Bloody Mary
Who was Bloody Mary?
There are many different stories of who the real “Bloody Mary” was. The Bloody Mary of slumber party fame has been linked to Queen Mary Tudor of England, who gained the nickname of “Bloody Mary” when she had more than 300 people burned at the stake during her reign because they would not follow her Roman Catholic faith. She is also sometimes confused with Mary Queen of Scots (Bloody Mary Tudor’s cousin), who in fact may have been instead the subject of a much more benign children’s tradition: the nursery rhyme “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary.” In other versions, Bloody Mary is also thought to be the ghost of “Mary Worth,” a supposed witch killed in the Salem Witch trials, though no historical record of a person by that name exists. The most far-fetched version of the story is rooted in the legend of a woman named Elizabeth Bathory, a sixteenth-century countess who was rumored to have killed girls and then bathed in their blood to retain her youth. Her name wasn’t Mary, obviously, but the nickname she earned, “The Blood Countess,” may contribute to her confusion with the Bloody Mary of countless slumber parties. The most mundane
Queen Mary Tudor of England
story associated with the Bloody Mary myth is that Mary was a local woman who was killed in a car accident; her ghostly visage features a horrible facial disfiguration she received in the crash. No matter which story you decide to go with—and there are merits to each of them—the basic method of summoning the restless spirit of Bloody Mary is the same: a darkened room, a mirror, and the chanting of her name.
Why the mirror? “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?” is probably the most familiar rhyme about the magical divination possibilities of your own reflection. Indeed, girls in ancient times were encouraged to eat a red apple and brush their hair at midnight in front of a mirror, whereupon they would be rewarded with a glimpse of their future husbands (the red apple and the mirror both figure prominently in the Snow White story we know today). Other rituals involving a mirror required spinning around a certain number of times or looking over your shoulder, the end result being, again, the revelation of whom you might marry. Even today we have less binding versions of these chanting rituals and superstitions—think “he loves me, loves me not” to see if someone likes you, or the twisting of an apple stem while chanting the alphabet to discover the first initial of the person you like best. What does this have to do with Bloody Mary? One of the variations of the Bloody Mary chant was “Bloody mirror, bloody mirror.” This, combined with the idea that you were supposed to discover who you were going to marry by looking in the mirror, plus the gruesome legends of various Marys who were bloody themselves, easily evolved into the “Bloody Mary” game we know today.
How to Play
Go into the bathroom, or another darkened room with a mirror. Holding a flashlight beneath your chin so that it lights up your face in a ghostly way, close the door and turn off all the lights. Stand in front of the mirror and chant “Bloody Mary” thirteen times to summon the spirit of Bloody Mary. Ideally this should be done alone, but you can take your friends in there with you for moral support—which you may indeed require, since the legend is that if you get to the thirteenth chant of her name, Bloody Mary will appear in the mirror and either reach out to scratch your face, pull you into the mirror with her, or scare you to death. However, some people believe Bloody Mary isn’t always cruel: they say if you’re lucky, you’ll just see her face in the mirror, or she’ll appear and answer your questions about the future. And even if no face appears in the mirror, there are other ways Bloody Mary can make her presence felt—a scar or cut that wasn’t there before, a window slamming shut, or other eerie happenings. Ultra-daring girls can play this game with one crucial variation: turning off the flashlight and summoning Bloody Mary completely in the dark.
Truth or Dare
How to Play
Truth or Dare, the essential sleepover party game, goes by several different names. Sometimes it is called “Truth, Dare, Double-Dare,” and there is also a variation called “Truth, Dare, Double-Dare, Promise to Repeat.”
In its most basic version, “Truth or Dare,” players take turns choosing between a truth or a dare, and must either answer a question or perform a dare determined by the other players. The questions can be as embarrassing as you like, and the dares as risky as you can imagine—but neither should ever be harmful. First, because the game is supposed to be fun, and second, because what you ask or dare may come back to haunt you when it’s your turn to choose. In “Truth, Dare, or Double-Dare,” the players have a choice between telling the truth when asked a question, performing a minor dare, and performing a bigger dare. In “Truth, Dare, Double Dare, Promise to Repeat,” there is the added choice of promising to repeat something—usually embar- rassing—in public later.
It’s a good idea to set some ground rules before you play so that nobody gets her feelings hurt or gets in too much trouble: nothing that would get a girl in hot water with her parents, nothing that requires going outside or bothering people not involved in the game. The other basic rule is that once you agree to tell the truth, perform a dare or double-dare, or repeat something embarrassing in public later, there is no chickening out. If you refuse to do what’s asked of you, you’re out of the game.
Examples
Truth: You have to answer a personal question. This can be something like: What’s your deepest darkest secret? What was your most embarrassing moment? When was the last time you brushed your teeth? What superpower do you wish you had?
Dare: You have to do an easy dare, such as “Act like a chicken for thirty seconds,” “Wear your underwear on your head the rest of the night,” “Do ten push-ups,” or “Act out a dramatic death scene.”
Double Dare: A bigger or more embarrassing dare, such as “Kiss a stuffed animal with sound effects,” “Try to pick your nose with your big toe and then wipe it on somebody,” “Sing the national anthem at the top of your lungs,” must be done.
Promise to Repeat: If you don’t want to tell the truth or perform a potentially humiliating dare, you can choose “Promise to Repeat,” which requires you to promise to repeat something embarrassing in public later, like agreeing to include the word “stultifying” in every sentence you say to your mom the next day.
Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board
How to play
Have one person lay on the ground, while four to six others gather around her. The players should place the index fingers of both hands underneath the person lying down, and then, with eyes closed, everyone begins to chant, “Light as a feather, stiff as a board.” After twenty chants or so (or whatever number of chants you agree upon ahead of time), the players start raising their arms, lifting the person and seemingly levitating her above the ground.
One variation is to play this game as a call-and-response story. The player next to the person’s head begins the story with, “It was a dark and stormy night.” Each player (except the one lying on the ground) repeats the phrase one at a time, and then the player at the head continues, “It was cold and the road was icy.” Everyone repeats, then the head player says, “The car she was in spun out of control.” Everyone repeats, then: “And when they found her.” Everyone repeats, then: “She was light as a feather.” Everyone repeats, then: “And stiff as a board.” These last two sentences are repeated by the group several times, and then the entire group begins chanting “Light as a feather, stiff as a board” and lifting up the person who is lying down.
Is Your Slumber Party Guest Really Levitating?
The “Light As A Feather, Stiff As A Board” slumber party game has its roots in a long tradition of unexplainable, seemingly miraculous feats of weightlessness. Levitation, from the Latin word levis, or “light,” means to float into the air, and numerous religions, from Christianity to Islam, have stories of levitation by shamans, mediums, saints, and those demonically possessed.
Saints who levitated were said to possess a luminous
glow. Among the reported levitators was Saint Teresa of Avila, who levitated while in states of rapture in the 1680s and is usually painted with a bird, signifying her ability to fly; St. Edmund, around 1242; St. Joseph of Cupertino who astonished the Church with his flights in the 1600s; Catherine of Siena in the late fourteenth century; and St. Adolphus Liguori in 1777. Reports of levitation in more recent times include Father Suarez in 1911 in Southern Argentina, and, also at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Passionist nun Gemma Galgani. The Christian saints, priests, and nuns generally attributed their levitation to states of rapture or ecstasy that were beyond their control, while in Hinduism, Buddhism, and other Eastern traditions, levitation was presented as a skill that could be accomplished through spiritual and physical training. Levitation, like all things otherworldly, turned demonic in the Middle Ages, where rather than being a signal of a person’s divinity and proximity to God, it was seen as a manifestation of evil generated by demons, ghosts, or witchcraft. The nineteenthcentury Spiritualism movement in America, with its interest in séances, ghosts, poltergeists, and other spooky things, helped give levitation a boost once again. But in modern times it’s mostly understood to be a magic trick, a phenomenon based in real-world explanations and techniques. Still, as anyone who has seen David Blaine—or played “light as a feather, stiff as a board” at slumber parties—can attest, it’s entertaining, even when you’re pretty sure it’s not real.
Making a Cloth-Covered Book
YOU WILL NEED
Two pieces of 6½″ × 9¼″ cardboard
A needle or embroidery needle and thread
Fabric (about 16″ × 12″)—an old dress, T-shirt, or pillowcase works well
Eight pieces of 8½″ × 11″ plain white paper (for a longer book, you can use more paper)
1 piece of fancy or colored 8½″ × 11″ paper
Wide packing tape and regular tape
A ruler
Fabric glue
12″ ribbon
Scissors
Fold the plain paper and the fancy paper in half. If the fancy paper looks different on the front than it does on the back, fold it so that the “front” side is on the inside. Put the folded plain paper inside the folded fancy paper, like a book. Then use your needle and thread to sew the papers together in two places, about an inch and a half from the top and an inch and a half from the bottom.
Cut your fabric to about 16 inches by 12 inches and lay it out, wrong-side facing up. Place the two pieces of cardboard in the middle of the fabric, leaving about a quarter of an inch between each piece. Tape the cardboard pieces together and maintain the quarter-inch separation. Coat the back of the cardboard lightly with fabric glue and then glue the cardboard to the cloth. Fold and glue each of the corners first and then fold and glue the fabric on each side. You can use tape to secure the fabric if necessary; just make sure the tape doesn’t stick up close to the outer edge. Now you’ve made the fabric book cover.
Cut your 12-inch ribbon in half. Use your ruler to find the center of the left side of your fabric cover and glue the end of one ribbon there (starting about two inches from the end of the ribbon). Try not to overglue, but also try to make sure you glue right to the very edge so that the ribbon is firmly attached. Secure with tape. Do the same thing on the right side of the cover with the other ribbon.
Open your papers and place them in the middle of the cardboard and fabric so that the fold of the paper is right in the center of the tape between the cardboard pieces. Using the fabric glue, glue the outer paper (the fancy paper) to the inside of the cover and let it dry. Once dry, tie the ribbon to close your book. It’s not as secure as a lock and key, but it’s a pretty way to keep safe your handmade journal, should you choose to use it as a secret diary.
Pirates
THERE HAVE BEEN women pirates throughout the ages, from Queen Artemisia to female Vikings to modern-day women pirates in the Philippines. Many of the stories about female pirates are just that: stories made up showcasing women pirates who are merely fictional. But there are several women pirates whose stories are verifiable, and who really did live and (in some cases) die a pirate’s life on the high seas.
CHARLOTTE BADGER
Charlotte Badger was a convicted felon when she was sent to Australia from England. She was found guilty of the crime of breaking and entering when she was eighteen years old and sentenced to seven years deportation. She sailed to Port Jackson, Sydney, aboard the convict ship The Earl of Cornwallis in 1801 and served five years of her sentence at a factory, during which time she also gave birth to a daughter.
With just two years of her sentence left, she was assigned to work as a servant to a settler in Hobart Town, Tasmania, along with fellow prisoner Catherine Hagerty. In April 1806, Charlotte, her daughter, Catherine, and several male convicts traveled to Hobart Town on a ship called Venus. When the Venus docked at Port Dalrymple in June, the convicts mutinied, and Charlotte and her friend Catherine joined in with the male convicts to seize control of the ship. The pirate crew headed for New Zealand (even though nobody aboard really knew how to navigate the ship), and Charlotte, her child, Catherine, and two of the male convicts were dropped off at Rangihoua Bay in the Bay of Islands.
Charlotte and her compatriots built huts and lived on the shore of the island, but by 1807, Catherine Hagerty was dead, and the two men had fled. The Venus had long since been overtaken by South Sea islanders, who captured the crew and then burned the ship. Charlotte and her child stayed on Rangihoua Bay, living alongside the Maori islanders. Twice she was offered passage back to Port Jackson, and twice she refused, saying that she preferred to die among the Maori.
What happened to Charlotte after 1807 isn’t entirely clear. Some stories have her living with a Maori chieftain and bearing another child; in other stories the Maori turned on her, prompting her and her daughter to flee to Tonga; still other stories eventually place her in America, having stowed away on another ship. Whatever happened to her, she was quite possibly the first European woman to have lived in New Zealand, and one of New Zealand’s first women pirates.
ANNE BONNY AND MARY READ
Anne Bonny, born in Ireland around 1700, is by all accounts one of the best known female pirates. She was disowned by her father when, as a young teen, she married a sailor named James Bonny; the newlyweds then left Ireland for the Bahamas. There, James worked as an informant, turning in pirates to the authorities for a tidy sum. While James confronted pirates, Anne befriended them: she became especially close with Jack Rackam, also known as “Calico Jack.” Jack was a pirate who had sworn off pirating so as to receive amnesty from the Bahamian governor, who had promised not to prosecute any pirate who gave up his pirating ways. In 1719, however, Anne and Jack ran off together, and Jack promptly returned to pirating—this time with Anne by his side. She donned men’s clothing in order to join the crew on his ship, the Revenge, and was so good at the work that she was accepted as a crewmate even by those men who discovered she was actually a woman.
When the Revenge took another ship during a raid and absorbed its crew, Anne discovered she was no longer the only woman on board: a woman by the name of Mary Read had also disguised herself as a man to be accepted as a pirate. Mary, born in London in the late 1600s, had spent nearly her whole life disguised as a man. Mary’s mother had raised her as a boy almost from birth to keep the family out of poverty. (Mary’s father died before she was born, and her brother, who would have been the only legal heir, also died. Back then, only men could inherit wealth, so baby Mary became baby Mark.) As a young girl living as a boy, Mary worked as a messenger and eventually enlisted in the infantry, fighting in Flanders and serving with distinction. She fell in love with another soldier (to whom she revealed her true gender), and they soon married, leaving the army to run a tavern called The Three Horseshoes. Sadly, her husband died in 1717, and Mary once again had to disguise herself as a man to earn a living. She put on her dead husband’s clothes, enlisted in the army, and went to Hol
land. She found no adventure there, so she boarded a ship for the West Indies. That was when her ship was captured by the Revenge, and her life intersected with those of Calico Jack and his mistress, Anne Bonny.
Anne and Mary became close friends, and once Anne knew the truth about Mary, she swore that she would never reveal Mary’s true identity. But Calico Jack, jealous of Anne’s attention, grew suspicious of their friendship and demanded an explanation. Soon the secret was out, but, luckily for Mary, Jack was relieved and not angered to discover she was a woman. He allowed her to continue on the crew, and just as Anne had been accepted by her crewmates despite being female, Mary was accepted too. Unfortunately for the crew of the Revenge, the Bahamian governor was not so accepting of pirates who flouted amnesty agreements by returning to pirating after promising not to, and he issued a proclamation naming Jack Rackam, Anne Bonny, and Mary Read as “Pirates and Enemies to the Crown of Great Britain.”
In 1720, the Revenge was attacked by a pirate-hunter eager to capture an enemy of the Crown. Calico Jack, along with nearly the entire crew, was drunk at the time, and the men quickly retreated to hide below deck and wait out the attack. Only Anne and Mary stayed above, fighting for the ship. It is said that Anne shouted to the crew, “If there’s a man among ye, ye’ll come out and fight like the men ye are thought to be!” Enraged by the crew’s cowardice, Anne and Mary shot at them, killing one man and wounding several others, including Calico Jack. Despite the women’s efforts, the ship was captured.
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