SPIRIT TALES AND MAGIC
Our host; Dr.G had his first paranormal experience at only eight years old. With over five decades of storytelling, magic and paranormal story collection he is an award winning story teller on a mission to revive firelight and the telling of stories!
SPIRIT TALES AND MAGIC
A Packed Parking Lot, A Silent Trickster, And Why Saying Bloody Mary Three Times Might Be A Bad Idea
A sleepy Phoenix parking lot turned into a tidal wave of costumes, laughter, and just enough mischief to tip the night into legend. We showed up with candy and flashlights; the crowd brought handmade characters, a silent trickster in royal purple, and a kid who stepped to the table and—without breaking character—whispered the line that launched a hundred sleepovers: say my name three times in a mirror.
From there, we trace the Bloody Mary tale the way it lives in the wild: the bathroom gone dim, a candle trembling, the chant that makes a mirror feel like a threshold. We walk through the roots many assign to Mary Worth, the village suspicions, the missing children, and the bonfire curse that birthed a ritual any kid can attempt. Along the way, we unpack why low light and expectation transform your own reflection into a stranger, how folklore travels through families, and why crowds often mistake power for threat. The silver bullet detail, the graves, the revenge—each version tells you more about the teller than the witch.
We also talk about inheritance and the stories braided into blood. Your family tree widens with every generation, carrying survival and rumor alike. “You are the great, great, great grandchildren of the witches they didn’t hang” becomes a lens, not a slogan: a way to honor people who endured the flames of fear without letting them define the future. Between candy bags and ghost shirts Sharpie’d by hand, we found a community eager to share the myths that shaped them—and a reminder that the bravest among us still flip the light after the third whisper.
Press play for a lively mix of trunk-or-treat mayhem, folklore unpacked, and mirror-deep chills. If our take on Bloody Mary sparked a memory, share your hometown legend with us and tag a friend who dared you first. Subscribe, leave a quick review, and send your story at SpiritTalesandmagic.com.
Hey everybody, it's Dr. G Spirit Tales and Magic. You can find the website at SpiritTalesandmagic.com. On that website, you can click podcast and you will wind up here, or you can send us your stories, which we would love to have you do. You can even book Cassandra and I for an event, or if we're having a public event somewhere, you can find out where it is. About 6 30 in Phoenix and still in the upper eighties. You know what fall means in Phoenix? Nothing. It actually does mean something because it's Halloween time. So last night, Cassandra and I go to an event that is called Trunk Retreat. Now, a lot of you may know what that is. I didn't know. I've been around the Halloween industry for decades. So trunk or treat is you take your car, your SUV, or whatever, you open up your hatch or you open up your trunk, you decorate said space, you put a little table in front of you, and you offer candy and whatever else it is you're giving away to people who come in costume and you know the whole trick-or-treat thing, right? So Cassandra and I get there and we're completely set up at least 30 minutes early. And it's hot out, it's Phoenix. So God, it's so hot. Anybody come into this thing? Relax, we're like it's time for the event. One or two people. Cassandra's like, where are all the people? I don't know. Quarter after the event time start, hit about 10 people. It's like, well, that's good. Now there's a bounce house that they've set up. There's a food truck. The police are there doing some displays. It's it's actually a moderately big affair. It's taking up uh about half of our parking lot and about a quarter of the Home Depot's parking lot. They were one of the sponsors, as well as us. And the city of Phoenix. City of Phoenix was the main sponsor. All of a sudden, it's like you blinked your eyes or somebody threw a switch, and there is wall-to-wall people everywhere. As far as you can look from where we're standing in every direction, it's a sea of people. So in the first 45 minutes, we gave away about 200 bags of candy and some flashlights and a lot of literature. The people watching was fantastic, of course. And it's always interesting to see what costumes people come up with. Now, a lot of folks will just run down to the costume store and get the costume out of the bag and throw it on and get some candy. But some of the people got very inventive. And what I liked about it was some of the people who got very inventive were not of a specific age. Young people, old people, people in between, put some research into costumes or made their own costumes or created their own characters. And I must say I was impressed. So this, what I take it to be a young man, comes up to the table. Now he's dressed in a pair of purple pants, a long purple coat. Over his face is like a black spandex material, very similar to say underwear. You just can't see in to see his face. He doesn't speak. He just stands there. Cassandra's kind of giggling. I look up and say, Well, what do I call you? He says nothing. Do you listen to the podcast? He says nothing. So I get my wallet out and I hand him a business card for the podcast. Which he slowly tears in half and puts one side on one end of the table, one side on the other end, and he pushes the table just a little bit toward me. So we give him a bag of candy and a flashlight, and he walks off very slowly down by where the police are, which would be to our right, goes around their display, and he's gone. About an hour later, I'm looking over by the food truck. There he is, peeking around the corner of the food truck. So tell Cassandra, watch the shop for a minute. I'm gonna go have a chat with this guy. Go over there rather quickly, get past the food truck, and on the right side of it, food truck is the last thing in the lot. The only thing beyond it is the alley that goes around our building and a picnic table. He's not back there. There's a young girl and a young man sitting at the picnic table. Do you see which way the guy in the purple went? And she's like, What guy? We've been here almost the whole time. My dad has the food truck. There's been nobody here but us. I kind of smiled and I said, Oh, well, the costume was great. You should have seen it. The only problem was I think he was wearing his mother's underwear on his face. And the kid says, I was not. And then he just looked at me. He goes, I did get you though. I got you, right? I'm like, yeah. I said, I got you back though, because it was a really, you know, it was spandex, right? It was actually the leg of uh one of her yoga suits. I said, Ah, okay. So you listen to the podcast. He's yes, I do, and I love it. See me later. I have a story about the thing you're talking about. Okay, great. So I go back to the table. Made a call man on several people's costumes, and then here comes this little girl. She's probably 11, 12. Her mom's with her, and what I take to be her dad. And dad has a little tiny human up on his shoulders, and that person is wearing a shirt that somebody took a sharpie and drew a ghost on. So we gave him candy, and I'm looking at her costume, and I can't figure out who she is. Nice little costume, but I'm like, so look at her mom. And I said, okay, or are we playing Stump, the storyteller? I don't know what her costume is. And they all smile. She looks down at the little girl and she says, Go ahead, tell him who you are. Now she's in character. She's a little kid and she's in character. And she just slowly looks up at me. And she says, Bet if you say my name three times in a mirror, you'll know who I am. So are you bloody Mary? I am. So I gave her another bag of candy. They went on to other people. For someone that young to even know that urban legend was fairly amazing. One of the people next to us came over and he goes, Who's Bloody Mary? I'm like, How old are you? 58. You don't know who Bloody Mary is? He's like, no. He goes, I'll listen to your podcast though. Why don't you tell us on the podcast who Bloody Mary is? Okay. So the Bloody Mary legend. It's and a lot of this is from memory, and some of it is from scribbled notes that are years old, and some of it's copies of copies of notes, you know how that is. But anyway, Bloody Mary is an old, old legend. Uh, you may have heard it back in, say, primary school, or maybe your younger siblings or family members, they could have heard it too, or passed it on to you. It's really based on many urban legends and some folklore that a lot of people believe was based on the story of the witch Mary Worth, which could be folklore itself, right? And which tends to give witches a bad rep. And don't even get me started on this. This is not meant to do that. We're repeating an urban legend, but the bloody Mary story is usually told very fairly innocently, um until you get some people that try and tell the gruesome side of it, too. And really, it has it all. It's got witches, kidnappings, it's burdens of witch at the stake, it's got magic and silver bullets, and so I guess take a walk with us through the spooky world of Bloody Mary. So just kind of think back to your kind of childhood, uh, sleepovers. My daughters did sleepovers, and I would either do magic or tell stories at the sleepovers. But if you had sleepovers or if you talked about ghosts, or you sat around a campfire in a backyard or anything like that, sometimes in school you would hear stories, or maybe you were watching a horror movie, which actually would have been completely inappropriate for you at that age. Were you the voice that said, Who's bloody Mary? Hopefully not, because then you get suckered into all that legend, which basically it's this: if you hold a lit candle in a darkened room with a mirror, and really any darkened room will do, but the legend is usually told about a girl throwing it or a guy throwing it in the bathroom, and you say the name Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary. Into that mirror, you'll be greeted with a rather startling image of Mary's reflection in the mirror behind you. Now, there are many different retellings of that same story. There's just many, many versions of it. Some people say, Oh, she'll appear literally dripping in blood, and other people's story versions have her dragging you away, and in other people's versions she just vanishes, and then when you look in the mirror, your own reflection has become that of Bloody Mary. The tales get more and less macabre, depending on who's telling them and how long ago it's been since they heard it. Some people even talk about violent murders, and if you turn on the water while this is happening, it won't be water. Blood will run from the pipes. Is Bloody Mary real? It says here that some people think so. It's based on the story of Witch Mary Worth. Now it's fair to say that Bloody Mary history is long and varies person to person and region to region. When you begin, it says that many people already believed that Mary was a witch, simply because she lived in the forest in an extremely little cabin, and was known around the local village for selling some tinctures and herbal remedies. It seems that the locals were very wary of her, and they didn't want to get too close, fearful that she'd curse them or maybe curse their animals, then those who chose to use her remedies? Well, they were sometimes even shunned by the very religious for participation in witchcraft or Wicca. As the story goes, soon small girls started to go missing. The people in the village looked everywhere. They looked everywhere they could possibly think of for them. But they were just nowhere to be found. A few brave folks decided that they would venture toward Bloody Mary's cabin, and that they'll search for the girls there. And although Mary denied all knowledge of the girls, the girls' disappearances, or any actions that would cast her in any way in a bad light, the families grew suspicious. Her usually elderly and somewhat haggard appearance had drastically changed. She was starting to appear more feminine and even youthful. The village were so suspicious, but there was little they could do. Now sometimes the Bloody Mary continues with the miller's daughter. One night the poor girl was captivated by a mysterious noise that only she could hear, whilst her mum was sitting up in bed with a very bad toothache, using, as luck would have it, an herbal tincture that she had purchased from Mary herself. The miller's wife was very frightened and shouted for her husband to come and help follow her daughter. They were shouting at her daughter, turn around, come back, come back but no avail. It was almost as though she was following some unspoken and unseen force. Now getting the help of a few townsfolk, sounds like a posse to me, the town farmer noticed that there was a light at the edge of the woods. When they got closer, they noticed again that Mary Worth was standing in a clearing. She was next to a huge oak tree, holding what they believed was a magic wand, and pointing it toward the miller's home, and was almost glowing with this unnatural light. The miller's daughter was headed straight for that light. Sometimes when people ask what is Bloody Mary, sometimes it's hard to answer. Particularly as witches don't typically have wands, or glow with unnatural lights, or do anything that would actually harm anyone. But it's fair to say that most people imagine her as a witch or some type of supernatural being. It goes on to say that once the farmers and the miller's father noticed just what Mary Worth was doing, they set up on her with pitchforks and guns, and when she released realized that everyone was coming at her from the village and knew what she was, she broke the spell and made it for the forest. Well, she wasn't quite quick enough, according to legend. Farmer loading his gun with a silver bullet. A silver bullet, really? You're not hunting werewolf. Okay, back to the story. He loaded the gun with a silver bullet in case Mary decided to turn her attention back toward his daughter. He fired a shot. He caught her in the hip. She was kicking and thrashing and screaming and tied to a stake, and a bonfire was promptly built so that this supposed witch could be gone for good. Now the legend says as she was burning, she set a curse upon the villagers, and she told them that if they ever dared to utter her name in a mirror, she would be back for them. Her spirit would return to wherever they summoned her from, and make no mistake about it, she would enact her revenge. Unfortunately, it claims that the missing villagers, the villagers with the missing children, they go back home to the village, they return to Mary's house, to Drew to do what they called a proper search. They found what they were looking for rows of unmarked graves. You see, it seems that she had been using the blood of their children to make herself more youthful. However, the Bloody Mary legend I don't believe ended there. The most common version of the legend states that if you chant her name three times into a mirror, you'll summon the Bloody Mary Ghost. And unfortunately for you, she'll take your soul for her own. Ripping yours to shreds in the process, she'll leave your soul to burn. Just like she was left to burn by the villagers, and to top it all off, you'll be subject to an eternity trapped in the mirror. Now are you still asking, is Bloody Mary real? I don't know about you, but perhaps that's a test you should leave out of your experimentation. Cassander and I usually don't give much away about the show, but I I have to say this. We have a show that's called The Witch of the Woods. One of the things from there is, and I won't give much of it away, just a tiny bit, to to realize that you are fifty percent of your mother's DNA, and fifty percent of your father's DNA. They are fifty percent of their mother's DNA and fifty percent of their father's DNA, and back it goes, generation to generation to generation. Your family tree, the further back you go, the wider it spreads out. Where am I going with that? You are the great, great, great grandchildren of the witches. They didn't hang. You see, most witches were not burned. They were hung, and we have a an entire episode or two about Salem, so we'll leave that alone there. So tell me, what's your creepy urban legend story? We'd love to hear it. We'll talk tomorrow, my friends.
