"The history of the children's game Bloody Mary is a difficult one to extract from the large amount of mixed up legends and history that over the years has become the main basis for the story surrounding the game.
The most common story told is that Mary Worth was a witch that lived over 100 years ago who dabbled in the black arts. She was found out and executed. However this does not tie in with a child or baby which is often mentioned in the ritual of summoning her.
The other story accompanying the ritual is a local woman was involved in a fatal car accident nearby, her face horribly mutilated. She reappears in the mirror when summoned with that same horrific face.
It is largely believed that the origins of the names "Mary Worth" and "Bloody Mary" came from a slight mix up of characters from history. There is a lot of speculation as to the names being taken from Mary I, Queen of England who reigned during the Tudor period. Mary Tudor was also commonly known as "Bloody Mary".
Her nickname of "Bloody Mary" became attached to her when she violently executed and burnt Mary Tudorpeople at the stake for heresy throughout her reign of a little over 5 years.
She also was unable to bear children and suffered two phantom pregnancies, this is where it is speculated that the Bloody Mary game involving chanting "I stole your baby" or "I killed your baby" became tangled up with the now known Bloody Mary game.
There is another suggestion that the name "Mary Worth" was derived from a victim of the Salem Witch trials. There was no person involved in these trials by the name of Mary Worth.
Other surrounding additions to the "Bloody Mary" game are derived from the legend of Elizabeth Bathory, who it was rumored bathed in blood and took part in other atrocities to save her youthful beauty, of course her name was not Mary but somehow the stories of this cruel woman have been inserted into the Bloody Mary game.
However this game came about and whenever this game was first invented the one thing we do know for sure is that the ritual of spinning and chanting has evovled from quite a long time ago, when young girls participated regularly in rituals such as this to find who they would marry and when they would marry. There is also the addition of mirrors which were known as being portals to another world, especially during victorian times. Add in a little more of the olde time spiritual beliefs including covering mirrors while in the presence of a dead person or at a funeral, some spooky ghost stories told at bedtime, and it seems to have all somehow combined over the years to form the now famous game of Bloody Mary."
I have never heard of Mary Worth, or the game! But I was interested in the post about Mary Tudor. She was not known as "Bloody Mary" because she had one person executed. She had thousands executed!
Her father, Henry VIII, founded the Church of England (Protestant) when he went against the Pope's teaching on divorce. His daughter Mary brought back the Catholic faith to England; and she persecuted every Protestant caught in the land, and had them executed. Only after Mary died, and Elizabeth became ruler, did England regain sanity! Just thought I would set the history properly.
Thanks Brysing. though I think the statement was just a general overview of how the nickname came to be I used that information because it had the other reasons why the whole urban legend thing came to be.
I'm not sure but I think Queen Mary Tudor also actually could have been called Bloody Mary for marrying King Phillip II of Spain aswell as gaining the name for the Protestant executions which I think was around 287 her father King Henry VIII was responsible for a much higher number of Protestant executions somewhere in the region of 57,000 deaths and the English where living in fear that the Spanish Inquisition would come to England after she married King Phillip II and after her death her name was blackened because of the hated Spanish King.
I've never been to good on history though so I'm sure if that's all right or not Lol
