Case file · Folklore / legend
Bloody Mary
A ghost or witch said to appear in a mirror when her name is chanted, a sleepover ritual that took its modern form in the United States in the late 1960s.
1967 CE · 39.83, -98.58 · status: legend
The account
It grew from older divination games in which young women looked in a mirror by candlelight to glimpse a future husband, or a skull foretelling early death.
The sceptical view
It is a group game; what participants see in a dark mirror is shaped by expectation and suggestion.