Text:

“So when I was in 1st grade I hung out with this group of girls, and the main, like, ring leader girl always told us that um, that Bloody Mary lived in the girls bathroom and it was like a ghost that would put bloody hand prints on the wall and you could like summon her or whatever, and there was like these hand prints, they were probably just mud or whatever or paint or something but they like looked like dried blood like against the wall near the bathroom walls of one of the nearby buildings so everyone was like OMG bloody mary lives there and the ring leader girl was like OK so like why don’t we go in there and try some bloody Mary stuff. We’re like OK why not, so it’s during school hours it’s like lunch or something lunch recess we go in there and so we go in there right and I remember there being like twine on the floor like random pieces of like twine or sticks, I don’t know, but like for some reason we danced around them but I don’t think we put them there, I don’t know, but we all held hands and we danced in a circle and she said if we say bloody Mary three times like she’ll be here like OK so we do that and then we all get super scared once we’re done chanting. I mean nothing happens but once we’re done chanting we’re like Oh my gosh and we all run out of the bathroom right, so I’m pretty much last out of the bathroom and I run out the door and I’m stuck on something like caught on the door and the thing with the door is it’s a push door so it doesn’t have handles. It doesn’t have like a knob just kind of like push either way um and I’m totally, yeah, stuck on the door there’s someone like holding me, it felt like someone was holding me just for a split second there. Then I, you know, I could go and then I ran and I was scared and whatever but it’s like I was like held there for a second and I was like well I wasn’t caught or anything because there’s no knob on the door to like catch me so I don’t know maybe the spirits were mad at me and they’re holding me but yeah”

Context:

V is a 19 year old student from Orinda, CA, and she told me a story from when she was in elementary school. She believes in ghosts and spirits and explained that she always has believed in them. She believes in them because she says she “has no reason not to” and has had various experiences like that or known people who have experienced similar things with the supernatural.

Analysis:

While V says that she believes in ghosts and spirits, and pretty much always has, I think this is in part due to having experiences like these starting from an early age. Childhood is a huge part of developing beliefs in one’s life, and especially if they experience things themselves rather than just hearing about them. I think that this story/experience of the supernatural has had an impact on V’s belief in ghosts and spirits, as she does believe that some force was holding her there in that bathroom. I also think that Bloody Mary is an interesting gateway into believing in ghosts, as many young women, or just young people in general have been told the story of Bloody Mary at some point in their life. What I find most interesting, however, is that her story is extremely similar to one of my own. While I didn’t experience anything actually happening with a spirit, it was a common belief in my elementary school that one of the girls bathrooms was haunted by Bloody Mary, and for that reason girls were afraid to use that bathroom. I find it interesting as I grew up in Virginia, without internet or a way to have heard of it from across the globe, yet at the same time in California, other girls were having the same experience.