjects very robust um, 0:08:01.280 --> 0:08:06.280 sixty of people said they saw huge deformations of their face, 0:08:08.480 --> 0:08:12.880 also saw fantastical and monstrous things. And other people said 0:08:12.920 --> 0:08:15.560 they saw the face of a parent, or the face 0:08:15.560 --> 0:08:19.040 of an animal, or an old woman or a child. Yeah. 0:08:19.040 --> 0:08:21.600 And I was looking at why that might happen, and 0:08:21.640 --> 0:08:26.760 apparently one swing one explanation is that your brain becomes 0:08:26.800 --> 0:08:30.600 sensitized to the visual information it's getting and because it 0:08:30.680 --> 0:08:34.439 doesn't need it's already judged this image a non thread 0:08:34.480 --> 0:08:37.280 and it's not food or anything like that, it stops 0:08:37.320 --> 0:08:42.239 filling in the details and so visually a deformation occurs 0:08:42.280 --> 0:08:44.600 in your image of what you're seeing in them because 0:08:44.600 --> 0:08:47.679 you're staring at it. Right. Yes, so there actually is 0:08:47.760 --> 0:08:50.320 science to this idea where you know, the chanting of 0:08:50.360 --> 0:08:53.040 bloody Mary doesn't necessarily do anything, although I don't know, 0:08:53.080 --> 0:08:54.800 maybe it puts you in something of a trance like 0:08:54.880 --> 0:08:57.160 state where this happens on a deeper level or something. 0:08:57.400 --> 0:08:59.360 But at the very least, we realize that the brain 0:08:59.520 --> 0:09:03.120 stops all in details, so a deformed version of like 0:09:03.160 --> 0:09:06.320 a face can see. And then you also add in 0:09:06.720 --> 0:09:10.599 our um innate need to fill in patterns or to 0:09:10.679 --> 0:09:13.880 fine patterns and to see faces and things. So maybe 0:09:13.920 --> 0:09:18.000 we start inputting stuff in those missing areas and it 0:09:18.000 --> 0:09:22.080 comes out all monstrous or baby like. But wouldn't you 0:09:22.120 --> 0:09:25.320 need for this effect to take place, to do it 0:09:25.400 --> 0:09:27.600 for like ten minutes and not just say bloody Mary 0:09:27.640 --> 0:09:30.760 three times? Yeah? I think you're I think that's part 0:09:30.800 --> 0:09:33.080 of the game, as you're supposed to stay in there 0:09:33.120 --> 0:09:35.199 for longer than just however long it takes to say 0:09:35.200 --> 0:09:37.840 bloody Mary three times, you know, like you maybe use 0:09:37.960 --> 0:09:40.080 chance bloody Mary three times and then you just stare 0:09:40.160 --> 0:09:43.720 until you just are scared and run out of the bathroom. 0:09:43.840 --> 0:09:45.360 You know what game is a lot more fun than 0:09:45.400 --> 0:09:47.640 that at a slumber party. How about that game where 0:09:47.640 --> 0:09:49.920 you go in a closet with someone and I don't know, 0:09:50.160 --> 0:09:52.880 kiss in the dark? Sure, sure, or light as a feather, 0:09:52.920 --> 0:09:55.320 stiff as a board is pretty awesome. Yeah, but I 0:09:55.400 --> 0:09:57.760 was I was probably more scared of kissing a girl 0:09:57.800 --> 0:10:02.680 in a closet than I was incanting bloody mary. Um. 0:10:02.720 --> 0:10:05.360 There is this great article on this, well, a couple 0:10:05.400 --> 0:10:08.760 of them. I found some on Penn State Universities like 0:10:08.840 --> 0:10:13.199 folklore site. Mental floss had something good, and Snopes did too. 0:10:13.280 --> 0:10:16.720 But in that mental Floss article they turned up um 0:10:16.760 --> 0:10:20.240 a possible providence of this game and linked it to 0:10:20.320 --> 0:10:24.320 a Robert Burns poem from I think sev six, where 0:10:24.640 --> 0:10:27.480 I think the poem is called Halloween and and Robert 0:10:27.520 --> 0:10:30.280 Burns is basically giving you party ideas that your next 0:10:30.280 --> 0:10:33.600 Halloween gathering in the eighteenth century, and one of them 0:10:33.640 --> 0:10:36.360 is what um girls can do to look in the 0:10:36.400 --> 0:10:41.160 mirror to see who they'll marry. Right, And the idea 0:10:41.600 --> 0:10:44.680 for mental Floss and others is maybe just the word 0:10:44.760 --> 0:10:47.440 mary got kind of twisted up over the years, and 0:10:47.480 --> 0:10:49.600 that's where that came from. That's part of it. And 0:10:49.640 --> 0:10:51.720 then another part is so you're looking in the mirror 0:10:51.760 --> 0:10:54.280 and you're combing your hair and or eating an apple 0:10:54.320 --> 0:10:56.040 at the same time, and then you'll see in the 0:10:56.080 --> 0:10:58.079 mirror over your shoulder the face of the person you're 0:10:58.080 --> 0:11:01.080 gonna marry, but you could all so see a skull, 0:11:01.559 --> 0:11:03.400 and that means you're going to die before you have 0:11:03.440 --> 0:11:06.440 a chance to marry. And so it's possible that that 0:11:06.520 --> 0:11:09.080 and the Mary kind of turned into bloody Mary because 0:11:09.080 --> 0:11:12.120 of the skull. Uh, that's one explanation for where this 0:11:12.200 --> 0:11:17.680 came from. There's another one from that is super Yeah, 0:11:17.679 --> 0:11:19.960 that it might have something to do with, uh, some 0:11:20.040 --> 0:11:25.360 kind of ritual for when an adolescent girl enters her minsies, 0:11:25.679 --> 0:11:30.400 which is called what chuck right? That's right? Really stuck 0:11:30.480 --> 0:11:32.480 with me over the years, Yeah, I did. We both 0:11:32.559 --> 0:11:35.240 learned that one together, and it makes sense in a 0:11:35.320 --> 0:11:38.480 really kind of figurative way, like the whole game is 0:11:38.640 --> 0:11:43.480 really preoccupied with blood. That's one the age of the 0:11:43.480 --> 0:11:46.800 girls who tend to play these games kind of alignes. Yeah, 0:11:46.800 --> 0:11:49.280 it's definitely considered a girls game, and like a late 0:11:49.480 --> 0:11:55.760 pubescent pre irish, say, late prepubescent, early adolescent age time frame, 0:11:56.040 --> 0:11:58.880 so that would be the right time for this game 0:11:58.920 --> 0:12:01.679 to be played too. Yeah, and the last part of 0:12:01.679 --> 0:12:03.920 that one is, uh, something we talked a lot about 0:12:04.559 --> 0:12:07.320 on our episode about that many many years ago, was 0:12:07.760 --> 0:12:09.560 we're kind of like one of the only cultures that 0:12:09.679 --> 0:12:14.680 doesn't have some kind of ritual right of passage for 0:12:14.800 --> 0:12:17.080 girls entering that phase of their life, right, Yeah, and 0:12:17.120 --> 0:12:20.040 then this kind of suggests that like girls still need 0:12:20.080 --> 0:12:22.160 that anyway, even if they're there, they don't live in 0:12:22.200 --> 0:12:25.000 a culture that has it. And this stands in in 0:12:25.160 --> 0:12:29.760 some really weird, roundabout way, which actually find fascinating, very interesting, 0:12:30.200 --> 0:12:33.360 very interesting indeed. So that's Bloody Marry everybody, and we're 0:12:33.400 --> 0:12:38.079 one step closer to Halloween, so be where in the meantime, 0:12:38.400 --> 0:12:41.360 short stuff is out like a bat in the night. 0:12:45.040 --> 0:12:47.360 Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. 0:12:47.880 --> 0:12:50.360 For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart 0:12:50.440 --> 0:12:53.360 Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your 0:12:53.360 --> 0:13:00.600 favorite shows.