AMERICAN FOLKLORE, BLOODY MARY

     I've always been interested in all folklore, especially how they originated.  How were they created?  Over active imaginations?  I would like to believe there is a little truth behind every legend.  Not that I'd like to believe there were spooky men walking around with hooks for hands, impaling helpless victims.  I'm assuming you know what I mean.  Everybody has heard of Bloody Mary.  I remember at school, a few of us would go into the bathroom, turn out the lights, spin around a few times, and then call to Bloody Mary, saying her name three times.  Nothing ever happened of course, but it sparked the imagination, and fear.

     I found this interesting interpretation of Bloody Mary, excerpted from 'Spooky Pennsylvania,' retold by S.E. Schlosser.

     BLOODY MARY

     She lived deep in the forest in a tiny cottage and sold herbal remedies for a living.  Folks living in the town nearby called her Bloody Mary, and said she was a witch.  None dared cross the old crone for fear that their cows would go dry, their food-stores rot away before winter, their children take sick of fever, or any number to terrible things that an angry witch could do to her neighbors.

     Then the little girls in the village began to disappear, one by one.  No one could find out where they had gone.  Grief-stricken families searched the woods, the local buildings, and all the houses and barns, but there was no sign of the missing girls.  A few brave souls even went to Bloody Mary's home in the woods to see if the witch had taken the girls, but she denied any knowledge of the disappearances.  Still, it was noted that her haggard appearance had changed.  She looked younger, more attractive.  The neighbors were suspicious, but they could find no proof that the witch had taken their young ones.

     Then came the night when the daughter of the miller rose from her bed and walked outside, following an enchanted sound no one else could hear.  The miller's wife had a toothache and was sitting up in the kitchen treating the tooth with an herbal remedy when her daughter left the house.  She screamed for her husband and followed the girl out of the door.  The miller came running in his nightshirt.  Together, they tried to restrain the girl, but she kept breaking away from them and heading out of town.

     The desperate cries of the miller and his wife woke the neighbors.  They came to assist the frantic couple.  Suddenly, a sharp-eyed farmer gave a shout and pointed towards a strange light at the edge of the woods.  A few townsmen followed him out into the field and saw Bloody Mary standing beside a large oak tree, holding a magic wand that was pointed towards the miller's house.  She was glowing with an unearthly light as she set her evil spell upon the miller's daughter.

     The townsmen grabbed their guns and their pitchforks and ran toward the witch.  When she heard the commotion, Bloody Mary broke off her spell and fled back into the woods.  The far-sighted farmer had loaded his gun with silver bullets in case the witch ever came after his daughter.  Now he took aim and shot at her.  The bullet hit Bloody Mary in the hip and she fell to the ground.  The angry townsmen leapt upon her and carried her back into the field, where they built a huge bonfire and burned her at the stake.

     As she burned, Bloody Mary screamed a curse at the villagers.  If anyone mentioned her name aloud before a mirror, she would send her spirit to revenge herself upon them for her terrible death.  When she was dead, the villagers went to the house in the wood and found the unmarked graves of the little girls the evil witch had murdered.  She had used their blood to make her young again.

     From that day to this, anyone foolish enough to chant Bloody Mary's name three times before a darkened mirror will summon the vengeful spirit of the witch.  It is said that she will tear their bodies to pieces and rip their souls from their mutilated bodies.  The souls of these unfortunate ones will burn in torment as Bloody Mary once was burned, and they will be trapped forever in the mirror.


     BURNT CHURCH

     Here's a story I've never heard of before, but I'm sure you'll find it as horrifying as I did.  It is also retold by S.E. Schlosser.

     She was sophisticated, poised, and cultured.  In retrospect, this should have made them suspicious.  A teacher like her should be presiding over a girl's school in London or New York, not seeking a position in a small town in Georgia.  But at the time, they were too delighted by her application to ask any questions.

     "It will be good for our daughter to learn some culture," the attorney's wife told the pastor's wife.

     "And our boy may find some table manners at last," the pastor's wife responded with a smile.

     School was called into session in the local church shortly after the arrival of the teacher.  And soon, the children were bringing glowing reports home.  Teacher was special.  Teacher taught them manners and diction as well as reading, writing and arithmetic.  All the children loved teacher.

     The parents were delighted by the progress their children were making at school.  Teacher had been a real find.  A God-send, said the preacher's wife.

     But not every one in town was so satisfied.  The local ne-er-do well - called Smith - had more sinister stories to tell.

     "That woman ain't natural," he told the blacksmith, waving a bottle of whisky for emphasis.  "I seen her out in the woods after dark, dancing around a campfire and chanting in a strange language."

     "Nonsense," the blacksmith retorted, calmly hammering a headed iron bar on his anvil.

     "They say she's got an altar in her room and it ain't an altar to the Almighty," Smith insisted, leaning forward and blowing his boozy breath into the blacksmith's face.

     "You're drunk," said the blacksmith, lifting the hot iron so it barred the man from coming any closer.  "Go home and sleep it off."

     Smith left the smithy, but he continued to talk wild about the Teacher in the weeks that followed.  During those weeks, a change gradually came over the school children.  The typical high-jinks and pranks that all children played lessened.  Their laughter died away.  And when they did misbehave, it was on a much more ominous scale than before.  Items began to disappear from houses and farms.  Expensive items like jewelry, farm tools, and money.  When children talked back to their parents, there was a hard edge to their voices, and they did not apologize for their rudeness, even when punished.

     "And my daughter lied to me the other day," the attorney's wife said to the pastor's wife in distress.  "I saw her punch her younger brother and steal an apple from him, and she denied it to my face.  She practically called me a liar!"

     "The games the children play back in the woods frighten me," the pastor's wife confessed.  "They chant in a strange language, and they move in such a strange manner.  Almost like a ritual dance."

     "Could it be something they are learning at school?" asked the attorney's wife.

     "Surely not!  Teacher is such a sweet, sophisticated lady," said the pastor's wife.
 
     But they exchanged glances.

     Smith, on the other hand, was sure.  "That teacher is turning the young'uns to the Devil, that 's what she is doing," he proclaimed up and down the streets of the town.

     "Don't be ridiculous," the preacher told him when they passed in front of the mercantile.

     "I ain't ridiculous.  You are blind," Smith told him.  "That teacher ought to be burned at the stake, like they burned the witches in Salem."

     The pastor, pale with wrath, ordered Smith out of his sight.  But the ne'er-do-well's words rang in his mind and would not be pushed away.  And the children continued to behave oddly.  Almost like they were possessed.  He would, the preacher decided reluctantly, have to look into it someday soon.

     That day came sooner than he thought. The very next Monday, his little boy came down with a cold and his mother kept him home from school.  When the pastor returned from his duties for a late lunch, his wife came running up to him as soon as he entered the door.  She was pale with fright.

     "I heard him chanting something over and over again in his bedroom," she gasped.  "So I crept to the door to listen.  He was saying the Lord's Prayer backwards!"

     The pastor gasped and clutched his Bible to his chest, as goose bumps erupted over his body.  This was positively satanic.  And there was nowhere the boy could have learned such a thing in this town, unless he learned it...at school.

     At that moment, the attorney's wife came bursting in the door behind him.

     "Quick pastor, quick," she cried.  "Smith is running through town with a torch, talking about burning down the school.  The children are still in class!"

     The pastor raced out of the house with the two woman at his heels.  They and the other townsfolk who followed them were met by a huge cloud of smoke coming from the direction of the church, where the school children had their lessons.  The building was already ablaze as frantic parents beat at the flames with wet sacks, or threw buckets of water from the pump into the inferno.  Smith could be heard cackling unrepentantly from the far side of the building, which was full of the screams of the trapped students and their teacher.

     The fire blazed with a supernatural kind of force, and the pastor thought he heard the sound of the Teacher laughing from within the building when it became apparent that no one could be saved.

     The church burnt for several hours, and when it was finally extinguished, there was nothing left.  Mourning parents tried to find something of their children to bury, And Smith wisely disappeared from town, his mission against the works of Satan completed.

     The teacher's burnt body was buried deep in the ground and covered with brick tomb.  The children's smaller bodies were interred beneath wooden crosses.  Of all the student's in the school that fall, only the pastor's small son survived.

     To this day, voices can be heard in the graveyard at Burnt Church, chanting unintelligible words, as the school children and the teacher once chanted in the woods outside town.  Sometimes apparitions are seen, and dark walkers who roam the graveyard at night.  And they say that a brick taken from the grave of the evil teacher can set fire to objects on which they are place.