The Daring Book for Girls - Andrea J. Buchanan [51]
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,