Bloody Mary folklore in popular culture

An early 20th century Halloween greeting card showing Bloody Mary

Both folk and urban legends have served as inspiration for a number of depictions of Bloody Mary, a ghost, phantom or spirit conjured to reveal the future;^[1] these are especially prevalent in films and television shows dealing with the supernatural.

Specific cultural references

Specific reference to Bloody Mary are made in the following:

Film

• Bloody Mary, a 2006 film set in a psychiatric hospital which is based on the legend;^[2]
• The Legend of Bloody Mary, a 2008 film by director John Stecenko includes a character, Amy, who goes missing for good after playing the game "Bloody Mary".^[3]
• Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension

Stage

• In 2008, for its annual "Halloween Horror Nights" event, Universal Studios Florida developed a new variation of the legend. In their version, "Mary" was a doctor who studied fear by exposing her patients to it.^[4]

Television

• A season two episode of Charmed ("Chick Flick"), involves a demon who makes killers from different horror movies come to life. One of these killers is Bloody Mary.^[5]
• In the Ghost Whisperer TV series' third season, an episode ("Don't Try This at Home") involves the Bloody Mary legend.^[6]
• Supernatural, the paranormal TV series, had an episode titled, "Bloody Mary", during its first season, involving a ghost that attacked those who were looking into a mirror while her name was repeated, although she was only capable of 'leaping' into mirrors within a certain range of the mirror that she killed herself in front of. In the course of the investigation, it is revealed that the original 'Bloody Mary' was an aspiring actress who was found dead in front of her mirror of an apparent suicide, but she wrote the first few letters of a name on the glass before she died, with the investigating detectives noting that Mary was said to be having an affair with a doctor, speculating that he was the actual killer, but there was no actual evidence to prove that theory. Due to her death, Mary's ghost will only attack people who looked in a mirror while her name was being invoked- whether they were the ones who said her name or not- if they had some secret relating to their role in another's death, with the protagonists seeking to stop Mary as she cannot distinguish between a man killing his wife and disguising it as a suicide or a young woman whose obsessive boyfriend killed himself because she left him.^[7]
• Syzygy, an episode of The X-Files, concerns her legend.^[8]
• Mentioned in Warehouse 13 at various times, about a large mirror in the warehouse, in relation to Lewis Carol's Alice in Wonderland story.
• In the South Park episode Hell on Earth 2006, the Bloody Mary chant is parodied, with the boys daring each other to chant "Biggie Smalls" into a mirror three times. When Butters finishes the chant, Biggie Smalls appears.

Video games

• The Wolf Among Us, a video game based on the Fables comic book series, introduces the Bloody Mary legend as a Fable and one of the key antagonists in the game.^[9] She is voiced by Kathryn Cressida.

Other

• The Bloody Mary Show, a British comedy webseries which portrays Bloody Mary's daily life.^[10]

References and notes