Lunatics Radio Hour: The History of Horror
Lunatics Radio Hour is a non-fiction history podcast about the history of horror and the horror of history. Each episode explores real, documented events where fear, violence, survival, and the unknown shaped human lives and cultures. The show also traces how historical events influenced film, examining how real-world horrors became the stories and images that appear on screen.
Topics include dark history, psychological phenomena, folklore rooted in fact, and the historical roots of horror cinema. Most episodes focus on researched historical subjects. Occasional short fiction stories are included and clearly labeled.
If you’re drawn to the darker side of history and the real events behind horror films, Lunatics Radio Hour explores where history, fear, and cinema intersect.
Lunatics Radio Hour: The History of Horror
Episode 129 - The Real History Behind Bloody Mary
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Are your sleepovers complete without the chilling game of Bloody Mary? The game's origins are steeped in mystery, intrigue, and eerie folklore. In this episode, we unravel the stories of three historical women who potentially inspired this bone-chilling game. From the turbulent reign of Queen Mary the First to the bloodcurdling tales of Elizabeth Bathory and the enigmatic Mary Worth, we walk you through the bloody corridors of history.
Imagine a time when King Henry the Eighth severed ties with the catholic church, setting in motion a series of events that shaped the course of history. Delve into the reign of his daughter, Queen Mary I, infamous for her attempts to restore Catholicism and her reign of terror. You will also hear about the chilling tales associated with Elizabeth Bathory, a noblewoman speculated to have bathed in virgin blood for eternal youth. Then, peruse the life of Mary Worth, whose narrative sways between hero and villain, adding an intriguing layer to the Bloody Mary folklore.
Do you know about the Toxler's fading effect? This episode dives into its connection with horror genre in relation to midnight rituals. Exploring its representation in classic horror films, and the modern depiction of the Bloody Mary ritual in popular video games, we take a chilling journey into the murky depths of horror lore. So, buckle up for an episode that promises to keep you on the edge of your seat, daring you to face the enigmatic and horrifying history of Bloody Mary. Tune in now, if you dare!
lunaticsproject.com
Get Lunatics Merch here. Join the discussion on Discord. Listen to the paranormal playlist I curate for Vurbl, updated weekly! Check out Abby's book Horror Stories. Available in eBook and paperback. Music by Michaela Papa, Alan Kudan & Jordan Moser. Poster Art by Pilar Keprta @pilar.kep.
Check out the work of our friend Sheldon Higdon here.
Sources
- The Myth of Bloody Mary by Meilan Solly on SmithsonianMagazine.com
- History.com article, How Henry the VIII’s Divorce Led to Reformation by Sarah Pruitt.
- History.com article, What Inspired Bloody Mary’s Gruesome Nickname? By Una Mcilvenna.
- The Ghost in My Machine article on Bloody Mary
- A Mental Floss Article by Emily Petsko Bloody Mary: Why We Think We See Faces in The Mirror
- Wikipedia and Britannica.com
- Thanks to April Brenker for research help!
Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Lunatics Radio Hour podcast. Happy, almost Halloween. I'm Abby Branker sitting here with Alan Kudan.
Speaker 2Hello.
Speaker 1And today we are talking about the history of the sleepover game Bloody Mary.
Speaker 2Uh-huh.
Speaker 1For some reason, you're very skeptical of this topic.
Speaker 2Yes, how is this an entire topic?
Speaker 1It clearly didn't have the emotional impact on you and childhood as it did on me.
Speaker 2No, I did not even learn about this until I met you.
Speaker 1Okay, well, for anyone who doesn't know, we're going to get into it, but Bloody Mary is essentially a sleepover game that I played a lot growing up. Like you would play a Ouija board in light as a feather, stiff as a board, right that kind of thing.
Speaker 2Yeah, another thing I didn't learn about until meeting you.
Speaker 1You had such a conservative childhood.
Speaker 2Yes, yes, I did.
Speaker 1Thank God, you met me and we can unravel it all together.
Speaker 2Man, it all worked out.
Speaker 1Listen, this is our Halloween series for a reason.
Speaker 2No, I understand that, which really ups the stakes. Every Halloween we do something special, of course. So you know, sometimes we do the radio dramas, other times we did what? The scary scuffle that was a Halloween thing.
Speaker 1Yeah, or we've done like deep dives into franchises.
Speaker 2We did the Halloween movie franchise breakdown, which was ambitious.
Speaker 1Honestly a highlight of my life.
Speaker 2Although not as ambitious as the Kaiju series.
Speaker 1Thank you guys for still being here. What a dry series.
Speaker 2I can just unplug this right now.
Speaker 1Listen, that one was for you, this one's for me.
Speaker 2Okay, fair, I'm skeptical, not just about ghosts, but also about how much there really is to this childhood game. Is it going to be really spooky?
Speaker 1Shall, I give you my thesis statement.
Speaker 2Yes, give me your thesis statement.
Speaker 1Just okay, this is going to be good because it's going to ground everybody. And what's going to happen today?
Speaker 2Yeah, that's what I need. I need to come back down to earth. Thank you.
Speaker 1Okay, so my thesis statement is that this game, bloody Mary, is actually inspired by a historic woman, and there's three different historic women that could have inspired this, and there's a lot to their story and maybe some wrongful reputation that they have. Two of them are super famous.
Speaker 2Okay.
Speaker 1One there's less known about. So the focus today is really going to be on these pretty intense. It is history, so I'll give you that it's going to be very history based today. However, it's pretty rock and roll history.
Speaker 2Okay, I mean, yeah, I'm here. You've booked me for the next 90 minutes, so let's 90 minutes.
Speaker 1You need more than that.
Speaker 2Yeah, it cuts down, don't worry All right.
Speaker 1So before we jump into that, though, we have two announcements. One our incredibly talented friend Pilar Kep has designed some epic. I hate to say it, but maybe one of my favorite merch designs that we have ever had. If you head to lunaticsprojectcom, click on merch. Well, of course, link it in the description of this episode, but we have the coolest Bloody Mary merch.
Speaker 2And now and I know that you like it- so I know this was supposed to be a surprise, until you just sent me a photo of like BTS, of some voiceover recordings, and it was all just hanging in the background.
Speaker 1Yeah, that was my bad.
Speaker 2Yeah, but holy cow, it's really freaking cool.
Speaker 1So cool, you're wearing it now.
Speaker 2I am. It's a really cool shirt. It says Bloody Mary all over it. Am I proud to rep Bloody Mary? I don't know yet, but I am very proud to rep this design because it's just a cool shirt.
Speaker 1Yeah, and Pilar Kep is just one of the best that there is. It's so cool.
Speaker 2Not to mention there's a whole bonus doppelganger design.
Speaker 1That's right. So Pilar worked with us on Bloody Mary design and a doppelganger design. So we have sweatshirts, t-shirts, tote bags, on and on available in our merch store Again, lunaticsprojectcom click on merch in the top right of the webpage. The second announcement is that our friend, Sheldon Higdon, whose his work has been featured on our lunatics library series in the past, has a new book available. It's perfect for Halloween. It's called the Eerie Brothers and the Witches of Autumn and you can head to SheldonHigdoncom to order your copy. And again, he has a story on our doppelganger, speaking of doppelganger, our doppelganger stories episode. So good, so well written and I'm so, so, so excited to dig into his book.
Speaker 2I knew there was a reason we are dropping the doppelganger designs now.
Speaker 1Exactly, very well timed.
Speaker 2That's great. This is the perfect time of year to pick up some spooky books.
Speaker 1Yeah, support some indie writers. It's like win-win.
Speaker 2I'm about to finish another spooky thing and I'm on to the next, so that's my next read.
Speaker 1That's up in the queue for you and I have a copy for you waiting.
Speaker 2Excellent, thank you.
Speaker 1You're welcome.
Speaker 2Okay, are there more announcements? Or can you tell me how boring Bloody Mary is?
Speaker 1All right, let's get into it For our sources the Myth of Bloody Mary by Maylan Sully on Smithsonian Magazinecom, a Historycom article. How Henry VIII's Divorce Led to Reformation. By Sarah Pruitt, another Historycom article, what Inspired Bloody Mary's Gruesome Nickname? By Una Mikkelvenna. And I also have to mention so, one of my favorite blogs, the Ghost in my Machine, which just has information and instructions and all of these sort of what I call Midnight Rituals. So a few articles from that blog, but especially the one on Bloody Mary, a Mental Floss article by Emily Petsko, bloody Mary why we Think we See Faces in the Mirror. Wikipedia and Britannicacom. And I also want to say a big, big thank you to April Branker for help on researching this episode.
Speaker 2Wait a minute, didn't we? We talked about Bloody Mary ones before, because we did an episode on Midnight Rituals.
Speaker 1We did very, very long ago. I don't know that I would recommend it to people to go back and find it.
Speaker 2Okay, so I was not sold on our Midnight Rituals episode, but that was also before we figured out how to do history stuff, yeah. So I know, maybe it's just going to be better this time.
Speaker 1This is my second chance. After this, I'm caught off.
Speaker 2I mean no, a third time's a charm.
Speaker 1Oh, that's generous of you. So for anyone unfamiliar, bloody Mary is a popular sleepover game, and at least in parts of the United States, because again it seems like it didn't make its way to Alan's hometown.
Speaker 2Maybe I don't know.
Speaker 1Or you didn't get invited to any sleepovers.
Speaker 2No, I mean, I knew about Ouija boards or Ouija, but that was it. I was not in a crowd of spooky things.
Speaker 1Did you ever use a Ouija board?
Speaker 2Yes.
Speaker 1What was your experience like? Lame All right, I've got a lot of work to do here today.
Speaker 2Yeah, good luck.
Speaker 1So Bloody Mary again, is similar in nature to light as a feather, stiff as a board or little boy blue the instructions-.
Speaker 2Little boy blue it's very similar.
Speaker 1For those of our listeners that don't remember what the fuck little boy blue is so you rock your arms as if you're holding a baby and you chant the phrase blue baby, blue, baby 13 times. Baby blue, blue, baby, baby, blue 13 times.
Speaker 2Okay, and what does that do?
Speaker 1I guess you should do it and see what happens. All of these are meant to like summon things right. They're summoning rituals.
Speaker 2It's meant to summon a baby. To summon, what A ghost baby. Yeah, a ghost baby.
Speaker 1Okay.
Speaker 2Where does it come from? The other side Well, there's just like a it's so disappointing if you're like a baby and like if you're a ghost and you're also stuck as a baby, it's like what are you gonna do? Like, do you still need like a ghost adult to like help, you do shit.
Speaker 1Just cry. I'm confused all the time.
Speaker 2Yeah, like that's so upsetting.
Speaker 1It's terrible Okay.
Speaker 2Like you can't even haunt people without help.
Speaker 1Well, maybe you know what, Maybe they're just a projection of a thing, maybe they're not sentient.
Speaker 2Like a real so like a real baby.
Speaker 1Okay, so let's go back to Bloody Mary. The instructions are simple. You walk into a bathroom. Sometimes it's complete darkness, sometimes with a candle or two burning. I like to play it with one candle burning it's the most dramatic option.
Speaker 2Okay, single source lighting.
Speaker 1That's right. You look into the mirror and you say her name three times, though there is a variation where you say it 13 times, but that feels very excessive.
Speaker 2Is there a distance that the candle should be?
Speaker 1No.
Speaker 2So the foot candles don't matter.
Speaker 1What's a foot candle?
Speaker 2What's a foot candle? A foot candle is a measurement of light, so the foot candle.
Speaker 1You're talking okay.
Speaker 2So for those that do not know, one foot candle is the amount of light a candle puts out. One foot away. Light goes off a parabolic curve, so it's not just like a one-to-one ratio, it goes off a well, the inverse square. So the inverse square law is basically a way of describing when you have like a point source that expands in all directions. So, like you know, sound works the same way where, if you are, if you increase the distance from something, you double it. Right, you would need to take the inverse square. So if you're two times the as far from something, you would have to, the intensity goes down by a factor of four. Because you're taking the inverse square of that, because it's radiating in all directions, you're losing a lot of intensity by moving further away from it.
Speaker 1I understand. I don't think it applies to the sleepover game, bloody Mary.
Speaker 2Copy that Moving on.
Speaker 1I tried to do some research into early versions of this game because it seems that they are a little bit different.
Speaker 2Okay, when did it start?
Speaker 1The days of yore.
Speaker 2Yore.
Speaker 1It's the best I can do you right now.
Speaker 2Okay.
Speaker 1But women, I would say, in like the Victorian era perhaps, would do this ritual.
Speaker 2So it was a parlor game.
Speaker 1Sort of yeah.
Speaker 2So this is back when people had parlors.
Speaker 1And they would actually walk upstairs backwards with a candle lit and when they got to the mirror they would turn and look into a mirror and the whole point of it was that they were hoping to get a glimpse of their future husband's face.
Speaker 2What.
Speaker 1As a way to sort of predict their future, but from time to time someone would see a skull or the grim reaper instead, which is a sign that they would die before marriage.
Speaker 2No, that's a bummer.
Speaker 1Yeah, the modern version, right. The version that I played as a kid was that you were summoning Bloody Mary, which was sort of a vague. There's tons of different variations, right, and in some it's that your face turns bloody, and others it's a demonic woman behind you, like. There's all kinds of different versions and points to this game, but the idea is that you're invoking her and she will appear in the mirror. So it's important that you're in a bathroom, really because of your access to the mirror.
Speaker 2And this is just one woman that appears in everyone's bathrooms.
Speaker 1That's the idea.
Speaker 2Like the Santa Claus of mirrors.
Speaker 1Sure, but she's not, you know, earthbound, so she has a lot of flexibility there.
Speaker 2I would argue that Santa is not earthbound either.
Speaker 1Okay.
Speaker 2He flies yeah but he's not. Well, he doesn't fly, the reindeer fly.
Speaker 1Spirit. Okay, so this is a form of catopteromancy which I'm definitely mispronouncing Catopteromancy. What happens when you say catopteromancy 13 times Okay?
Speaker 2You get smarter. What is it?
Speaker 1I'm going to tell you Divination using a mirror.
Speaker 2Oh, that's cool.
Speaker 1So mirror divination can literally be traced back to the earliest times of humanity. We're not going to linger on this for too long, but historically it was very popular in ancient Greece, rome and Egypt, with Druids and pagans, and in China and India.
Speaker 2Remember when you had your lithomancy? Yeah, the oldest form of divination, we're told.
Speaker 1Yeah, that was actually strangely accurate.
Speaker 2This was, yeah, he definitely appeared to be a charlatan, but he seemed to have his lithomancy down. He just threw his rocks and he looked at those little rocks and apparently he gave you an amazing reading.
Speaker 1He gave me a lot of advice about Lunatics project.
Speaker 2He said hold off until Halloween 2023 for the Bloody Mary episode.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2I know you're chomping at the bit for it, but here it is, at last.
Speaker 1So in some cases, like in India, it was thought that the mirror could reveal the past, present and future. In other societies, like in Rome, it was believed that a mirror could be a way to receive a message from the gods.
Speaker 2I mean, I guess when you're looking in a mirror, you are technically looking into the past.
Speaker 1There you go, nerd joke. Very small fraction of the past. The Bloody Mary ritual has evolved away from the marriage angle. Today, quoting from Wikipedia, quote the law surrounding the ritual states that participants may endure the apparition Screaming at them, cursing them, strangling them, stealing their soul, drinking their blood or scratching their eyes out. Some variations of the ritual called Bloody Mary by a different name Hell Mary and Mary worth our popular examples.
Speaker 2Hell Mary. Hell Mary as an he double hockey stick. Mary hell, okay, I have one question. Okay, when one witnesses Mary drinking his or her own blood?
Speaker 1What.
Speaker 2She have like a cup and you just like, you're like mmm, that looks like be positive, that's mine.
The Origin of Bloody Mary
Speaker 1No, alan. Okay, get into a horror movie mindset for a second. Okay, think of this creatively, because you're a very creative horror filmmaker. You are invoking a spirit.
Speaker 1Uh-huh and you're standing in front of a mirror, there's one light on, there's maybe a group of you know eighth graders outside the door, so scared, and the idea is that whatever happens, you have to endure it. Right, so she's gonna come, she's gonna beat the shit out of you, whatever happens, you see in the mirror, and then the kind of like legend is that okay, so say, she comes and scratches you. You leave the bathroom with actual scratches.
Speaker 1I see so it's like it happened in the mirror, but then your body sort of has the imprint of of the trauma of what happened in the mirror.
Speaker 2I'm still hung up on this her drinking your blood thing.
Speaker 1Okay, so say she's sort of like a vampire.
Speaker 2Ah, okay.
Speaker 1Standing behind you, or she scratches you and then she takes your blood in and then you exit there and bleeding.
Speaker 2I see, okay, you know gotcha, yeah, so it's not like a chalice of no, but that's like a very bizarre place for your.
Speaker 1Your think of this, think of your eyes are Crying blood and she licks it off your face. How about that?
Speaker 2Like a dog.
Speaker 1Like a dog, yep. There are several theories to the origins of the Bloody Mary folklore and ritual. The biggest theory is that this can be traced back to the Violence of Queen Mary the first, who we will talk about today, and Queen Mary the first was actually known as Bloody Mary.
Speaker 2Okay, it was a nickname she was given cool another theory and hang on. Do we know anything about her and why she got that name?
Speaker 1Yeah, we're gonna talk about it at length.
Speaker 2That's great, because that sounds interesting great.
Speaker 1The next theory is Elizabeth Bathory, who's one of my favorite historical figures fucking rock and roll.
Speaker 2You know who Elizabeth Bathory is course I know who Elizabeth Bathory is. She's she was the namesake of one of the greatest black metal bands ever made and the third theory is Mary Worth.
Speaker 1So we're gonna talk about all three women that were mostly gonna focus on Queen Mary and Elizabeth Bathory, because that's who we know the most about. Cool, here we go back in time.
Speaker 2What can you make a back travel back in time sound? I Like the slowdown at the end there, so you didn't overshoot the time period.
Speaker 1So let's talk about Queen Mary. Mary is known for being incredibly bold, ambitious and cutthroat. Mary the first was born on February 18th 1516 a great year. She was the daughter of the infamous King Henry the eighth and Catherine of Aragon, and of course, king Henry the eighth Famously had a bunch of wives that he kept killing because he couldn't get a male heir. There's tons of representation of this part of history Everywhere. There's even a Broadway musical about it right now, really called six.
Speaker 2Oh, did you see it? Yeah, was it good.
Speaker 1Yeah, took my mom, my sister, so Mary was the only one of their children to survive into adulthood.
Speaker 2Why.
Speaker 1Because back then there was lots of disease and death fair reason and of course, she was not the male heir that King Henry famously sought. Mm-hmm but Mary wasn't unloved. Her father famously boasted that Mary never cried as Early as age two. Mary's father had negotiated future marriages for her, the first to a newborn son of King Francis, the first of France.
Speaker 2It's a lot of the word France in there.
Speaker 1But this fell through. A few years later, when he was six and she was 22, mary was promised to her cousin, although this also fell through.
Speaker 2She was promised to her cousin.
Speaker 1Yeah times were different back.
Speaker 2Oh for marriage. Yeah got you first cousin.
Speaker 1Probably, and these are just two examples. At the time, right marriages, especially those of the ruling class, were negotiated as alliances. Hmm, when Henry the ace marriage to Catherine of Aragon was annulled, it was an order to pursue his relationship with Anne Boleyn. His daughter, mary, went from a princess to a lady.
Speaker 2That sounds like a Downgrade correct. What is a? What is a lady?
Speaker 1It's like a lord a lady, a lord a Duke. I see this is also important because it caused Henry to break from the Catholic Church, which is an incredibly pivotal and historic moment, that sort of shaped history since why?
Speaker 2why did he break from the church?
Speaker 1Because the church here? Let me tell you why okay. I'm gonna quote from the history comm article by Sarah Pruitt because it illustrates the hypocrisy here and we're in France, right. England.
Speaker 2England. So why are we talking about France?
Speaker 1that she was Supposed to marry, that.
Speaker 2Ah, gotcha, but that was not, that was the cousin.
Speaker 1No, that was it. I gave you two examples I one was her cousin, one was the future king of France.
Speaker 2Oh yeah, but if I had a choice between Future King of France and my cousin?
Religious Shifts and Unfortunate Circumstances
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, that's a no brainer Quote. When Martin Luther issued grievances about the Catholic Church in 1517, king Henry the eighth took it upon himself to personally repudiate the arguments of the Protestant Reformation leader. The Pope rewarded Henry with a lofty title a fidet Defensor, or defender of the faith. Barely a decade later, the very same Henry the eighth would break decisively with the Catholic Church, accept the role of supreme head of the Church of England and dissolve the nation's monasteries, absorbing and redistributing their massive property as he saw fit, and quote so Henry, who was a very devout man of God, very Catholic, suddenly disavowed from the church in order to dissolve his marriage with his wife so that he could marry Anne Boleyn, who had captured his attention and refused to come his mistress.
Speaker 1So I'm just gonna pause here to say that England was Europe, really was very Catholic, right, and there was these rumblings of Protestantism. Henry grew up very, very Catholic. The whole country of England was Catholic. He could not get a divorce because he was Catholic. So suddenly he was Protestant and he was able to annul his marriage under Protestant religion. And so he essentially changed the religion of the country so that he could divorce his wife and, all it's sorry annul his marriage and Marry his mistress.
Speaker 2What is the difference between annulment and the divorce?
Speaker 1Nothing in practice is the definition is like usually you can get an annulment if, for some reason, the marriage wasn't valid, right, so if it's like the next day and you were out of Vegas wedding, or if it's like Somebody who wasn't coherent or you know whatever, it's like a kind of to say, oh, that didn't count. Right, but that but this is like a bullshit. This clearly was a divorce. I see okay, but we're calling it an annulment.
Speaker 2I, you can, I will.
Speaker 1In college actually took a class on the history of theology. This move by Henry was one of the things that really turned me off to all religion, because it Was a realization of how political all of these things really are, you know welcome to the team. This also calls to mind some of our episodes on pagan holidays and how you can trace back Christian holidays to their pagan roots.
Speaker 2So when.
Speaker 1Exactly a political decision at the time to help influence pagans and keep the peace right, as paganism and Catholicism or Christianity were starting to meld. A lot of the time it wasn't like, okay, we're just going to follow Catholic holidays. It was like, okay, let's figure out a way to sort of meld these things to keep the peace in this country. So that's why I find it all super interesting. Yeah, listen to our history of Salwin episode right now, especially because it's all about Halloween.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's a shame the, the religion of all the people in midsummer, didn't catch on. That be fun.
Speaker 1You love that movie. Not as much as hereditary par for the course I did.
Speaker 2it was good but I don't know the the bar was set too high with hereditary.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's fair. But back to Henry the eighth. His argument was that his marriage to Catherine was not valid Because she was the widow of his brother. So before Catherine was married to King Henry the eighth, she was actually married to his brother who died. So he sang because you, she was married to my brother. This doesn't count. This was all bullshit. Okay, even though they had multiple kids together, and Murray was one of them.
Speaker 2Okay.
Speaker 1Typically, this sort of thing happened quite often. Oh but the issue with this situation was that the papacy at the time was under imperial law. So earlier that year 1527, the Holy Roman Empire had attacked Rome and forced the Pope to flee, meaning the Holy Roman Emperor was King Charles V of Spain, who happened to be related to Catherine.
Speaker 2I mean, imperial law is just so convoluted, it's all just messed up with the byproducts of the Trade Federation. Just don't even get me started.
Speaker 1Understandably, the Pope did not want to allow the king to divorce the emperor's aunt Right. So again this gets all more complicated, because in this situation it would have been a bad political move for the Pope to grant this divorce or this annulment, because he would have pissed off this imperial leader who was related to Catherine Right. So again, it's all fucking politics.
Speaker 2I'm so confused. So like this guy had a daughter who's going to go on to become Bloody Mary, Correct. But he's trying to get the marriage annulled and it's complicated for political reasons.
Speaker 1Well, he does get the marriage annulled.
Speaker 2I'm just giving you the background he does and this makes all this is to say that Mary has an unhappy home.
Speaker 1Well, here I think it's also interesting, but okay, so as a workaround, henry appoints someone amenable to his cause.
Speaker 2Thomas Cranmer, a Protestant, oh fucking Thomas, the ultimate yes, man.
Speaker 1As the Archbishop of Canterbury who in turn, allows this divorce or this annulment. In 1533, Henry married a very pregnant ambulane and in 1534, Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy which appointed King Henry VIII as the head of the Church of England. An official break from the Catholic Church Tours Protestantism.
Speaker 2Oh, wow.
Speaker 1And again, I promise that all this is related to Bloody Mary, but I do think that it's interesting to talk about the history, even though not all of it is spooky, because it gives you a lot of landscape for what Mary's going to do. That gives her this reputation of Bloody Mary and being hyperviolent. You need to kind of understand the political landscape to understand her, the weight of what she does while she's in power.
Speaker 2Okay, I think I follow so far. Hang on. So what year are we up to? When was she born?
Speaker 1She's born in the early 1500s. We're now in like the 1530s, okay.
Speaker 2Oh, so she's 30 something 20, 30 something yeah 20,. She's just 20, 30 something yeah.
Speaker 1So back to Mary. Mary spent about three years on the Welsh Marshes where her father had loosely assigned her to the Council of Wales and the Marshes though. It's believed that this was largely an empty position. But what a fun position.
Speaker 2What was the name of it?
Speaker 1The Council of Wales and the Marshes.
Speaker 2Yeah, but that's like Wales is the country, not the animal, but still like her job is just to like, tend the marshes. I can't tell you how disappointed I was when I found out that Princess Diana, princess of Wales, had nothing to do with the animal. Like that's fucking cool.
Speaker 1That would be cool. Again. When the divorce of her parents went through, mary's title of princess was taken from her and given to Henry and ambulance daughter Elizabeth. Mary is called the Lady Mary. Henry kept Mary isolated from her mother, who he had sent away. She's next sent to live at her infant half-sister's house, and all of her servants and their lavish lifestyle is taken away from her.
Speaker 2The infant half-sister owned the house.
Speaker 1It was her house, yeah.
Speaker 2Okay, yeah, that's good. Just yeah, send pawn them off on the infant half-sister. That seems like good parenting.
Speaker 1These are like the princesses of the land, like there's so much wealth running around here.
Speaker 2Or crawling.
Speaker 1So, understandably, mary's pissed right. She went from being the princess of England, with her father boasting about her to his friends, to basically cast aside, stripped of her title and removed from any resources. So she's pissed.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1She continues to rock the boat by refusing to acknowledge that Anne was the Queen of England or that Elizabeth was a princess. So she's pretty vocal, she's contrarian, she's like fuck this, I won't stand for this.
Speaker 2Sounds like someone I know.
Speaker 1Who.
Speaker 2Alan Mary.
Speaker 1Mary is also frequently ill as an adult, which we can only speculate about why.
Speaker 2Right, because her caretaking was done by a child.
Speaker 1But her and her father do not speak for over three years, and she was not allowed to see her mother, even though both women were often sick. Eventually, Catherine of Aragon died in 1536, leaving Mary depressed and isolated. Also in 1536, Anne Boleyn is beheaded by King Henry VIII. What a turn of events.
Speaker 2So this is her mom.
Speaker 1So Mary's mother dies right.
Speaker 1Yeah, and then Anne Boleyn, who's the woman that Henry left her mom for. He also beheads because he grows sort of tired of her and she doesn't produce a male heir. So this is not relevant to this episode, but he sort of sends some like PIs in to dig up a bunch of fake bullshit about her. That isn't true. And then he beheads her so that he can be free to marry again. So he says oh, she's a traitor, she betrayed me, kills her and now. So that's why he ends up with six wives. Right, he gets crafty with how he gets there.
Speaker 2I see this is wild. Like you know what, I am going to change the religion of an entire country just to get a divorce. But I can also just like behead my wife, like nothing Willi. Nilly Fun.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's fucking crazy.
Speaker 2This makes no sense.
Speaker 1This is the patriarchy 101,.
Speaker 2my friend, this is 101? Yeah, fuck.
Speaker 1And so Henry had also fallen in love with Jane Seymour, who is next on his list of wives. Jane really wanted Henry to make peace with Mary. Quoting from Wikipedia, quote Henry insisted that Mary recognize him as the head of the Church of England, repudiate people authority, acknowledge that the marriage between her parents was unlawful and accept her own illegitimacy. She attempted to reconcile with Henry by submitting to his authority as far as God and my conscious permitted, but was eventually bullied into signing a document agreeing to all of Henry's demands. End quote. And thus Mary was back in the game, ie. She went back to court and was given a house and some servants, including her favorite lady in waiting, and one of her favorite hobbies was gambling at cards.
Speaker 2Gambling at cards Indeed.
Speaker 1All right, I've set the stage. Things are going to get interesting now you ready?
Speaker 2Because we're real. We're real in the weeds, here.
Speaker 1Okay, here we go. I know I acknowledge it Eventually after the death of Henry.
Speaker 2Her dad.
Speaker 1And three more stepmothers what? Her younger half-brother, edward IV, takes the throne, essentially skipping Mary in line, and she's like fuck this. So, after everything that she's lived through her father, there's three more stepmothers.
Speaker 2That come to be All of the kids, or were they wicked?
Speaker 1All of the kids that come from that and most of these women die. Henry dies and then her Mary's little brother gets the throne and she's like fuck this.
Speaker 2Was this the infant half-brother that raised her?
Speaker 1No.
Speaker 2So this guy, this baby that put it all to work gets nothing. This is the real crime.
Speaker 1When Edward dies, six years later he tries to pass power to his Protestant cousin, Lady Jane Gray.
Speaker 2Why is it relevant that they're Protestant if the whole country was Protestant now?
Speaker 1Because they've sort of drank the Kool-Aid. Right now they're Protestant.
Speaker 2Right, everyone's Protestant.
Speaker 1But Mary's going to try to bring back Catholicism why?
Speaker 2Mary, come on.
Speaker 1Quoting from the Smithsonian article quote Though Mary could have sought refuge with family members in Europe, she chose to remain in England and fight for what was rightfully hers. Alluding the armies of her antagonists, she rallied support from nobles across the country and marched on London. Mary and Elizabeth rode into England's capital side by side. So that's their little half-baby, one as a queen and the other as queen and waiting.
Speaker 2There's a half-baby.
Speaker 1Whatever the baby you're obsessed with.
Speaker 2Oh, the infant half-sister. Correct, gotcha, not half-baby.
Speaker 1But yeah, so I'm going to reiterate what I just said, because I know you've been distracted.
Speaker 1So, mary, you don't say and Elizabeth, right, they endure the stupid little brother in the throne, even though Mary's really the rightful successor. She's the oldest but because of all this political bullshit she was not given the throne. So she sort of goes about England, she canvases for herself with her sister and they ride on London, conquer London as queen and queen and waiting, sort of saying I will next be queen, this is my vice queen or whatever the next in the line.
Speaker 2Fucking vice queen sounds cool.
Speaker 1And here we go, okay.
Speaker 2I wasn't aware that two very disenfranchised women were able to just walk in and claim a country.
Speaker 1Yeah, I think totally valid point. Totally also not hard for the course. I think the reason they probably had so much success and this is purely speculation on my part is because of how much people were frustrated with King Henry V because of his antics. Also, right, because there were nobles out there who were Catholic and, of course, really wanted to seek Catholicism returned to England.
Speaker 2I see, okay, so they're probably.
Speaker 1all the other nobles are like yeah, dude, you deserve it. Cool, that's my theory.
Speaker 2No, and that's where we're sticking to it.
Speaker 1So Mary remained in power for five years short reign. She was the first English queen to come into power on her own, versus being the wife of a king. Quoting again from the Smithsonian article quote she prioritized religion above all else, implementing reforms and restrictions aimed at restoring the Catholic Church's ascendancy in England.
Speaker 2She was so close, so close as being this really cool woman, and then, bam, no, you know what? Let's just give it all back to the Pope.
Speaker 1Most controversially, she ordered 280 Protestants burned at the stake as heretics, a fact that would later cement her reputation as Bloody Mary.
Speaker 2I think the first question that comes to mind is it 280 individual stakes or one really big one?
Speaker 1280 individual stakes.
Speaker 2It's not nearly as fun. They could go full wicker man, you know, just put them all in there.
Speaker 1You're really into a mass murder situation.
Speaker 2If you're gonna do it, just do it, don't half-ass it.
Speaker 1Mary died in 1542. She had not produced an heir, and thus the crown went to Elizabeth, the queen, in waiting. She also did a lot of work around financial reform, exploration and expanding the navy, so let's talk a little bit about expanding the navy. Her violent history. She also invented the submarine Could you imagine, we found schematics in her diaries.
Speaker 2Just with a bunch of hamsters they could get, they were able to circumnavigate the Arctic Circle.
Speaker 1So Mary burned hundreds of Protestant heretics at the stake Again. Some say 280, some say 300, but it was hundreds and hundreds.
Speaker 2Protestant heretics or just Protestants.
Speaker 1Protestants that she claimed her heretics.
Speaker 2Okay, just it's in the details.
Speaker 1She attempted to restore Catholicism in England and we can see why she would want to do this right again, looking at her traumatic past. Her father, blah, blah, blah, bullshit, bullshit.
Speaker 2Yes, let's blame Protestantism.
Speaker 1I'm not blaming anything. I'm not saying Protestantism is better or worse than Catholicism. You know, I'm not getting into that game here. I'm just saying I-.
Speaker 2She clearly did not listen to our South Wind episode.
Speaker 1That's right Would have done her a lot of good.
Speaker 2It really would have.
Speaker 1Everyone should I really. It's one of my favorite episodes. The stake burnings are known as the Marian persecutions and though this seems graphic and extreme and terrible and it was being burned at the stake was a standard punishment for heresy at the time, it still is.
Speaker 1Quoting from the historycom article by Una Miklvenna, quote all over Europe, the punishment for heresy was not only death, but also the total destruction of the heretics' corpse to prevent the use of their body parts for relics. What, therefore? Most heretics were burned and their ashes thrown into the river, and Mary's choice of burning was completely standard for practice of her period. End quote.
Speaker 2Not at all relevant, however, uh-huh. Because, it's October and we've been watching tons of horror movies. Yes, so I recently watched Dracula Untold. Have you seen this? I have not. So apparently this, the movie is about the origin of Dracula, so predates you know the, the Brom Stoker novel by centuries? Sure, uh, because it's the guy before he became a vampire, right?
Speaker 2I don't know if this is completely made up for this movie. I mean, it's fucking Dracula, it's all made up, yeah, uh, but the they made it really seem like this is based off folklore, which I just found was kind of cool, how Dracula himself, before he became a vampire, was Vlad the Impaler. Of course, what do you mean? Of course, you didn't know that. No, do you remember?
Speaker 1our episode on the history of vampires. We did an episode on vampires, uh-huh.
Speaker 2It's not. It wasn't our best work, it was really early on, but we did Well.
Speaker 1We talked all about this. It was frickin' cool, uh-huh the the image. The reason I bring it up is because you got to see.
Speaker 2Vlad the Impaler at work, and again, I have. No, I don't know anything about this guy because apparently I just Thinking of him as like a construction worker.
Speaker 1No.
Speaker 2I? I understand he's impaling people, but I just imagine it was his method of, you know, killing. It's like he'd stab him, but no, he would put entire armies on stakes outside the city walls. Yeah, um, and like in the movie they have the imagery of like the the army finally comes to the gates and their entire, like advanced squadron is just is impaled on these gigantic logs.
Speaker 1Maybe it's time for us to revisit vampires and werewolves and things really do it right.
Speaker 2No, it was really. I love this movie. It's so cool.
Speaker 1Yeah, sounds great.
Speaker 2So I, I I googled this movie just to see if there's like more to it because they set it up as if there's going to be a sequel. Uh-huh, and apparently this was the very first movie to kick off the universal like dark universe. I thought that was the very first movie to kick off the universal like dark universe. I thought that was going to. I thought that was the Tom Cruise mummy movie.
Speaker 1What year was it Uh?
Speaker 2it was 2014.
Speaker 1Oh, a while ago.
Speaker 2Yeah, um, and I was just like, of course I want to see more of this. This is really cool and it's really really high budget, dracula, shit, yeah, well done. It's a shame Nothing happened with it.
Speaker 1Yeah, fuck you, tom Cruise. You ruined everything, as always, as usual, don't sue us, though. So let's talk about a man named John Fox, who was dubbed the Protestant martyrologist.
Speaker 2I'm a hundred percent picturing David DeCovney in Renaissance clothing.
Speaker 1So because I'm watching X-Files again. He's fresh in your mind.
Speaker 2No, his name was Fox.
Speaker 1Oh, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2That's much more relevant than both.
Speaker 1I mean literally. It was just last night that I was watching X-Files. It wasn't last night. Two nights ago. So many believe that John Fox is partially to blame for Bloody Mary's exaggerated reputation and again, I'm not defending her 300 murders, I'm just saying she kind of did what any other monarch did at the time. But she is the one who's called Bloody Mary.
Speaker 2And they're all just like Fox. Stop with these conspiracy theories.
Fox's Book of Martyrs and Bloody Mary
Speaker 1Yeah, like enough. Fox's Book of Martyrs is first released in 1563 and went on to four editions because it was so popular. Not only was a copy placed in every Catholic church, clergy were also asked to keep a copy in their home for servants and visitors.
Speaker 2What was the name of the book?
Speaker 1Fox's Book of Martyrs.
Speaker 2And it was in every single church.
Speaker 1Correct, so it's filled. The different time periods and topics discussed in Fox's Book the section on Mary has always garnered the most attention from readers. 30 of the 67 wood carvings used as illustrations in the first edition portray executions under Mary's ruling, so almost half right, essentially.
Speaker 2Okay, hang on. I googled this because I wanted to see if you could still buy this book on Amazon.
Speaker 1Okay.
Speaker 2And I think I just misheard you. It's not Fox's Book of Martyrs, martyrs, martyrs, which is way less rock and roll, and I'm like they put this in every church A Book of Martyrs.
Speaker 1Well, it is essentially a Book of Martyrs.
Speaker 2Essentially, but not quite.
Speaker 1It's all visuals and graphic descriptions of these burnings at the stake, apparently, and actually. In the next episode we will hear an excerpt from some of the most hardcore versions of these that were meant to discredit Mary and the decisions that she made.
Speaker 2It's cool, but not as cool. I mean, come on, don't you want to hear like? And then, this one time in 1523, she snuck up with a frozen lamp shank and bopped him on the head.
Speaker 1Sounds like every podcast I listen to.
Speaker 2Well, fucking Fox was ahead of his time.
Speaker 1That's why it went so viral. The first viral true crime book.
Speaker 1Though Fox's writings have been critiqued for their lack of accuracy at times, they claim firsthand accounts of the victims' burnings and they are incredibly intense. Because of the popularity and propaganda of Fox's book, mary's story became folklore and legend. The graphic images of people burning at the stake became her legacy and she was forever dubbed Bloody Mary. And again, you can kind of see both sides of this right. She certainly lived out a personal vendetta, however, I think, like during Henry VIII's reign, he executed 80 people on religious reasons, but also again killed, like the majority of his wives, so you know.
Speaker 2Do you find any hypocrisy in calling someone Bloody Mary when their way of execution is burning the one thing that causes wounds to cauterize and not bleed.
Speaker 1I understand your point.
Speaker 2I guess Bernie Mary doesn't have the same ring to it.
Speaker 1Queen Mary I, while certainly bold and violent in her own right, was no more so than the male kings of her time, notably her father. Both her sister, Elizabeth I, and her father executed people for heresy. We know of at least 81 people that Henry VIII killed for this reason.
Speaker 2That seems like a low number.
Speaker 1Well, he was too busy fucking killing his wives. He was distracted.
Speaker 2Oh, these are separate murders. Yeah, sorry, separate executions. They all deserved it.
Speaker 1Largely her reputation is a product of sexism and unfair bias, because she was a woman who behaved exactly in line with male monarchs.
Speaker 2Yeah, she tries to convert a country. It's fucking monarch 101.
Speaker 1Mary died at the age of 42, and it's believed now that she had a form of ovarian or uterine cancer. But let us talk about the second woman from history that could have inspired the Bloody Mary midnight game. Elizabeth Bathory is very famous for killing a lot of virgin children, mostly girls, and using their blood as a way to make herself look younger, and so that is very much the reputation that precedes Elizabeth Bathory. Elizabeth Bathory is one of my favorite historic figures, and she has a lot of similarities to Queen Mary, meaning her reputation is largely based on highly political allegations, and even more so than Queen Mary, elizabeth Bathory's reputation, which has lasted for so long, could all be entirely bullshit, so let's talk about it.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean, I feel like a lot of these personalities just expand over time.
Speaker 1You know, myth grows, of course. Urban legend, rumor yeah, the Blood Countess, also known as the Countess Elizabeth Bathory Descott, is an alleged Hungarian serial killer from the 1500s. So she could even be your ancestor, alan. Maybe, I first encountered her story in a film called the Countess from 2009,. Though, this legend has influenced countless novels, films and TV series.
Speaker 2And metal bands.
Speaker 1Some even believe it inspired Brom Stoker's Dracula. The legend goes that Bathory killed at least 80, but potentially up to 650 victims. Keep in mind that there is some debate over whether or not these allegations hold true, but we'll get to that. There are some narratives that depict Bathory killing young girls in order to harvest their quote unquote virgin blood in an effort to remain ageless.
Speaker 2Well, yeah, that's virgin blood magic one on one.
Speaker 1Just like a modern day Kardashian. However, this isn't backed by any evidence. In truth, the accounts tell a chilling story of extreme torture, which was often sexual in nature.
Speaker 2Sorry, just in like 100 years, girls are going to be at sleepovers doing a little game and then you're going to see a Kardashian sipping your blood.
Speaker 1In the mirror. Countess Bathory was an incredibly well connected, noble woman. She had family members as part of the royal families in Poland and Transylvania hinting to nudge-nudge. At the startling age of 11, she was engaged to Count Furnek Nadstie a political arrangement and by age 15, the couple was married and waited 10 years to have their first child.
Speaker 2Of course.
Speaker 1Well, that's a long time back then. There is a rumor that before Bathory had children with her husband, she had an illegitimate child with a lower class man. Some claim that her husband had that man castrated and killed by dogs.
Speaker 2Castrated and then killed by dogs. That's a rough one.
Speaker 1Bathory kept her name because, at the time of her marriage, her social standing was higher than that of her husband. Her husband was often away from home at war and Bathory was tasked with protecting and representing the people in their territories in her husband's absence, though there are rumors that he helped teach her torture techniques when he was home. Further allegations suggest that Bathory often took lovers while her husband was in battle, and in 1604, bathory's husband died from illness after suffering for several years. So the rumor goes that Bathory first sourced victims within her own walls, torturing her servants. Then she expanded to kill children of the lower class, which was not seen as a quote unquote crime at the time. But ultimately she ended up torturing and killing noble children that had been sent to her for schooling.
Speaker 2Essentially, that's bad.
Speaker 1She couldn't help herself. She was addicted to it. Witness testimony revealed that Bathory would often torture these girls by biting them and hurting them using needles, ice or burning metal. In 1610, she was accused publicly of horrifying crimes and thus began the investigation that would result in her arrest.
Speaker 2Like, how do you get away with this? It seems like, especially it's one thing when you are murdering peasants right as the nobility. This is like an even more easy to get away with version of like Jack the Ripper.
Speaker 1You remember our episode on the history of black masses with Miranda Warzell.
Speaker 2Oh, the same person. We did the history of Southerner.
Elizabeth Bathory and Bloody Mary Legends
Speaker 1It's so similar to this and I think that brings up the same thing that you're asking right now, because in that episode it's just these crazy examples of all of these noble people who were accused of murdering hundreds of kids during these black magic rituals, et cetera, et cetera, and I think in some cases there's maybe some truth, but in a lot of cases there's no fucking way, right, you could say, ok, someone who's incredibly powerful could get away with killing 50 serving kids, but not 650 noble kids, right? And so that's when it calls into question, looking back with modern eyes, was this a witch hunt to get someone out of power who was important? And we don't know we. All we know is the sources that we're left with. But that's what kind of what we're going to come to today with Elizabeth Bathory was. Did she do it? Did she do some version of this? Was she totally innocent? Because a lot of times people want land, they want their power, and so there's other reasons why these rumors start.
Speaker 2Fair points.
Speaker 1So the investigator right who's assigned to Elizabeth Bathory. Count Gyergy Thurzo caught Bathory in the act, supposedly.
Speaker 2Count Gyergy Thurzo Fucking clean. That dude cleans up on Tinder. Let me tell you why.
Speaker 1She was in so Bathory, was imprisoned within her own castle, and there's some murky involvement by a handful of servants. Some say that the servants were also, kind of like, guilty of helping her with this.
Speaker 2Did she have a murder castle? Yeah, with like traps and shit. I know I'm confusing this with the World's Fair guy.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, which is very different, yeah, very different time periods. I don't know.
Speaker 2I feel like she. I don't even know about that guy. I'm surprised Because I know a lot of things. Ok, ok, I feel like she had a murder castle.
Speaker 1I mean, she had a castle where she murdered allegedly 650 kids.
Speaker 2If you're murdering 650 kids, you have a special room for it. It's like you know what? Move the pool table. No, we're going to kill him here, like no come on.
Speaker 1Well, the other guy from the Black Mask episode had a murder room, a torture room.
Speaker 2OK.
Speaker 1She definitely had one. Ok, I just don't know the logistics of her castle. But we can call architectural digest and see what they say.
Speaker 2Are there any Bathory movies?
Speaker 1Oh yeah, so many. That's why I first found out who she was, because I was actually interning at IFC Films and this film called the Countess came to my desk and I had to watch it and it's like a story about her. It's so good.
Speaker 2It's cool.
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean, it's good enough that at the time I was like I'm in love with this woman, I'm obsessed with this.
Speaker 2I want to watch this.
Speaker 1And then, when I found out it was based on reality, I was like I'll never stop.
Speaker 2Did she have a murder castle in that movie?
Speaker 1She sort of would kill. I remember a lot of bathtub Like they would fill the bathtub with the blood of the kids and she would soak in the blood.
Speaker 2That's just gratuitous.
Speaker 1So some reports indicate that the servants of hers were involved with torture, and during the trial they only admitted to burning the bodies of the victims. But four servants were sentenced to death.
Speaker 2Why the servants?
Speaker 1Because it came out that they had some involvement in helping her dispose of the bodies. And blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 2But she got away just fine.
Speaker 1No. So she gets like bricked up in the castle and she has to like die there.
Speaker 2Oh, oh damn.
Speaker 1Yeah, so because of Bathory's status, she was not officially convicted of a crime and she also would not be taken to prison. But we do know that she was kept in her castle and some believe she was walled up within it until her death in 1614. And that's how that movie, countess the Countess, ends with her being sort of like like the end of a cascava, montiato, where they're like breaking up, though, but like to starve to death or just live out your life.
Speaker 1Well, there's some like debate over, but I choose to believe to starve to death.
Speaker 2I think she ate all her servants.
Speaker 1Oh yeah. Well, there's certainly some cannibalism executions here, I'm sure.
Speaker 2I mean, she's bathing in blood, which is great for the skin. I get that, but you know like clearly you're comfortable with the idea of like man meat.
Speaker 1Sure, but here's the problem the majority of the evidence can be written off as rumor or hearsay. Bathory's servants were tortured by investigators, meaning their testimony cannot be trusted, and some speculate that the lead investigator held control over many of the witnesses. There was a good political reason to want to bring Bathory down. Her reach, land ownership and wealth right. Even if there's some exaggeration at work here, it is likely that Bathory was not completely innocent. She and her husband had a reputation for being especially cruel to their servants. Again, he was like a big war hero who was rumored to teach her torture tactics from war. That was like their thing, you know. Like ours is horror, theirs is torture. Bathory's story has inspired everyone, from Brom Stoker to Lady Gaga in her American Horror Story performance, and again, this true story has inspired so many horror retellings, and it fits perfectly with our mission to explore the history of horror. Let's talk about the final woman that Bloody Mary could be based on. I know very little about her.
Speaker 2Mary Taylor Moore.
Speaker 1Mary Worth, the final theory of the origins of Bloody Mary, the only one that some rituals call out by name, is Mary Worth. So in some versions of Bloody Mary you say Mary Worth three times in the mirror, not Bloody Mary. This is all I could find out about her. I'm going to warn you, it's brief.
Speaker 2Oh, I'll fill in the details to her.
Speaker 1Mary Worth is a bit of an ambiguous character. Some versions of folklore identify her as a woman who killed enslaved people as they tried to escape from freedom. Other versions claim she was burned at the stake during the witch trials.
Speaker 2So in one she's sort of a hero and one.
Speaker 1She's a villain.
Speaker 2Well, I was going to say, you've described lots of white people in history.
Speaker 1But there's also a version of this game found in Japan. So Hanoko-san, or Hanoko of the toilet, is a spirit who is said to mainly haunt school toilets. And I'm going to quote from Wikipedia because I didn't want to mess anything up, so quote. Like many urban legends, the details of the origins of the legend vary depending on the account. Different versions of the story include that Hanoko-san is the ghost of a World War II era girl who was killed while playing hide and seek during an air raid, or that she was murdered by a parent or stranger, or that she committed suicide in a school toilet due to bullying. Legends about Hanoko-san have achieved some popularity in Japanese schools, where children may challenge classmates to try to summon Hanoko-san. The character has been depicted in a variety of media, including films, manga, anime and video games.
Speaker 2Do you have some examples?
Speaker 1So there's a manga series called Hanoko and the Terror of Aligori.
Speaker 2And the Terror of Aligori.
Speaker 1There's also a manga series called Toilet-Bound Hanoko-kun, an anime television series which was adapted by that.
Speaker 2I'm not going to lie. The idea of a ghost haunting a toilet sounds very much like moaning myrtle.
Speaker 1Well, the funny thing is, when I actually was talking to one of my friends about this series and she's from Canada and she's like I don't know. She's like, oh, bloody Mary, that's the thing with the toilet, right? So I think she was conflating Hanoko and Bloody Mary, which was interesting.
Speaker 2That's neat.
Speaker 1There's also a male version and some variations of Hanoko-san. So, in conclusion, I have one final thing to tell you to talk about, which I think is really interesting and I could find I'm sure, if I scoured Reddit hundreds of posts, thousands of posts of people and their experiences conjuring Bloody Mary in the mirror, right.
Speaker 2Sure.
Speaker 1Creepypasta, all of that. It is out there galore. But I want to address why some people believe, truly believe, that they had success summoning Bloody Mary.
Speaker 2So these are the true accounts.
Speaker 1No, I'm not going to share any true accounts. I'm just going to share some science around why somebody could think that they actually have summon Bloody Mary.
Speaker 2Drugs, alcohol. You getting scared in the country.
Speaker 1In the country. Ok, so seeing things after staring in mirrors is actually a known phenomena. It's called the Toxler effect or Toxler's fading.
Speaker 2Go on.
Toxler's Fading and Bloody Mary Horror
Speaker 1Quoting from Wikipedia quote when one fixates on a particular point for even a short period of time, an unchanging stimulus away from the fixation point will fade away and disappear. Research suggests that at least some portion of the perception phenomena associated with Toxler's fading occurs in the brain. End quote. And if you visit the Wikipedia page for Toxler's fading, there's actually like demonstrations so you can see it. And when you see them you're like oh, I've definitely seen these online before. I'll show you one right now Alan.
Speaker 2OK, Abby just gave me something. It's like a white screen with an animation of like pink dots going in a circle.
Speaker 1Yeah, and stare at that center across here and do you see how it starts to disappear.
Speaker 2Yep, and then just you just see a green dot going around which is simply your brain compensating with. Well, because yeah, it's the green magenta shift. It's just your brain compensating.
Speaker 1Right, and so there's also one of my favorite midnight rituals that I've never done is called Three Kings and it has like some similar elements where you sit and you can only look in a mirror out of your periphery and people. When they do this, of course, all the time they see shit, and it's the same thing as the Bloody Mary is Like. If you stare at this central focus in a mirror, you get this Toxler's fading effect.
Speaker 2I wonder if this is the same phenomena that makes your brain erase your nose.
Speaker 1What? Oh, because your nose is there.
Speaker 2Yeah, close one eye, there's your nose. Close the other eye there's your nose. But when you look with two eyes, you don't see your nose, although that might be parallax.
Speaker 1And just to close the loop on the Toxler's fading, when you also have the flicker of the candlelight involved that can amplify kind of the effects of what you're seeing visually. But go stand in the mirror and stare at a central point for a while and see what you see.
Speaker 2I'm going to argue that point.
Speaker 1Oh good.
Speaker 2Because a flickering candle would give you a changing visual spectrum.
Speaker 1Well, that's why, when you're staring and you start to have Toxler's fading, it's happening in your periphery.
Speaker 2Oh, that's why something would flicker. Yeah, no, I got you OK. No, no, that makes sense.
Speaker 1Nice try though.
Speaker 2Thank you, I did try.
Speaker 1Why is this important to horror? Right, the whole thing is the history of horror. It is the history of horror. So, beyond having a great influence on me as a child and, I imagine, many others, even if not Alan it also speaks to our culture. For instance, 100 years ago, the mirror ritual was done to conjure up the image of a husband, which, of course, is certainly outdated now.
Speaker 2Certainly.
Speaker 1But in our childhood it was strictly a horror game, which has become more and more in the zeitgeist of our lifetime right. So that's also just an interesting sign of the times.
Speaker 2We had different childhoods. You're doing these little horror games. I'm trying to convert my country to Protestantism so I can divorce.
Speaker 1Bloody Mary or similar rituals have made their way into various horror films. Most famously perhaps is Candyman from 1992.
Speaker 2Oh yeah.
Speaker 1Not a direct representation of Bloody Mary, but certainly a representation of a summoning ritual, especially one that comes with saying a name multiple times.
Speaker 2Right, because he's got the bees and she doesn't have bees.
Speaker 1You have to say Candyman, Candyman, three times.
Speaker 2Right which is different than the Mary.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's a good point. Paranormal Activity 3 from 2011 is a very direct representation of a Bloody Mary ritual, so that would be where I would point all of you to sort of see that in action.
Speaker 2I've only seen the first paranormal activity and I only watched that because of our found footage series, so I don't know.
Speaker 1Maybe that's the next series that we dive into.
Speaker 2What Paranormal Activity?
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean in our personal lives, not in the podcast.
Speaker 2I see.
Speaker 1I don't know that. It's that juicy.
Speaker 2The only series that I've been doing in October so far has been the Insidious series, because the new one just came out.
Speaker 1And I'm kind of jealous because I've been too afraid to watch Insidious by myself. But now oh, it's fine, the first one, you told me that you were so scared.
Speaker 2The first one's so scary I'm not going to watch it. So scary After that I mean there's jump scares, but it's not bad and also because the series is so known for its jump scares.
Speaker 1At this point, you kind of get a bit better.
Speaker 2So I just watched the fourth one today.
Speaker 1And they are five.
Speaker 2The fifth one just came out Because they're so known for their jump scares. They use the same camera techniques, same music cues, everything right To indicate that a jump scare is coming and then it doesn't. So it's just like now they're just playing with you, which is cool. The series has gone full self-aware and, honestly, it's fun.
Speaker 1Noted. I tried to watch a film called A Cold Wind in August from 1961 for this episode. Apparently there's some sort of Bloody Mary ritual, but it was too slow for me.
Speaker 2Is this a sequel to A Warm Wind of June?
Speaker 1Maybe I have no idea. And then there's also some B horror movies, of course, that celebrate Bloody Mary, and there's tons. I'm just going to name a few that have fun titles, but there's a whole IMDB page dedicated to Bloody Mary films and there's quite a few Urban Legends Bloody Mary from 2005,. Bloody Mary from 2011, which has a whopping two stars on IMDB, the legend of Bloody Mary from 2008,. And a film with a much higher ranking called Bloody Mary Evil Returns from 2022, which actually has a pretty good rating. So I'm kind of curious in that.
Speaker 2I think we should watch some of these and report back once we get to the Loonatics Library part of this.
Speaker 1All right.
Speaker 2I have one bit of pop culture to contribute.
Speaker 1OK.
Speaker 2So there's two Bloody Mary references in pop culture that I knew of before. This game One is a video game in the Twisted Metal series.
Speaker 1So I think All roads lead back to Twisted Metal.
Speaker 2I think it started in Twisted Metal Black. There's one car, oh, is it Spectre? It might be Spectre. So the Spectre car, I think, is driven. The driver, her name is Bloody Mary and she is a wronged bride. So, she was a bride that her husband was murdered on their wedding day or something, something like that, and she's just out for crazy vengeance.
Speaker 1Very kill, bill, and I'm thinking about it Almost like Yacht of your Rona as well.
Speaker 2Oh sure, the other one is. There's this it's a bit of a niche drink called the Bloody Mary. It's just vodka.
Speaker 1You have made this whole episode to make this show. Tomato juice.
Speaker 2No, I actually just thought of it now. Tomato juice, vodka.
Speaker 1Worcestershire sauce.
Speaker 2Viestershire sauce.
Speaker 1Tabasco.
Speaker 2And then celery bacon like a cheeseburger on top. They just pile it all on. It's very good. It's great when you fly.
Speaker 1It's great any time. Bloody Mary is one of the top five drinks for me.
Speaker 2Did you know why people love tomato juice so much on airplanes?
Speaker 1Why.
Speaker 2The air pressure does something to your taste buds, where tomato juice physically tastes different at high altitudes compared to sea level. So that's one of the reasons why tomato juice is so popular on airplanes and not nowhere else, but it just dwarfed in popularity compared to airlines.
Speaker 1I don't know if people if I've talked about this on the podcast or not, but I have such an overwhelming, disgusting love for tomato juice where, if I have it, if I get a bottle, if I get my grimy little hands on a bottle of Campbell's tomato juice?
Speaker 2Your grimy little hand.
Speaker 1It's gone in a half an hour the whole bottle. Anytime I go to a diner, tomato juice with lemon I mean, I live for it. It is literally like it's the closest I think I'll ever understand to a vampire craving blood is slurping down thick room temperature tomato juice with some fucking lemon in it. Man Ugh, it's like if it feeds my soul, just like blood feeds Vlad's soul, you know.
Speaker 2Room temperature. That's gross. Hey, you do you.
Speaker 1I mean, I like it called that. Sometimes I even put a little ice in it.
Speaker 2But sometimes at a diner, you get it. How it comes, you know. Asked, only given with ice.
Speaker 1They don't give it with ice, it's always pure.
Speaker 2As to not compromise the integrity.
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean ice certainly changes the flavor profile.
Speaker 2Sure.
Speaker 1It has to be a hot summer day for me to be open to an ice version.
Speaker 2I always do the ice on the plane.
Speaker 1Well, you're an amateur.
Speaker 2I guess so.
Speaker 1Anyway, yes, great point, alan. Bloody Mary certainly is also a awesome drink, and you can get a Bloody Maria, which is with tequila instead of vodka.
Speaker 2Right and little known fact. But Maria and Mary are the same name.
Speaker 1All right, I'm going to assume I didn't convert you to be interested in Bloody Mary and its historic origins.
Speaker 2From a horror standpoint. No, ok, whomp, whomp. I feel like we missed the translation from Bathory being this fucking rock and roll murderer to her being summoned by teenagers.
Speaker 1Well, let's talk about that. I can shed some conclusive light on that journey.
Speaker 2Please share your conclusive light.
Speaker 1So if you have Queen Mary, the first Bloody Mary, you have the blood countess, elizabeth Bathory, and imagine the impact that these women have during their lifetime and then shortly after their lifetime in terms of urban legend. So they're so powerful, in fact, that we still are getting several articles a year about both of them in major publications. That's how impactful these rumors and the folklore of their lifetime has seeped into history. So that's the stage. And then, of course, you have things where, if you are local to Hungary or England or these things happened and you have this propaganda from Fox's Book of Martyrs or just from locals, right?
Speaker 2Martyrs.
Speaker 1From Fox's Book of Martyrs or just from locals talking about this stuff. Then is when you get these ritual games right. So then you get whatever a sleepover ritual at the time is. You have kids who take urban legend, turn it into some kind of practice, especially if things like scrying and other stuff is witchy, right, blah, blah, blah. Then of course you have a separate train of people who are using rituals, especially during the Victorian era, to talk to the dead, to conjure things up. So it also gets conflated. It all becomes one mishmash things. Things evolve into other things and I don't know if that's super intelligent, but that's kind of my take on this is like nobody is going to hand you a map of OK, this thing happened and here is exactly how it seeped through history. And now we have the game Bloody Mary. But you can make some conclusions around what is rumored to be. When you look in the mirror that can kind of connect back to Elizabeth Bathory, or especially because girls are playing these games in a lot of cases or to Queen Mary.
Speaker 2OK, I see the correlation, I'll give you that. Yes, you did explain it well. I concede that we have enough to make an episode here. And on that note. My 90 minutes are up and you can't afford more time.
Speaker 1Please, please, please, head to lunaticsprojectcom and click on Merch, because we are obsessed with our new spooky design. I am just so over the moon for it. I think it's one of our creepiest designs yet, in a really good way, perfect for Halloween.
Speaker 2Thank you, Pilar.
Speaker 1Yeah, thank you, pilar, and I will proudly wear it on Halloween this year, maybe with some Bloody Mary blood dripping from my eyes, maybe sipping on an actual Bloody Mary. Just thought of my costume this year.
Speaker 2Oh, that's smart, that's really smart.
Speaker 1And I will definitely post some images from Fox's book of martyrs on social media, because these images are super rock and roll If you've probably seen them. If you follow horror accounts like I do, so now, you'll kind of connect what they are. That's what happened to me, but I'll post some of that stuff so you guys know what we're talking about. Cool.
Speaker 2All right, this initially did not seem like a topic worthy of Halloween. It's a very good topic.
Speaker 1Thank you.
Speaker 2I don't know if it's Halloween worthy good.
Speaker 1Well, but we still have one more episode where I can woo you Sure, and that's so. Next episode for Lunatic's Library. We have some very rock and roll Bloody Mary stories. I'm super excited to share them with you guys, and that will be my final shot to really freak you out with Bloody Mary.
Speaker 2All right, we'll see what happens.
Speaker 1Until next time, stay spooky, stay well, and we will talk to you soon. Bye, bye, Eh. There's a review.
