A Creepy Challenge

[Pumpkin_Head]

Hi Folks:

I probably posted something about this a few years back, but I thought I would renew it in the form of a challenge. I remember as a child, when we use to have séances tell ghost stories and the like, there was this one legend that use to scare the bejeebers out of all of us. It was the legend of Mary Worth. It was believed that if you shut off the light, place a candle in front of a mirror, star at your reflection and recite the incantation: "I believe in Mary Worth" 7 times, she would appear in the form of a hideous old hag and you would die.

When I was a kid, I got as far as lighting the candle and placing it in front of the mirror over the dresser in the bedroom my younger sister shared, but I completely chickened out on reciting the incantation. To this very day I have never done it.

Have any of you put such a legend to the test?

Mike

[Murfreesboro]

I heard a story rather like that re Bloody Mary, but I never did it.

[Pumpkin_Head]

I think Bloody Mary and Mary Worth are based on the same legend. Mary Worth, at least I think, was more of a Chicago version of that legend, though I can't swear to that. I do know that I never took up that challenge and likely never will.

Mike

[witchy]

When I was 14 me and some of friends lit a candle and said Bloody Mary 3 times in a bathroom at a friends house and then I screamed blood murder....... and laughed for what seemed like forever, my friends were mad at me for a week, but nothing happened!

[Pumpkin_Head]

Believe it or not, the 'Mary Worth' branch of the 'Bloody Mary' legend was actually one of Chicago's very own, and at the time my friends and I were getting into the 'Mary Worth' dare, we lived there. It seemed to have started in Chicago. The story goes is that there was a girl named Mary Worth who lived on a farm on Old Wagon Road a little north of Chicago. It was said that she use to capture run-away slaves and use them in various black magic rituals. When discovered by her neighbors, they burned her at the stake. I found this out through a web search that I did on Mary Worth. There are a lot of inconsistencies in the story, not the least of which is that Mary Worth was most active in her black magic during the Civil War era, and when the Emancipation Proclamation Act in 1863, run-away slaves didn't have to worry about the slave catchers any more. BUT, it makes for good entertainment.

Mike