Episode Transcript
TMD 018: Three Bloody Marys
Hello, hello, you devilish darlings. My name is Dana and I’m your host for this month’s meditation so I’ll be reading for Carly this time. One of our goals here is to help normalize conversations about death and dying. So, if you haven’t already, maybe start a conversation about death with your family. I can honestly say the answers might surprise you when you start asking the questions… and it’s easier to talk about these things before you’re faced with loss.
That’s our PSA and now let’s get on with the goods. This month we’re going to talk about Bloody Marys. No, not the brunch booze. Rather, some very violent women of yesteryear. Now, the women we are going to talk about have a unifying thread in that they are all purported to be the origin of everyone’s favorite slumber party game: Bloody Mary.
Yep, we’re talking about the mirror myth of sleepover fame and its human origin. Although, which woman is the one hiding in mirrors, I can’t say… You’ll just have to decide for yourself.
Now, I believed this was just a game to test courage. I did not know that, historically speaking, the tradition actually had to do more with divination than Fear Factor. Here’s the way it works… or used to… a young woman, in a dimly lit room, must look into a mirror and say “Bloody Mary” three times. She might be granted a glimpse of her future husband… OR she might see a skull staring back at her. The skull means the girl will die before she is wed.
I always thought the point of the Bloody Mary game was to stand in a dark bathroom staring into the mirror, daring a murderous ghost to appear, for as long as your fear will permit. Not the first time or the last that I launched off into an episode thinking I knew something and discovered I was wrong. I guess that’s why there’s research.
Okay, as you may or may not remember, I previously touched upon evil royals in an episode called Henry’s Ghosts and, in that episode, we talked about King Henry VIII of England and his penchant for killing off wives. Now we’ll go a bit further and talk about his oldest daughter - our first Bloody Mary.
To start us off, let’s just move a smidge through the history of Henry VIII’s eldest daughter, Mary Tudor, also known as Mary I of England, also known as Bloody Mary. Mary was the daughter of King Henry and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. Soooo England was a catholic nation when Henry took power. However, after years of marriage without a male heir, Henry started to reconsider that marriage. Eventually, the union between Henry and Catherine was annulled and the King was free to marry again… again and again and again.
By the time, Henry relinquished his crown upon his death, his son by his Jane Seymour - Henry’s third wife - was crowned. Sure, it was normal to pass over daughters in favor of a male heir. Which is what happened with Edward. He skipped right on by his older sisters: Mary and Elizabeth.
Now this particular chunk of history is one I know a weird amount about and that’s because it’s a super important time for folks like me who have studied the history of Western religions. See, thing is, Protestantism was gaining steam and Henry, King of Catholic England, burned through wives too quickly to keep up with their rules about divorce. King Henry VIII kicked off what I like to call “The Great FlipFlop,” otherwise known as the English Reformation.
When he switched teams and took the country with him, we saw some major violence against Catholics, but we’re not getting into that right now because we are here to talk about Mary. Henry’s oldest child, a woman renowned for her devotion to her faith. Mary was skipped over in line for the crown, once by her brother and once again when her brother Edward died. It seems Edward named a cousin, Jane Grey, to rule once he passed… not his sisters. Edward sought to keep England a protestant nation by naming a protestant ruler. England, it would seem, had other ideas about the royal bloodline and placed Mary on the throne… She tried to restore Catholicism in the country and this is where things get bloody.
During the five year period in which she reigned, Queen Mary disposed of quite a number of people who opposed this reformation. Roughly 280 dissenters were killed. Most of them were burned at the stake.
Other people, like nobles who supported other claims to the throne, were beheaded. Lady Jane Grey, who was also known as the Nine Days Queen, ruled for nine days in July of 1553. She was beheaded by Mary, as was her husband and her father and her father-in-law. I should actually do a whole history on the Dudleys, a family Lady Jane Grey joined through marriage. Their cursed line carries all the way from Jolly Old England through the Colonies to a creepy small town in the U.S. today.
OKAY… so Queen Mary’s short reign was full of murderous danger. From her. She was the danger. I do want to say that she did occupy a throne during one of the most tumultuous times in England’s tumultuous history. So, I don’t know, I guess she played her part well? Whether or not Mary needed to kill hundreds of people to maintain her hold on the throne, we’ll never know. I tend to err on the side of not killing a bunch of people. Not matter your reasons.
Queen Mary of England is just one of three women who are often looked to as the potential origin of the Bloody Mary mirror ritual. Another contender is another member of the aristocracy, but not quite as highly placed as a queen.
No, this time we’re dealing with a countess. The Hungarian Countess, Elizabeth Báthory, is sometimes known as The Blood Countess and some contend that she is the most murderous woman in history. She even made the list of Time-Life’s Most Notorious Serial Killers. It is rumored that Elizabeth Bathory tortured and killed more than six hundred women and young girls.
The Blood Countess was born in 1560, just a year after Bloody Mary died. And, in 1573, when she was twelve or thirteen years old, she was betrothed to a Hungarian count. It was a political arrangement. You see, Elizabeth was born to the highest ranking noble family in Transylvania, which was part of the Hungarian Kingdom at the time. Her uncle was the king of Poland. I mean, blood doesn’t get more blue than this.
Elizabeth was married off to this Count when she was fourteen, but if the stories are to be believed, she’d already secretly borne a child - by a young peasant boy who was later castrated and torn apart by dogs by Elizabeth’s husband, according to Richard Cavendish, who wrote about the Countess for History Today. The baby, a daughter, was sent off with a local woman to some distant place. Out of sight and out of mind.
Okay, so for her marriage, Elizabeth was gifted her husband’s castle and the surrounding areas, which include more than a dozen villages. Count Ferenc Nádasdy, her husband, was a soldier so he was often away from home. Elizabeth was given charge of all their land.
She had four children, supposedly with her husband, but she was known for taking lovers. The children were raised by governesses, per “uge” amongst the aristocracy of the time. This gave Elizabeth plenty of time to indulge her hobbies, which included torture and murder.
She started with servants and peasants, but she started making waves when she moved up the ladder… which was still down the ladder for her. The daughters of lesser nobles would be sent to the care of the Countess so they might receive proper courtly training. At least, that was the idea when these girls were packed off and sent away.
Instead, they were beaten, stuck with needles and hot irons, starved, and subjected to any one of a number of other horrors. Her penchant for torture and murder became such a hot topic that, in spite of her noble ranking, an investigation into the truth behind the rumors was launched in 1610. Roughly three hundred witnesses spoke out against Elizabeth during these investigations, some describing things they witnessed, like dead and mutilated bodies. By some accounts, the Blood Countess had victims trapped in her castle at the time of her arrest.
Three of the four members of Elizabeth’s violent inner circle were accused of these heinous crimes, tried, and sentenced to death. I’m guessing those were the servants. The fourth was sentenced to life in confinement. I’m guessing she was not a servant.
And for Elizabeth? Well, she was never officially tried. Because her family was the ruling family in Transylvania, she was arrested but never charged. An agreement was struck to confine the Countess to her castle for the remainder of her life. By some accounts, she was confined to a small section of the castle, perhaps even just a room, but some accounts give her run of the whole place.
She remained in confinement at her castle until 1614 when she died in her sleep.
I suspect she was not given carte blanche with regard to the killing of peasants once again, but if the rumors are true, I would assume her family wasn’t so swell. They might have offered her a virgin once a year as a birthday present.
Some people claimed The Blood Countess drank or bathed in the blood of virgins to maintain her youth. Cutting off her supply might have been her doom. There’s a lot about this story we won’t be able to verify. There’s contention about whether or not the Countess was an actual monster, or just a wealthy and powerful woman up against some dude who owed her family money. Yes, one of the investigators did owe her family money and, yes, the debt was canceled in exchange for leniency with Elizabeth.
But there were a lot of stories about this woman bathing in blood, some of her victims had bite marks, and, once again, there were a lot of stories. So many that it seems unwise to dismiss the accusations totally. I wonder if there isn’t some gray space where the real truth lies.
Maybe Elizabeth Bathory murdered young women and drank their blood to maintain her health or youth. According Wikipedia,the Countess had several seizures when she was a child that might have been related to epilepsy. Treatment for seizures at the time included, and I quote, “rubbing blood of a non-sufferer on the lips of an epileptic or giving the epileptic a mix of a non-sufferer's blood and piece of skull as their episode ended.”
So she might have had a condition that she treated with the blood of her victims. Still not okay, but it sounds better than just bathing in blood for no good reason, right? Maybe? I’m still against it, just to be clear.
Word of Countess Elizabeth Bathory and her evil deeds got locked into folklore both near and far. Elizabeth earned the moniker Countess Dracula in addition to the Blood Countess. I don’t know where the “Mary” part comes from if her name was Elizabeth.
At least the next possible Bloody Mary was actually named Mary. Bloody Mary Worth, not to be confused with Mary Worth the comic book character that ran for eight decades starting in 1938, is correlated to an evil woman from American history this time.
No, this Mary Worth lived near Chicago and was said to be part of the “reverse underground railroad,” meaning she sold slaves back South. She was lynched on her own property for these wrongdoings and no one feels bad about it. Rumors of dark arts and the torture and murder of slaves who didn’t get sent back south and instead found themselves trapped in the clutches in the monstrous Mary.
While Mary was known about town as a witch, most people just avoided her. But, eventually, the rumors of wrongdoing became too much for the townspeople. She was lynched on her own land where she was also buried.
In the 1960s, a ninety-year old woman claimed she was alive and present for the death of Mary Worth. She claimed Mary was burned at the stake like a witch, not hanged.
Some say the place where this Mary Worth was buried later became a housing development and a stone that may have served as a gravemarker was moved for the construction of a house. If the Lake County Journal is to be believed, that house has experienced some ghostly happenings as a result, like dishes falling off the shelves. Oh, and the house burned down twice.
Twice, people. The house burned down twice. Why did they rebuild? I have no idea.
The jury’s out on whether Queen Mary I of England, the Blood Countess, or rotten Mary Worth are the origin of the Bloody Mary myth. We might not ever know. I don’t need to know. I’m done with that game forever.
And I’m done with this episode. But I promise to come back with more next month. Until then, I hope you are in a calm corner of this chaotic universe. I look forward to our next dance.
