We’re back with another edition of Urban Legend: Fact or Fiction. In this chapter, we are going to dive into mirror-based rituals like Bloody Mary and Candyman. Why do these tales endure? And why is saying their names over and over so terrifying?
The Ritual
“Did you know if you go into your bathroom, turn off all the lights, and say “Bloody Mary” three times into the mirror an angry spirit will appear and attack you? It’s totally true my uncle’s best friend’s hairdresser tried it and now they are in an institution,” some preteen at a slumber party.
Variants
This particular mirror ritual takes on many names like Bloody Mary, Candyman, Lady in White, Mary Worth, etc. No matter the name, the mechanics of the rituals stay roughly the same.
Go into a small familiar space, like a bathroom. Allow for little to no lighting, (some iterations do allow a candle while others ask participants to be in complete darkness), and stare into a mirror. Then repeat one of the aforementioned names 3, 5, 10, 13, 50, or 100 times. If this is done correctly an angry spirit will appear and harm you.
Versions of these mirror rituals date back to the 1700s, albeit a much more wholesome one. These versions had a person’s true love appear in the mirror, but if you displeased the spirits you could see a skull instead. The skull didn’t pop out and murder you or anything, it just indicated that death would soon be upon you. It wasn’t until the 1970s that these tales took on a uniformly sinister tone.
Does it Work?
The answer to whether these rituals work is simultaneously yes and no. No, a spirit will not pop out of the mirror and murder you. Yes, you may see something creepy but odds are it is in your mind and not from the great beyond.
Dr. Caputo of the University of Urbino conducted a study where participants were asked to stare into a mirror in dim lighting for ten minutes:
- 66% of participants experienced huge deformations of their face.
- 28% saw an unknown person.
- 48% saw fantastical and monstrous beings.
Oddly enough, another study showed that participants who suffered from depression saw significantly less of these distortions. Those that did, saw them for a shorter period vs participants without depression.
Participants didn’t have these distortions with reality due to ghosts but with how our minds are wired. Our brains can only process so much information at one time. To focus on day-to-day tasks we often ignore common stimuli like the pattern of your breath or certain ambient noises. Your brain has to redirect focus on what it deems most important, like turning down your car radio if you become lost or hear sirens. Yeah, you could find your way with the radio turned up but it’s much easier when you don’t have to.
This phenomenon was discovered in 1804 by physician and philosopher Ignaz Troxler and named the Troxler Effect.
And our senses do roughly the same thing. So if someone looks into a mirror and focuses on just their eyes, our brains will begin to ignore the other parts of the face since they aren’t what we are focusing on. This can cause facial features to distort and blend into the mirror. This explains the 66% of participants who experienced huge deformations of their faces.
But to top it off, our brains like to fill in things they cannot recognize with things they can recognize. So your mind trying to process the now distorted face may turn it into some long-repressed monster from your childhood. Because our brains just want SOMETHING familiar, it doesn’t care if it’s terrifying or not. This helps explain the 48% that saw fantastical and monstrous beings.
“Just because you think it doesn’t mean that it’s true. Your brain is a little bitch and likes to lie to you,” Elyse Myers
Origins vs Reality
Now you may be wondering where these ghosts came from. Given the countless regional affectations, we’ll just be looking at the two most pervasive spirits, Bloody Mary and Candyman.
Bloody Mary
Bloody Mary has been around for so long that there are countless iterations. The nuts and bolts of the tale typically center around some form of gender-based violence. Like a woman bleeding to death after her face is slashed, or she’s the mother of a murdered baby. Some rituals, typically of the Mary Worth or Mary Whales variety, even have people chant “I have your baby” or “I killed your baby.” While we would never victim blame here, running around saying you’ve killed/abducted a child is bound to have SOME consequences.
Is Bloody Mary Real?
There are several people on whom Mary could be based. The three most pervasive theories are Mary Tudor aka Mary I of England, Elizabeth Bathory, and Mary Worth (the witch not the comic strip).
Mary Tudor
Mary Tudor was born on February 18, 1516, to King Henry VIII and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. The problem was Henry, like most kings, only wanted male heirs to the throne. When his wife failed to birth a boy, he had their marriage nullified in 1533. This made Mary declared illegitimate, and Henry went on to marry Anne Boleyn.
Eventually, Mary went on to become the Queen of England. Using her power to reinstate Catholicism as the true religion. This coupled with her initially being an unwed queen (she married Philip II of Spain in 1545) made her the subject of a lot of scrutiny. However, when she ordered 280 Protestants to be burned at the stake as heretics, she was given the name Bloody Mary.
There is a lot of evidence suggesting that Mary’s nickname was a wild exaggeration, but that doesn’t change the court of public opinion, let alone legends.
It’s also been reported that she broke all her mirrors when she found out she had entered menopause, rendering her unable to birth an heir to the throne. Strengthening the possibility this ritual is (at least semi) based on her.
Elizabeth Bathory
Elizabeth Báthory is another possible inspiration for our bloodthirsty ghost. Deemed the Blood Countess she was a noblewoman with familial ties to the King of Poland. Bathory was rumored to have killed up to 600 female servants and noblewomen. Women that she took in and was supposed to be educating. She is accused of torturing these women in various cruel cruel ways like using them as insect bait, and genital mutilation.
What she is probably best known for is the rumors that she bathed in the blood of her victims to maintain her youth. However, historians are quick to point out that these claims popped up 100 years after her death, lending some doubt to their validity.
Mary Worth
Mary Worth was a woman who was burned at the stake after being accused of witchcraft. Some claim she was burned for witchcraft after being caught torturing slaves, but no one can explain how the two would be connected. Little is known about her beyond that obviously shotty tale. Many have speculated that Worth wasn’t even a real person. Just an amalgamation of several women who suffered similar fates.
Any of these three women could have produced a vengeful ghost if even half of their stories were true. How their lives morphed into the stories read above is anyone’s guess. Though we’d wager it’s a game of telephone where detail after detail was distorted until nothing looks the same. Kind of like looking at your face too long in the mirror.
Candyman
Candyman’s origins are significantly more straightforward considering the legend didn’t exist until Bernard Rose’s 1992 film of the same name. The film is based on Clive Barker’s short story, “The Forbidden,” with Barker staying intentionally vague about the creature’s origins.
Candyman’s origin story is directly explained in the film when Professor Purcell (Michael Culkin) tells the tale to Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen). Our vengeful spirit was born to an enslaved woman in the late 1800s. Eventually, he became a great artist and was hired to paint a portrait of a white woman, and the pair fell in love. When she became pregnant with his child, her father sent a lynch mob after him. Once caught, they sawed off his hand and smeared him with honey from a nearby apiary. Causing him to be stung to death and garnering his ever-so-sweet moniker. (Note the Elizabeth Bathory flair to the tale)
His body was then burned and the ashes were spread over what ended up becoming the Cabrini-Green apartment complex, which his spirit now haunts. This backstory was developed by actor Tony Todd who portrays our namesake ghost.
In the 2021 remake, this was altered to a man who was falsely suspected of putting a razor blade in candy given to a white child. Both tales focus heavily on racial injustice and profiling. While also borrowing from other classic urban legends like the hook hand killer, tainted candy, and the Bloody Mary-style ritual that runs through both films.
Is Candyman Real?
Like Bloody Mary, the Candyman legend may also be based on a real person. In 1987 Ruth McCoy was killed in her apartment when a burglar snuck in through a false wall behind her medicine cabinet. These walls were put in the Chicago Housing Authority building she lived in to make assessing plumbing issues easier.
The issue is people soon discovered they could climb through them and began moving about the building via the insides of walls. Some residents even went so far as to barricade their bathrooms at night to prevent break-ins. Despite the complex being aware of the issue, nothing was done. Making McCoy’s death sadly preventable.
As you can see the origin of these mirror rituals ranges from murky to crystal clear. With both resting their bases on the ongoing issues of racial and gender inequality. Concepts that unfortuneatly stay relevant with each generation.
Print Sources Used
- Brunvand, J. H. “I Believe in Mary Worth.” In Encyclopedia of Urban Legends, W. W. Norton and Company, 2001, pp. 205-206.
- Brunvand, J. H. “I Believe in Mary Worth.” The Mexican Pet, W. W. Norton and Company, 1986, pp. 80-82.
- Brunvand, J. H. “Bloody Mary.” Be Afraid Be Very Afraid, W. W. Norton and Company, 2004, pp. 66-67.
- Campbell, Micah. “Bloody Mary.” Urban Legends Ghost Stories And Folklore, Self Published, 2022, pp. 115-125
