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In suburban Nebraska, several partying high school teens jokingly dare their friend Charlie (MARNETTE PATTERSON) to look into a mirror and repeat "Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary," not knowing that this will unleash a series of mysterious murders. Sam and Dean realize that Bloody Mary has the power to travel through all reflective surfaces when she is hunting a victim. Worried that teens are accidentally summoning Bloody Mary, Sam and Dean race to destroy the violent spirit before she can kill again.
Written by:
Ron Milbauer - Teleplay
Terri Hughes Burton - Teleplay
Eric Kripke - Story
Directed by:
Peter Ellis
An urban legend that says that anyone who chants the words "Bloody Mary" three times in front of a mirror will summon a vengeful spirit. This spirit has been reported to do a variety of things to the person who summons her, including killing the person, scratching their eyes out, driving them mad or pulling them into the mirror with the spirit--generally referred to as the spirit of a woman or even a witch. This is an old legend, but in 1978 a folklorist named Janet Langlois published an essay on Bloody Mary, which led to the tale becoming a popular slumber party ritual done by girls as well as boys. No one knows the origins of the Bloody Mary legend; over the years, she has been rumored to be anything from a witch that was killed for practicing witchcraft to a modern-day woman killed in a car crash, depending on what part of the country you live in.
There is a great deal of folklore associated with mirrors, including the belief that the soul projects out of the body and into mirrors in the form of reflection. This belief underlies the most widely known mirror superstition: that breaking a mirror brings seven years of bad luck. Many cultures believe that breaking a mirror also breaks the soul of the one who broke it. The soul, angered at being hurt, exacts seven years of bad luck in payment for such carelessness. The Romans attributed the bad luck to their belief that life renews itself every seven years. To break a mirror meant breaking one's health, and this could not be remedied for seven years.
In some cultures, breaking a mirror was thought to presage a death in the family. This association of mirrors with death is common and stems from the belief that the soul can become trapped in the mirror. For this reason, children were often not allowed to look in a mirror until they were at least one year old. Mirrors were covered during sleep and illness so that the soul, in its wanderings, would not become trapped and unable to return to the body. After a death, mirrors were also covered to prevent the soul of the newly departed from becoming caught in the mirror, delaying its journey to the afterlife.
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