Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Bloody Mary

Episode Date: October 20, 2021

In this edition of Short Stuff we may accidentally conjure a deadly spirt, so look out! Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. And we're joined today by our

resident ghost, Bloody Mary. That's right. And we just did a weird thing and recorded our ads first. So I just had the urge to say, if you like Bloody Mary, you're going to love this Bloody Mary. Bloody Mary? You won't love Bloody Mary because that is a scary kids game. It seems like a lot of girls do this, but I know some boys who have done it as well. I have. Where you stand in the mirror and there are variations that we'll talk about. You look in the mirror, it's a darkened room, maybe you've got a candle going. If you're lucky. And you say the words Bloody Mary, a certain amount of times, it varies. Sometimes, sometimes 13 per region. Sometimes you turn in a circle 13 times. I've never heard of that. I would fall over.

That's the Parma, Ohio method. And then depending on how skilled you are at your incantations, Bloody Mary may kill you, may reach through the mirror and pull you in to the nether worlds, may claw your face and eyes out. Yeah. Or you may just die of fright. Or maybe nothing at all. Or she may just be standing there glowering at you, really mad that you brought her to this mirror, but you can't do anything about it. Right. Like, oh, these kids. Yeah. Either way, you're going to go running out of this bathroom and you're going to be talking to your friends about what you saw. And we'll talk about it later, but in a weird way, like they're correct when they say they saw something strange, right? Possibly. Okay. We'll go with yes.

So what's the deal? Where did this thing come from? So that's the other thing about it. It's not just a game, but there's, because there's like a legend wrapped around it and the legend is kind of evolving and changing regionally. And over time, like you were saying, it actually constitutes a piece of American folklore. They're pretty sure it's American, right? And they've actually been studying it here or there, like kind of sporadically, but the first person to actually put it, pen to paper about it was a folklorist named Janet Langloy. That's how I'm going with Langloy. Great last name, look wise, tough to say. You know what? I prefer Langloy. You could say it like that. It's even harder to say.

Langloy. Right. It almost looks like Shammy, but with an L. Oh man. Shammy confused me for the first 30 something years in my life. Why is everybody saying it like that? I knew it as Shammy was, but I never put the two together. Yeah, I know exactly what you mean, but this lady's last name is not Shammy, it's Langloy. That's right. She's a folklorist. Yeah. And I think she sort of just, I mean, it was around, but she was the first person to kind of start writing about it a little bit. And it turns out like because it's regional, there are a bunch of different names besides Bloody Mary. Hell, Mary is one. Mary Worth is hysterical. I think so. That's a full on comic strip. It is one of the weirdest comic strips ever.

Yeah. What was the deal with that? It's like Mark Trail. I don't know. At least Mark Trail was appealing to kids. Nothing about Mary Worth had any appeal to kids. Like they would just be like, what is this? I don't understand any of this. It was a comic strip, a soap opera comic strip for grownups. Very bizarre. Oh, was it for grownups? Totally. And then there was also, I think Apartment 3e was a very similar kind of comic strip. I might have the apartment number wrong, but it was like that. No, thank you. Give me Garfield. Give me Beetle Bailey. Give me Wizard of Id. Don't forget High and Lois. Bloom County. I can do this all day. Zits. Remember, Zits did a comic featuring us. Oh yeah, of course. That was awesome. But Bloody Mary has nothing to

do with any of that, but we should do it on comic strips. It's a great idea. I can't believe we haven't. I knew we did comic books, but not comic strips. We should definitely check. That is a great idea. We'll wind that out here with a few more names that I like. Black Angus is another, and then Svarte Madame. What did they say? Black Angus? Black Agnes. You're right. Right. So all of them are just, they're different names for the same spirit that you can conjure from your mirror if you do this right. And there's a few of those names kind of stand out. A couple of them, really. The first one, Bloody Mary. That's the one I always heard. And if you read about Bloody Mary, a lot of the people who are writing about Bloody Mary trace her to Queen Mary, the

first of England, who ruled from 1555 to 58. And she was actually called Bloody Mary because she was a Protestant killer. That's right. She ordered the death of many Protestants to be burned at the stake and other grisly forms of death. But here's the thing. It's probably not on account of her that we say Bloody Mary because she wasn't doing the actual killing. And in the folklore, it's really Bloody Mary doing the killing, and she bathes in the blood of children and stuff like that. Right. So that doesn't really jibe. It more jibes with somebody else, a woman by a totally different name, Elizabeth Bathory, the countess of blood, I think they call her, who actually is reputed to have killed many, many peasant girls herself and actually did probably bathe in their

blood. And she may actually be the most prolific serial killer in history. So there's like, maybe we're looking at like a mishmash of different names, traits, characters, or it could just be totally coincidental or they don't really know where this thing came from is what I'm saying. Or it was based on Mary Worth, the soap opera comic strip for adults. Right. She's got really boring as the comic strip went on. She's like, no, I might as well start killing kids. Should we take a break? I think so. All right. Let's take a break and we'll talk a little bit more about some of the variations. And

believe it or not, there's sort of a little real science to this one, too. advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation. If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help this. I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me.

Yep. We know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Uh-huh. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention.

Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good.

There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, Chuck, you talked about variations. One thing you can do is spin in a circle 13 times. Another one is you can chant her name a certain amount of times.

Another variation is where you actually prick your finger and make it bleed. And then you press fingers with the person you're doing this with and chant. Don't do that, kids. It's hardcore. And then there's also saying, I believe. I saw in a few variations that you say like, Mary Worth, I believe. Mary Worth, I believe. And that's the chant.

And a kind of matronly, well-dressed, animated woman appears in your mirror and says, what's the bother? And this is the kind of thing that's done at slumber parties and sleepovers. The kids all think they see something. They get scared. Their imagination takes over. But supposedly, there was a little real science to this in that in 2010, a researcher out of Italy named Giovanni Caputto did a little experiment

where he had people stare into a mirror in a dimly lit room for 10 minutes and write down what they saw. And out of the 50 test subjects, very robust. 66% of people said they saw huge deformations of their face. 48% also saw fantastical and monstrous things. And other people said they saw the face of a parent or the face of an animal or an old woman or a child. Yeah.

And I was looking at why that might happen. And apparently one explanation is that your brain becomes sensitized to the visual information it's getting. And because it doesn't need, it's already judged this image at non-thread and it's not food or anything like that. It stops filling in the details. And so visually a deformation occurs in your image of what you're seeing in the mirror. Just because you're staring at it for so long?

Yes. So there actually is science to this idea where the chanting of Bloody Mary doesn't necessarily do anything. Although I don't know, maybe it puts you in something of a trance-like state where this happens on a deeper level or something. But at the very least, we realize that the brain stops filling in details so a deformed version of a face can see. And then you also add in our innate need to fill in patterns

or to find patterns and to see faces in things. So maybe we start inputting stuff in those missing areas and it comes out all monstrous or baby-like. But wouldn't you need for this effect to take place to do it for like 10 minutes and not just say Bloody Mary three times? Yeah, I think that's part of the game is you're supposed to stay in there for longer than just however long it takes to say Bloody Mary three times.

You know, like you maybe use chant Bloody Mary three times and then you just stare until you just are scared and run out of the bathroom. You know what game is a lot more fun than that at a slumber party? How about that game where you go in a closet with someone and, I don't know, kiss in the dark? Sure, sure. Or light as a feather, stiff as a board is pretty awesome. Yeah, but I was probably more scared of kissing a girl in a closet

than I was of incanting Bloody Mary. Right. There was this great article on this. Well, a couple of them. I found some on Penn State University's like folklore site. Mental floss had something good and Snopes did too. But in that mental floss article, they turned up a possible provenance of this game

and linked it to a Robert Burns poem from I think 1786 where I think the poem is called Halloween and Robert Burns is basically giving you party ideas at your next Halloween gathering in the 18th century. And one of them is what girls can do to look in the mirror to see who they'll marry. Right. And the idea for mental floss and others is maybe just the word Mary got kind of twisted up over the years.

And that's where that came from. That's part of it. And then another part is so you're looking in the mirror and you're combing your hair and or eating an apple at the same time. And then you'll see in the mirror over your shoulder, the face of the person you're going to marry. But you could also see a skull. And that means you're going to die before you have a chance to marry.

And so it's possible that that and the Mary kind of turned into Bloody Mary because of the skull. That's one explanation for where this came from. There's another one from 1998 that is super 1998. Yeah, that it might have something to do with some kind of ritual for when an adolescent girl enters her Minzies. Which is called what Chuck? Monarchy, right?

That's right. That word really stuck with me over the years. Yeah, I did. We both learned that one together. And it makes sense in a really kind of figurative way. Like the whole game is really preoccupied with blood. That's one. Sure.

The age of the girls who tend to play these games kind of aligns. Yeah, it's definitely considered a girl's game and like a late pre-pubescent early adolescent age time frame. So that would be the right time for this game to be played to. Yeah. And the last part of that one is something we talked a lot about on our episode about that many, many years ago was we're kind of like one of the only cultures that doesn't have some kind of ritual right of passage for girls

entering that phase of their life. Right? Yeah, and then this kind of suggests that like girls still need that anyway, even if they don't live in a culture that has it. And this stands in in some really weird roundabout way, which I just find fascinating. Very interesting. Very interesting indeed.

So that's Bloody Mary, everybody, and we're one step closer to Halloween. So beware in the meantime, short stuff is out like a bat in the night. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts to my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.