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“When I was little, my older sister used to put me into the bathroom and turn the lights off and lock the door with her body and put a chair under the knob. And would scream, bloody Mary, bloody Mary, bloody Mary, 3 times, and I would look in the mirror and there would be a woman behind me. I’d be so scared.”

Context

The informant is from Los Angeles and has an older sister who would mess with her, like siblings do.

Analysis

Bloody Mary is one of the most widely circulated pieces of children’s folklore in the U.S., and what’s interesting about this account isn’t the legend itself but how it was performed. The informant didn’t encounter Bloody Mary through a calm explanation or a sleepover dare among peers. Her older sister forced the ritual on her by locking her in the bathroom and chanting the name for her. That changes the texture of the folklore considerably because it becomes a tool of sibling power rather than a shared rite of passage. Additionally, because she remembers actually seeing a woman behind her, whether it was imagination or the brain filling in shapes in a dark mirror, the experience was real to her, and that’s part of why this legend has survived for generations.