Lunatics Radio Hour
Episode 129 - The Real History Behind Bloody Mary
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!
What's it like to be a Cattle Rancher? FBI Special Agent? Professional Santa? Find out!
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
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!
What's it like to be a Cattle Rancher? FBI Special Agent? Professional Santa? Find out!
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
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 2:Hello.
Speaker 1:And today we are talking about the history of the sleepover game Bloody Mary.
Speaker 2:Uh-huh.
Speaker 1:For some reason, you're very skeptical of this topic.
Speaker 2:Yes, how is this an entire topic?
Speaker 1:It clearly didn't have the emotional impact on you and childhood as it did on me.
Speaker 2:No, I did not even learn about this until I met you.
Speaker 1:Okay, 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 2:Yeah, another thing I didn't learn about until meeting you.
Speaker 1:You had such a conservative childhood.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, I did.
Speaker 1:Thank God, you met me and we can unravel it all together.
Speaker 2:Man, it all worked out.
Speaker 1:Listen, this is our Halloween series for a reason.
Speaker 2:No, 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 1:Yeah, or we've done like deep dives into franchises.
Speaker 2:We did the Halloween movie franchise breakdown, which was ambitious.
Speaker 1:Honestly a highlight of my life.
Speaker 2:Although not as ambitious as the Kaiju series.
Speaker 1:Thank you guys for still being here. What a dry series.
Speaker 2:I can just unplug this right now.
Speaker 1:Listen, that one was for you, this one's for me.
Speaker 2:Okay, 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 1:Shall, I give you my thesis statement.
Speaker 2:Yes, give me your thesis statement.
Speaker 1:Just okay, this is going to be good because it's going to ground everybody. And what's going to happen today?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what I need. I need to come back down to earth. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Okay, 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 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:One 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 2:Okay, I mean, yeah, I'm here. You've booked me for the next 90 minutes, so let's 90 minutes.
Speaker 1:You need more than that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it cuts down, don't worry All right.
Speaker 1:So 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 2:And 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 1:Yeah, that was my bad.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but holy cow, it's really freaking cool.
Speaker 1:So cool, you're wearing it now.
Speaker 2:I 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 1:Yeah, and Pilar Kep is just one of the best that there is. It's so cool.
Speaker 2:Not to mention there's a whole bonus doppelganger design.
Speaker 1:That'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 2:I knew there was a reason we are dropping the doppelganger designs now.
Speaker 1:Exactly, very well timed.
Speaker 2:That's great. This is the perfect time of year to pick up some spooky books.
Speaker 1:Yeah, support some indie writers. It's like win-win.
Speaker 2:I'm about to finish another spooky thing and I'm on to the next, so that's my next read.
Speaker 1:That's up in the queue for you and I have a copy for you waiting.
Speaker 2:Excellent, thank you.
Speaker 1:You're welcome.
Speaker 2:Okay, are there more announcements? Or can you tell me how boring Bloody Mary is?
Speaker 1:All 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 2:Wait a minute, didn't we? We talked about Bloody Mary ones before, because we did an episode on Midnight Rituals.
Speaker 1:We did very, very long ago. I don't know that I would recommend it to people to go back and find it.
Speaker 2:Okay, 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 1:This is my second chance. After this, I'm caught off.
Speaker 2:I mean no, a third time's a charm.
Speaker 1:Oh, 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 2:Maybe I don't know.
Speaker 1:Or you didn't get invited to any sleepovers.
Speaker 2:No, I mean, I knew about Ouija boards or Ouija, but that was it. I was not in a crowd of spooky things.
Speaker 1:Did you ever use a Ouija board?
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:What was your experience like? Lame All right, I've got a lot of work to do here today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, good luck.
Speaker 1:So Bloody Mary again, is similar in nature to light as a feather, stiff as a board or little boy blue the instructions-.
Speaker 2:Little boy blue it's very similar.
Speaker 1:For 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 2:Okay, and what does that do?
Speaker 1:I guess you should do it and see what happens. All of these are meant to like summon things right. They're summoning rituals.
Speaker 2:It's meant to summon a baby. To summon, what A ghost baby. Yeah, a ghost baby.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Where 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 1:Just cry. I'm confused all the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like that's so upsetting.
Speaker 1:It's terrible Okay.
Speaker 2:Like you can't even haunt people without help.
Speaker 1:Well, maybe you know what, Maybe they're just a projection of a thing, maybe they're not sentient.
Speaker 2:Like a real so like a real baby.
Speaker 1:Okay, 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 2:Okay, single source lighting.
Speaker 1:That'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 2:Is there a distance that the candle should be?
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:So the foot candles don't matter.
Speaker 1:What's a foot candle?
Speaker 2:What's a foot candle? A foot candle is a measurement of light, so the foot candle.
Speaker 1:You're talking okay.
Speaker 2:So 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 1:I understand. I don't think it applies to the sleepover game, bloody Mary.
Speaker 2:Copy that Moving on.
Speaker 1:I tried to do some research into early versions of this game because it seems that they are a little bit different.
Speaker 2:Okay, when did it start?
Speaker 1:The days of yore.
Speaker 2:Yore.
Speaker 1:It's the best I can do you right now.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:But women, I would say, in like the Victorian era perhaps, would do this ritual.
Speaker 2:So it was a parlor game.
Speaker 1:Sort of yeah.
Speaker 2:So this is back when people had parlors.
Speaker 1:And 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 2:What.
Speaker 1:As 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 2:No, that's a bummer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 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 2:And this is just one woman that appears in everyone's bathrooms.
Speaker 1:That's the idea.
Speaker 2:Like the Santa Claus of mirrors.
Speaker 1:Sure, but she's not, you know, earthbound, so she has a lot of flexibility there.
Speaker 2:I would argue that Santa is not earthbound either.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:He flies yeah but he's not. Well, he doesn't fly, the reindeer fly.
Speaker 1:Spirit. Okay, so this is a form of catopteromancy which I'm definitely mispronouncing Catopteromancy. What happens when you say catopteromancy 13 times Okay?
Speaker 2:You get smarter. What is it?
Speaker 1:I'm going to tell you Divination using a mirror.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's cool.
Speaker 1:So 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 2:Remember when you had your lithomancy? Yeah, the oldest form of divination, we're told.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was actually strangely accurate.
Speaker 2:This 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 1:He gave me a lot of advice about Lunatics project.
Speaker 2:He said hold off until Halloween 2023 for the Bloody Mary episode.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2:I know you're chomping at the bit for it, but here it is, at last.
Speaker 1:So 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 2:I mean, I guess when you're looking in a mirror, you are technically looking into the past.
Speaker 1:There 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 2:Hell 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 1:What.
Speaker 2:She have like a cup and you just like, you're like mmm, that looks like be positive, that's mine.
Speaker 1:No, 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 1:Uh-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 1:I 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 2:I'm still hung up on this her drinking your blood thing.
Speaker 1:Okay, so say she's sort of like a vampire.
Speaker 2:Ah, okay.
Speaker 1:Standing behind you, or she scratches you and then she takes your blood in and then you exit there and bleeding.
Speaker 2:I 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 1:Your think of this, think of your eyes are Crying blood and she licks it off your face. How about that?
Speaker 2:Like a dog.
Speaker 1:Like 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 2:Okay, 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 1:Yeah, we're gonna talk about it at length.
Speaker 2:That's great, because that sounds interesting great.
Speaker 1:The next theory is Elizabeth Bathory, who's one of my favorite historical figures fucking rock and roll.
Speaker 2:You 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 1:So 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 2:What 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 1:So 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 2:Oh, did you see it? Yeah, was it good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, took my mom, my sister, so Mary was the only one of their children to survive into adulthood.
Speaker 2:Why.
Speaker 1:Because 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 2:It's a lot of the word France in there.
Speaker 1:But 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 2:She was promised to her cousin.
Speaker 1:Yeah times were different back.
Speaker 2:Oh for marriage. Yeah got you first cousin.
Speaker 1:Probably, 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 2:That sounds like a Downgrade correct. What is a? What is a lady?
Speaker 1:It'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 2:why did he break from the church?
Speaker 1:Because 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 2:England. So why are we talking about France?
Speaker 1:that she was Supposed to marry, that.
Speaker 2:Ah, gotcha, but that was not, that was the cousin.
Speaker 1:No, that was it. I gave you two examples I one was her cousin, one was the future king of France.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, but if I had a choice between Future King of France and my cousin?
Speaker 1:Yeah, 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 1:So 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 2:What is the difference between annulment and the divorce?
Speaker 1:Nothing 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 2:I, you can, I will.
Speaker 1:In 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 2:So when.
Speaker 1:Exactly 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 2:Yeah, it's a shame the, the religion of all the people in midsummer, didn't catch on. That be fun.
Speaker 1:You love that movie. Not as much as hereditary par for the course I did.
Speaker 2:it was good but I don't know the the bar was set too high with hereditary.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 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 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Typically, 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 2:I 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 1:Understandably, 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 2:I'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 1:Well, he does get the marriage annulled.
Speaker 2:I'm just giving you the background he does and this makes all this is to say that Mary has an unhappy home.
Speaker 1:Well, here I think it's also interesting, but okay, so as a workaround, henry appoints someone amenable to his cause.
Speaker 2:Thomas Cranmer, a Protestant, oh fucking Thomas, the ultimate yes, man.
Speaker 1:As 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 2:Oh, wow.
Speaker 1:And 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 2:Okay, I think I follow so far. Hang on. So what year are we up to? When was she born?
Speaker 1:She's born in the early 1500s. We're now in like the 1530s, okay.
Speaker 2:Oh, so she's 30 something 20, 30 something yeah 20,. She's just 20, 30 something yeah.
Speaker 1:So 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 2:What was the name of it?
Speaker 1:The Council of Wales and the Marshes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 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 1:That 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 2:The infant half-sister owned the house.
Speaker 1:It was her house, yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, that's good. Just yeah, send pawn them off on the infant half-sister. That seems like good parenting.
Speaker 1:These are like the princesses of the land, like there's so much wealth running around here.
Speaker 2:Or crawling.
Speaker 1:So, 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 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:She 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 2:Sounds like someone I know.
Speaker 1:Who.
Speaker 2:Alan Mary.
Speaker 1:Mary is also frequently ill as an adult, which we can only speculate about why.
Speaker 2:Right, because her caretaking was done by a child.
Speaker 1:But 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 2:So this is her mom.
Speaker 1:So Mary's mother dies right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 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 2:I 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 1:Yeah, it's fucking crazy.
Speaker 2:This makes no sense.
Speaker 1:This is the patriarchy 101,.
Speaker 2:my friend, this is 101? Yeah, fuck.
Speaker 1:And 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 2:Gambling at cards Indeed.
Speaker 1:All right, I've set the stage. Things are going to get interesting now you ready?
Speaker 2:Because we're real. We're real in the weeds, here.
Speaker 1:Okay, here we go. I know I acknowledge it Eventually after the death of Henry.
Speaker 2:Her dad.
Speaker 1:And 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 2:That come to be All of the kids, or were they wicked?
Speaker 1:All 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 2:Was this the infant half-brother that raised her?
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:So this guy, this baby that put it all to work gets nothing. This is the real crime.
Speaker 1:When Edward dies, six years later he tries to pass power to his Protestant cousin, Lady Jane Gray.
Speaker 2:Why is it relevant that they're Protestant if the whole country was Protestant now?
Speaker 1:Because they've sort of drank the Kool-Aid. Right now they're Protestant.
Speaker 2:Right, everyone's Protestant.
Speaker 1:But Mary's going to try to bring back Catholicism why?
Speaker 2:Mary, come on.
Speaker 1:Quoting 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 2:There's a half-baby.
Speaker 1:Whatever the baby you're obsessed with.
Speaker 2:Oh, the infant half-sister. Correct, gotcha, not half-baby.
Speaker 1:But yeah, so I'm going to reiterate what I just said, because I know you've been distracted.
Speaker 1:So, 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 2:Fucking vice queen sounds cool.
Speaker 1:And here we go, okay.
Speaker 2:I wasn't aware that two very disenfranchised women were able to just walk in and claim a country.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 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 2:I see, okay, so they're probably.
Speaker 1:all the other nobles are like yeah, dude, you deserve it. Cool, that's my theory.
Speaker 2:No, and that's where we're sticking to it.
Speaker 1:So 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 2:She 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 1:Most controversially, she ordered 280 Protestants burned at the stake as heretics, a fact that would later cement her reputation as Bloody Mary.
Speaker 2:I think the first question that comes to mind is it 280 individual stakes or one really big one?
Speaker 1:280 individual stakes.
Speaker 2:It's not nearly as fun. They could go full wicker man, you know, just put them all in there.
Speaker 1:You're really into a mass murder situation.
Speaker 2:If you're gonna do it, just do it, don't half-ass it.
Speaker 1:Mary 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 2:Just with a bunch of hamsters they could get, they were able to circumnavigate the Arctic Circle.
Speaker 1:So Mary burned hundreds of Protestant heretics at the stake Again. Some say 280, some say 300, but it was hundreds and hundreds.
Speaker 2:Protestant heretics or just Protestants.
Speaker 1:Protestants that she claimed her heretics.
Speaker 2:Okay, just it's in the details.
Speaker 1:She 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 2:Yes, let's blame Protestantism.
Speaker 1:I'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 2:She clearly did not listen to our South Wind episode.
Speaker 1:That's right Would have done her a lot of good.
Speaker 2:It really would have.
Speaker 1:Everyone 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 1:Quoting 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 2:Not 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 2:I 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 1:our episode on the history of vampires. We did an episode on vampires, uh-huh.
Speaker 2:It's not. It wasn't our best work, it was really early on, but we did Well.
Speaker 1:We 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 2:Vlad 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 1:No.
Speaker 2:I? 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 1:Maybe it's time for us to revisit vampires and werewolves and things really do it right.
Speaker 2:No, it was really. I love this movie. It's so cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sounds great.
Speaker 2:So 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 1:What year was it Uh?
Speaker 2:it was 2014.
Speaker 1:Oh, a while ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 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 1:Yeah, 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 2:I'm a hundred percent picturing David DeCovney in Renaissance clothing.
Speaker 1:So because I'm watching X-Files again. He's fresh in your mind.
Speaker 2:No, his name was Fox.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:That's much more relevant than both.
Speaker 1:I 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 2:And they're all just like Fox. Stop with these conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 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 2:What was the name of the book?
Speaker 1:Fox's Book of Martyrs.
Speaker 2:And it was in every single church.
Speaker 1:Correct, 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 2:Okay, hang on. I googled this because I wanted to see if you could still buy this book on Amazon.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And 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 1:Well, it is essentially a Book of Martyrs.
Speaker 2:Essentially, but not quite.
Speaker 1:It'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 2:It'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 1:Sounds like every podcast I listen to.
Speaker 2:Well, fucking Fox was ahead of his time.
Speaker 1:That's why it went so viral. The first viral true crime book.
Speaker 1:Though 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 2:Do 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 1:I understand your point.
Speaker 2:I guess Bernie Mary doesn't have the same ring to it.
Speaker 1:Queen 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 2:That seems like a low number.
Speaker 1:Well, he was too busy fucking killing his wives. He was distracted.
Speaker 2:Oh, these are separate murders. Yeah, sorry, separate executions. They all deserved it.
Speaker 1:Largely her reputation is a product of sexism and unfair bias, because she was a woman who behaved exactly in line with male monarchs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she tries to convert a country. It's fucking monarch 101.
Speaker 1:Mary 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 2:Yeah, I mean, I feel like a lot of these personalities just expand over time.
Speaker 1:You 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 2:And metal bands.
Speaker 1:Some 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 2:Well, yeah, that's virgin blood magic one on one.
Speaker 1:Just 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 2:Sorry, 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 1:In 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 2:Of course.
Speaker 1:Well, 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 2:Castrated and then killed by dogs. That's a rough one.
Speaker 1:Bathory 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 2:Essentially, that's bad.
Speaker 1:She 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 2:Like, 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 1:You remember our episode on the history of black masses with Miranda Warzell.
Speaker 2:Oh, the same person. We did the history of Southerner.
Speaker 1:It'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 2:Fair points.
Speaker 1:So the investigator right who's assigned to Elizabeth Bathory. Count Gyergy Thurzo caught Bathory in the act, supposedly.
Speaker 2:Count Gyergy Thurzo Fucking clean. That dude cleans up on Tinder. Let me tell you why.
Speaker 1:She 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 2:Did she have a murder castle? Yeah, with like traps and shit. I know I'm confusing this with the World's Fair guy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, which is very different, yeah, very different time periods. I don't know.
Speaker 2:I 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 1:I mean, she had a castle where she murdered allegedly 650 kids.
Speaker 2:If 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 1:Well, the other guy from the Black Mask episode had a murder room, a torture room.
Speaker 2:OK.
Speaker 1:She 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 2:Are there any Bathory movies?
Speaker 1:Oh 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 2:It's cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 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 2:I want to watch this.
Speaker 1:And then, when I found out it was based on reality, I was like I'll never stop.
Speaker 2:Did she have a murder castle in that movie?
Speaker 1:She 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 2:That's just gratuitous.
Speaker 1:So 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 2:Why the servants?
Speaker 1:Because it came out that they had some involvement in helping her dispose of the bodies. And blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 2:But she got away just fine.
Speaker 1:No. So she gets like bricked up in the castle and she has to like die there.
Speaker 2:Oh, oh damn.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 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 1:Well, there's some like debate over, but I choose to believe to starve to death.
Speaker 2:I think she ate all her servants.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah. Well, there's certainly some cannibalism executions here, I'm sure.
Speaker 2:I 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 1:Sure, 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 2:Mary Taylor Moore.
Speaker 1:Mary 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 2:Oh, I'll fill in the details to her.
Speaker 1:Mary 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 2:So in one she's sort of a hero and one.
Speaker 1:She's a villain.
Speaker 2:Well, I was going to say, you've described lots of white people in history.
Speaker 1:But 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 2:Do you have some examples?
Speaker 1:So there's a manga series called Hanoko and the Terror of Aligori.
Speaker 2:And the Terror of Aligori.
Speaker 1:There's also a manga series called Toilet-Bound Hanoko-kun, an anime television series which was adapted by that.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to lie. The idea of a ghost haunting a toilet sounds very much like moaning myrtle.
Speaker 1:Well, 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 2:That's neat.
Speaker 1:There'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 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:Creepypasta, 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 2:So these are the true accounts.
Speaker 1:No, 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 2:Drugs, alcohol. You getting scared in the country.
Speaker 1:In 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 2:Go on.
Speaker 1:Quoting 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 2:OK, Abby just gave me something. It's like a white screen with an animation of like pink dots going in a circle.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and stare at that center across here and do you see how it starts to disappear.
Speaker 2:Yep, 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 1:Right, 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 2:I wonder if this is the same phenomena that makes your brain erase your nose.
Speaker 1:What? Oh, because your nose is there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 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 1:And 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 2:I'm going to argue that point.
Speaker 1:Oh good.
Speaker 2:Because a flickering candle would give you a changing visual spectrum.
Speaker 1:Well, that's why, when you're staring and you start to have Toxler's fading, it's happening in your periphery.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's why something would flicker. Yeah, no, I got you OK. No, no, that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Nice try though.
Speaker 2:Thank you, I did try.
Speaker 1:Why 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 2:Certainly.
Speaker 1:But 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 2:We had different childhoods. You're doing these little horror games. I'm trying to convert my country to Protestantism so I can divorce.
Speaker 1:Bloody Mary or similar rituals have made their way into various horror films. Most famously perhaps is Candyman from 1992.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Not 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 2:Right, because he's got the bees and she doesn't have bees.
Speaker 1:You have to say Candyman, Candyman, three times.
Speaker 2:Right which is different than the Mary.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 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 2:I've only seen the first paranormal activity and I only watched that because of our found footage series, so I don't know.
Speaker 1:Maybe that's the next series that we dive into.
Speaker 2:What Paranormal Activity?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean in our personal lives, not in the podcast.
Speaker 2:I see.
Speaker 1:I don't know that. It's that juicy.
Speaker 2:The only series that I've been doing in October so far has been the Insidious series, because the new one just came out.
Speaker 1:And 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 2:The 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 1:At this point, you kind of get a bit better.
Speaker 2:So I just watched the fourth one today.
Speaker 1:And they are five.
Speaker 2:The 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 1:Noted. 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 2:Is this a sequel to A Warm Wind of June?
Speaker 1:Maybe 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 2:I think we should watch some of these and report back once we get to the Loonatics Library part of this.
Speaker 1:All right.
Speaker 2:I have one bit of pop culture to contribute.
Speaker 1:OK.
Speaker 2:So 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 1:So I think All roads lead back to Twisted Metal.
Speaker 2:I 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 1:Very kill, bill, and I'm thinking about it Almost like Yacht of your Rona as well.
Speaker 2:Oh 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 1:You have made this whole episode to make this show. Tomato juice.
Speaker 2:No, I actually just thought of it now. Tomato juice, vodka.
Speaker 1:Worcestershire sauce.
Speaker 2:Viestershire sauce.
Speaker 1:Tabasco.
Speaker 2:And 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 1:It's great any time. Bloody Mary is one of the top five drinks for me.
Speaker 2:Did you know why people love tomato juice so much on airplanes?
Speaker 1:Why.
Speaker 2:The 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 1:I 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 2:Your grimy little hand.
Speaker 1:It'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 2:Room temperature. That's gross. Hey, you do you.
Speaker 1:I mean, I like it called that. Sometimes I even put a little ice in it.
Speaker 2:But sometimes at a diner, you get it. How it comes, you know. Asked, only given with ice.
Speaker 1:They don't give it with ice, it's always pure.
Speaker 2:As to not compromise the integrity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean ice certainly changes the flavor profile.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:It has to be a hot summer day for me to be open to an ice version.
Speaker 2:I always do the ice on the plane.
Speaker 1:Well, you're an amateur.
Speaker 2:I guess so.
Speaker 1:Anyway, 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 2:Right and little known fact. But Maria and Mary are the same name.
Speaker 1:All right, I'm going to assume I didn't convert you to be interested in Bloody Mary and its historic origins.
Speaker 2:From 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 1:Well, let's talk about that. I can shed some conclusive light on that journey.
Speaker 2:Please share your conclusive light.
Speaker 1:So 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 2:Martyrs.
Speaker 1:From 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 2:OK, 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 1:Please, 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 2:Thank you, Pilar.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 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 2:Oh, that's smart, that's really smart.
Speaker 1:And 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 2:All right, this initially did not seem like a topic worthy of Halloween. It's a very good topic.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 2:I don't know if it's Halloween worthy good.
Speaker 1:Well, 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 2:All right, we'll see what happens.
Speaker 1:Until next time, stay spooky, stay well, and we will talk to you soon. Bye, bye, Eh. There's a review.