Author Archives: Christina Oti

Bloody Mary School Bathroom

Bloody Mary

 

Subject: Ritual/Game

 

Informant: Lauren Herring

 

Background Information: Bloody Mary is a common legend in childhood that involves a sort of game of going into a bathroom, standing in front of a mirror, and saying “Bloody Mary.” As the legend goes, if you do this, some figure will appear in the mirror. I asked Lauren about her take on it, and the following was her response.

 

Lauren: That game was so scary. I was always way too scared to do it alone. But everyone said the upstairs girls’ bathroom in Elementary school was haunted by [Bloody Mary].

 

Me: Did you ever see her?

 

Lauren: No, not really, but I did have one really scary experience with it.

 

Me: What was that?

 

Lauren: Ok, so it was around the third grade, and the story was, like, huge. Like, everyone was talking about Bloody Mary in the girls’ restroom. I think it started because there was some story about a girl a year ahead of us who actually conjured Bloody Mary in that bathroom, and then everyone said she haunted it ever since then.

 

So, I raise my hand and ask to go to the bathroom one day in class, and I go, and as soon as I wash my hands, the power goes out and the paper towel machine starts ejecting the paper towels. Like, not as in they were crazy-possessed, but they were those automatic ones, and they just all started rolling out the whole rolls of paper towels.

 

And so obviously I’m freaked out, I’m like in third grade. And I run to the door, but it’s locked. And then I start really freaking out, and all I can think about is Bloody Mary.

 

It turns out that the school was having a lockdown, so that’s why the lights went out and the doors automatically locked. But it was so scary. Like I really thought I was going to die. Also why would the school have it so that the bathroom doors locked? Oh, and it didn’t explain the paper towel thing.

 

Conclusion: I went to school with Lauren, so I knew about the Bloody Mary in the girls’ restroom story, but I had never actually heard her whole story about her experience with it. It is interesting to note that, if taken in the context of a ghost story, Lauren’s experience didn’t fit exactly right with the Bloody Mary ritual. The way I’ve heard it, in the ritual, one is supposed to stand in front of the mirror and say “Bloody Mary” three times while spinning in a circle three times with your eyes closed. When you open your eyes, you are supposed to see Bloody Mary in the mirror where your body is supposed to be. But in Lauren’s story, she never actually summoned Bloody Mary. Rather, it came to her when she did not expect it.

 

For more versions of this legend and different beliefs about Bloody Mary herself and how she is summoned, see: (Dundes, Alan. Bloody Mary in the mirror: essays in psychoanalytic folkloristics. Jackson: U Press of Mississippi, 2002. Print.)

One Frog

One Frog

 

Subject: Game

 

Informant: Tye Griffith

 

Background Information/Context: The following is a description from Tye of a game called “One Frog” that she used to play with her friends at recess when she was young.

 

“My friends and I used to play this game at recess. It was around when I was at R.O.B. [her Elementary School], I think. We called it ‘One Frog,’ and you would get a big group of people and all stand in a circle, and you would all start this pattern: [as she demonstrates] so, first you pat your knees, then clap, then you snap your right hand, and then you snap your left hand. So that’s the pattern.

 

And then the first person starts, and they go, ‘one frog.’ And then it goes clockwise, so the person to your left would go, ‘two eyes,’ and then the next person would go, ‘four legs,’ and then the next person says, ‘ker-plunk.’

 

And then the next person to the left starts it again but says, ‘two frogs,’ and then the person to their left would say, ‘four eyes,’ yadda yadda yadda. So—wait do you get it? [I say yes.] So that all goes on, and you have to keep going at the rhythm that your doing the clapping, snapping pattern. And then if someone messes up or gets off rhythm or, like, can’t think of the next number or something, they’re out.”

 

Conclusion: I was surprised when she started telling me about the game, because I know the same one, but in a different context. I’m a theatre major, and we use this game as a warm up activity for a show that I’m in right now. I was also surprised that the way Tye described it seems exactly the same as the version I know for theatre. I was surprised even more though that Tye played it as a childhood game because my whole cast, myself included, really struggles with it. If college students find it difficult to think of the next thing to say so quickly, then I can’t imagine how young children who have barely learned simple multiplication could figure it out, or even think of it as a fun game.

Reiki

Reiki

 

Subject: Healing Ritual, Superstition

 

Informant: Tye Griffith

 

Background Information/Context: Growing up, I had a nanny who helped raise me, and who had been working in my family since before I was born. Her name is Eva, and she is from Monterrey, Mexico. Eva also worked as a nanny for a close family friend of mine, Tye. Tye and I essentially grew up together, and had the connection of Eva, who I feel linked our two families together even closer. I asked Tye about a healing ritual Eva would perform called Reiki when we were little.

 

Tye: So, I don’t remember as much about this one, but I remember Eva would do it, and it was supposed to be a transfer of energy from one person to another through the placement of hands. I think she only did it if something was wrong, like if you were sick or in a bad mood or something, maybe.

 

So [Eva] would take our hands and run patterns along your palms with her fingers. And then she would, like, put her hands over yours. I don’t think she said anything while she was doing it or anything though. I’m pretty sure she didn’t. Yeah, Reiki was supposed to send good energy into you if something was wrong, and it was just a ritual involving your hands. It was kind of cool actually.

 

Me: Do you think it worked?

 

Tye: [laughs] I don’t know. I mean, at the time, I remember like fully believing in it.

 

Me: Yeah, me too, actually. I think it was like a placebo effect or something.

 

Tye: Yeah, because I do think if I was feeling sick or something before, and then she did it, I would feel better. Honestly, I think Eva is magic [laughs].

 

Conclusion: I asked Tye about two of the rituals Eva would do with us, and I actually really enjoyed looking back on them. I could tell when we were talking that Tye also had fun looking back on the experience. I do believe that the Reiki ritual worked to a certain extent, but more of a placebo effect type of thing. But when I was little, I did believe it worked. I thought that Eva was performing magic and that the magic was healing me magically.

Down by the Banks of the Hanky Panky

Down by the Banks of the Hanky Panky

 

 

Subject: Childhood Game

 

 

Informant: Natalie Thurman

 

 

Background Information/Context: Natalie used to play this game called “Down by the Banks of the Hanky Panky” when she was younger with her friends.

 

The following is Natalie’s description of the game to me:

 

 

 

“I used to play this one all the time with my friends. We would all sit around in a circle, close, so that your knees are touching—you would sit criss-cross. And you would put your hands on the knees of the people sitting next to you, palms up. The hand on the knee of the person to your right would be over the hand of that person. The hand on the knee of the person to your left would be under the hand of that person. I feel like that was really confusing—did you understand that? [I say yes.] Ok good. So you have your hands like that—oh my God, this is giving me so many flashbacks—and you start the game. You all start singing the song. It goes like this: [singing]

 

 

Down by the banks of the hanky panky

Where the bullfrogs jump from bank to banky

Singing oops, opps, curly pops

Snap crack-a-doodle and a cur-plop

 

 

And while you’re singing it, you bring your left hand, that’s resting on the hand of the person on your left, over their knee—you bring that left hand over to your right side and slap the hand of the person on your right, whose hand is resting on your right hand, which is resting on their left knee, if that makes sense. And you try to go with the rhythm, but towards the end, everyone ends up going as fast as they can so that it doesn’t land on you.

 

 

So when the song ends, and you say cur-plop, on ‘plop,’ whosever hand is the last one to be slapped is out, and they’re removed from the circle. Then you just keep going until you get to the last person, and they win the game. It gets really intense though when there’s less and less people. Like, when it gets down to the last two people, it’s so intense, everyone’s energy goes up like times ten. It was really fun.”

 

 

When Natalie first started describing the game to me, I immediately knew what she was talking about. I also played this game often with my friends when I was little, but I had completely forgotten about it until she brought it back up. It was particularly interesting to me to hear her actually tell me the lyrics of the song because I remember being a kid and not knowing the exact words that we were supposed to say, so instead, I would just make something up that sort of sounded like what everyone else was saying. I wonder if Natalie did the same thing, or if she told me the lyrics of a version of the song that she and her friends consistently used. It was also humorous for me to watch her try to explain the circle formation, as I could tell how difficult it was to explain in words. I think it’s a game that is much better suited as oral and performance folklore instead of for writing down how the game works. Because of this, the game doesn’t have official instructions, and can change slightly each time someone introduces it to a new set of friends.

Dog Licking Story

Subject: Myth, Childhood Scary Story

 

Informant: Lily Fitzpatrick

 

Background Information/Context: I was remembering a story that my friends and I used to tell each other at night to scare our friends. My friends and I used to tell these kinds of stories all the time, but this one was the one that came to mind when I tried to remember any of them. For whatever reason, none of these stories used to scare me very much, except for this one. Because I was having trouble remembering it entirely, I asked Lily to share how she remembered the story:

 

“This dog used to lick his owner’s hand every morning to wake him up for school. He was a young schoolboy [laughs], and then one morning he, like, got his hand licked, as one does in the morning, and he was like, ‘Oh time to wake up for school,’ and he walked into the bathroom, and the dog’s head was cut off, and the—wait I have to think to remember this—it said, like, I think, like, written in the dog’s blood on the mirror, it said, ‘dogs aren’t the only ones who lick hands.’”