You are sitting around the campfire, roasting marshmallows, enjoying your night. You’re relaxed, laughing with friends, until all of a sudden someone exclaims, “Let’s tell scary stories.” Your stomach twists. You hate scary stories; you jump at every scream, every bloody, gory detail. Meanwhile, your friends are eating it up, laughing and giggling. But once upon a time, ghost stories weren’t told for fun. They were meant to warn us, to remind people of the mistakes of the past, mistakes never to be repeated.
Now, here is a classic ghost story, possibly told to you by your friends in the basement at a sleepover in the 3rd grade: Bloody Mary. Say her name three times in the mirror in a dark room, and she will appear. Her nails running down your back, her scream ringing in your ears, and if you’re lucky, you may see her staring back at you in the mirror.
As with folklore, it stems from a multitude of stories, all combined into one. One possible origin is Elizabeth Báthory, a Hungarian countess who murdered and tortured over 600 young women in the 16th and 17th centuries. Spine-chilling, right? Elizabeth Báthory and her servants were found guilty of murdering the women after being investigated by the King. Three of her servants were killed as a result, although Elizabeth Báthory herself was not. She was to be put in her room, never to be seen again. While her name is not Mary, it’s easy to see how her story’s blood and vanity could inspire the myth. She murdered many young women, giving rise to the name “Bloody Mary.”
Another historical inspiration is Queen Mary I of England, who was nicknamed “Bloody Mary” for burning around 300 Protestants at the stake during her reign. And Mary Worth, a mysterious woman who either killed slaves escaping the American South via the Underground Railroad, or a woman who was hanged during the Salem Witch trials. All of these muses are terrifyingly gory and layered in mystery.
On a more scientific note, a study written by Maclen Stanley, JD, for Psychology Today shows that some people, especially those who are overly self-critical, may see monsters in the mirror under the right conditions. This happens because your brain can only focus on so many things at once.
When your brain focuses too intently on one specific thing, it tunes out everything else, the way you can focus on a conversation and forget your surroundings, or how reading this might make you momentarily forget you’re breathing and blinking. This is called the Troxler Effect.
A good example of the Troxler Effect is an optical illusion: when you stare long enough, your brain filters out what it deems unimportant. So when someone stares at their reflection too long, especially focusing on their flaws, the mind can distort the image, creating something strange, something monstrous. That’s when Bloody Mary “appears.”
Now, cross the ocean and you’ll find another haunting tale: La Llorona. A story as sorrowful as it is terrifying. There are many versions of this story, but the most popular tells of a woman named María, abandoned by her husband for a more beautiful woman. In some tales, he was abusive and distant, loving their sons more than her. Blinded by jealousy and grief, María leads her two sons to the river and drowns them, When she realizes what she’s done, she drowns herself too. Forever after, La Llorona wanders, searching for her lost children. You can hear her cries in the night: “Mis hijos! ¿Dónde están mis hijos?”
Parents tell this story to warn their children not to stay out too late. But deeper down, it’s also a warning about jealousy, how it blinds, consumes, and destroys. La Llorona’s origins can be traced all the way back to Aztec mythology, to the goddess Cihuacóatl, or Snake Woman: the goddess of motherhood, fertility, and midwives. She ruled over Cihuateteo, the spirits of women who died in childbirth, honored as warriors and guardians.
La Llorona may derive from Cihuacóatl’s suffering. According to legend, after giving birth to her son Mixcoatl, she abandons him at a crossroads. When she returns, she finds only a bloody knife. Overcome with grief, she wails, her cries a sign of approaching war for the Aztecs.
Bloody Mary and La Llorona are echoes of one another, women punished, feared, or pitied, turned to legend. Both are oral stories, passed down from generation to generation, whispered by campfires and retold in new forms. Each retelling changes the details, but the message remains: our ghosts remind us what happens when we lose control of our envy, our vanity, or our fear.
