Exploratory Essay

Very few stories have the endurance to last as many years, generations, and centuries as some do. Our methods of sharing them have changed and evolved, from cave paintings to parchment paper to technology such as cell phones and computers, but humanity’s love and need for storytelling has never lost its luster. In literary terms, this is called myth, or folklore. It is “traditional beliefs, customs, and stories of a community, passed through generations, usually by word of mouth” (Merriam-Webster). In ancient times, this could mean stories of past civilizations that have been smeared on walls of caves to preserve their lives and what happened to them; in Sulawesi, Indonesia, cave paintings found by archaeologist Jo Marchant illustrate drawings

These stories passed down by the people of Sulawesi helped Marchant discover a whole new animal. In more modern ways, folklore could be legends whispered at sleepovers, myths we’ve all heard before like Bloody Mary: a ghost inhabiting mirrors to take a life like hers was taken from her, and the Amityville Horror House, where a man possessed by a demon slaughtered his family and left the house haunted for future generations. In most cases, these myths have more fiction than fact, but they stem from live events, which is why their relevance to our past and humanity as a whole is still incredibly important. In anthropologist James George Frazer’s book Golden Bough, he says that folklore “reveals some of the fatal, ideological weaknesses of humankind”. To put it simply, anthropologists study folklore because it is a part of

Perhaps none are as apparent as the urban legend of Blood Mary. It is a game played by children all over the country: you stand in front of the mirror, preferably in the dark, and chant her name—“Bloody Mary”—three times, and it is said her spirit reaches through the mirror and takes your soul. This tale comes from all over the place. Some say Mary Worth was a young girl who had accidently been buried alive with a bell attached to her wrist that led up to the surface, just in case. One night the bell was rung, and they opened her coffin to find scratch marks on the inside of the lid and a blood-covered corpse. The practice of tying bells to fallen loved ones has been since disproven to have ever existed, but inaccuracy has never stopped humans from telling their stories before (Snell). Other origins swear Mary was a girl murdered behind an elementary school, or maybe a reference to Mary Tudor, who is known for her bloody sovereignty against the Protestants in the early 16th century (Tudor History). Whatever the true origin, Bloody Mary is a truly chilling tale of what can happen when the living cross paths with the