A man met a beautiful woman in a singles bar one night and took her home. During the evening she told him that she had been raped a few years ago, but was overcoming her resentment and fear, and was finally able to enjoy sex again. The next morning he awoke to find her already gone, on the bathroom mirror she'd written a message in lipstick. "Welcome to the AIDS club."

In some versions, the guy searches for Mary for years intending to kill her before he dies.

An unpopular young med. student had been particularly annoying one day and some of her classmates decided to play a trick on her. They snuck into her room after she'd gone to bed and placed an amputated arm into bed with her. The next morning they anxiously awaited her reaction but got none. Eventually they went up to check on her and found her sitting on the bed, moaning and gurgling as she gnawed on the arm.

A young girl was babysitting some children in a large old house, the children were in bed and she was watching TV when the phone rang. All the voice on the other end did was laugh, she listened for a minute then hung up. A few minutes later the phone rang again and a scratchy, male voice said "have you checked no the children yet?" She asked who he was, but he just laughed and hung up. She was very scared and called the police. They told her there was really nothing they could do about prank calls, but they'd trace the call if it happened again.

After she got another call asking her if she'd checked on the children, she hung up and the police called her and told her to get out of the house immediately. The calls were coming from the upstairs extension, where he'd already murdered the children.

If you stand in front of a mirror in a dark room and chant "Bloody Mary" twelve times starting at the stroke of midnight, the face of a hideous woman will appear in the mirror. It's the spirit of a girl who was born with a disfiguring disease and was killed by a cruel joke gone awry.

There are many variations to this classic, what Mary does when appearing varies. Besides appearing, sometimes she slaps the summoner, or scratches their face, grabs at them, drives them mad, etc.

She's also said to be a witch who was executed a hundred years ago for plying the black arts, or a woman of more modern times who died in a local car accident in which her face was hideously mutilated.

Other names sometimes used: Bloody Bones, Hell Mary, Mary Worth, Mary Worthington, Mary Whales, Mary Johnson, Mary Lou, Mary Jane, Black Agnes, Black Aggie

Often confused with the legend of Black Agnes, a statue that's supposed to come to life to punish.

The summoning chant varies, usually it's twelve or thirteen times, other than the name, sometimes the chant is "I believe in ______" or "Bloody Mary! I killed your baby!"

Connections:
Candyman
X-Files episode "Syzygy"

During a wedding reception of a young couple the guests decided on a drunken game of hide and seek. It was decided that the groom was "it" and he eventually found everyone but his new bride. Eventually the man became furious and decided it wasn't funny anymore and left her there. As weeks went by he accepted that she'd had second thoughts and went on with her life so he did the same.

A few years later a cleaning lady dusted off an old trunk in the attic of the building where the reception had taken place, out of curiosity she opened it. Inside the trunk was the rotted body of the missing bride who'd apparently became locked in the trunk she'd hid in. Whether she'd suffocated or starved was unknown, but her face was frozen in a scream.

A young boy met a new friend in a chat room and began talking to him regularly, the friend was from out of state but would be in town in a couple weeks and they made plans to sneak out and meet. The boy began to feel odd about the arrangement and confessed the whole thing to his father. The father contacted the authorities and after a couple hours the chat was traced to a local prison, the prisoner who'd been using that computer was scheduled for release in two weeks.

A man and wife were driving late one night when they were flagged down by a woman that appeared to be hurt. She claimed she'd been in an accident and her baby was alive but trapped in the car. The man told her to wait with his wife and he'd see what he could do. He got to the car and found a couple obviously dead in the front seat but a baby crying in a carseat. He cut the baby loose and returned to his own car.

When he got there his wife was alone, he asked her where the woman had went and she replied that she'd followed him to the wreck. He left the baby with his wife and went back to the car to find her. When he got there he realized the woman who'd been instantly killed in the front seat had been the one who'd flagged him down.

A man and his wife were vacationing in Las Vegas and as they arrived in their room they found it was filled with an overpowering stench. They called the front desk to complain, and headed for the casinos for some late-night gambling while the problem was taken care of. When they returned to the room, the stench was replaced with the strong smell of chemical cleaners and deodorizers, annoyed but satisfied that it was better than before they went to bed.

Early in the morning the smell had returned so strongly that it awakened them, the man called the manager and angrily demanded another room immediately. While his wife packed up their stuff the man ripped the sheets off the bed, where the smell seemed to be coming from. He found that the mattress had been cut open and a well-dressed corpse had been shoved inside.

A teenage couple were on their way home when the car stalled on a railroad bridge. As the young man examined the engine to see if he could find the problem, he heard the sound of a baby crying.

After a few minutes the engine again roared to life, not wanting to alarm his date he didn't mention the strange sounds he heard.

Later, he found out that it was in that area long ago a young girl who'd hidden her pregnancy died while giving birth alone. The baby had eventually died from lack of care, no one had heard it's cries that night.

A man got home late from a night out drinking with the boys and staggered inside, his wife heard him and helped him into bed. The next morning she complained about his behavior and how she worried about how he makes it home so drunk. He agreed that he had no memory of the last few hours of his night out, but said he'd never had a problem before.

As he pulled out of the garage to go to work, his wife was who had been watching him angrily from the front door screamed when she saw the body of a little girl crushed into the grill of the car.

A group of young girls were having a slumber party one night and began to exchange ghost stories. One girl claimed that the old man who had been buried earlier that week in the graveyard down the street had been buried alive. She claimed that if you tried you could hear him scratching at the lid of his coffin still. The other girls called her bluff and told her she was afraid to go there tonight. She eventually accepted their challenge and took a stake with her to drive in the ground to prove she'd been there. She headed off to the gravesite right away and never returned, the others assumed she had "chickened out" and went home ashamed.

The next morning as they passed the graveyard they saw her there at the old man's grave. She had accidentally staked her nightshirt to the ground and died of fright.

When a very tall man dies and can't afford a specially made extra-large coffin, the undertaker will often chop off his feet and place them in the coffin beside his legs. The family doesn't notice because only the top half of the coffin is open.

A young lady driving alone down the highway one night say a large gray-haired woman slowly walking along the side of the road. She pulled over and offered the old woman a ride. As they rode along, the women made small-talk. As the old lady offered her a stick of gum, she noticed the old woman's hands were very wide and the knuckles were badly scarred, she also saw how incredibly hairy the woman's arm was. Realizing her mistake, she swerved and said she thought she'd hit something, then she stopped and asked the old lady if she'd take a look.

When the old lady was behind the car, the girl sped off. The young girl immediately felt guilty realizing that she had probably just been an old woman, and in her nervousness she had behaved very badly. She felt even worse when she noticed the old woman's purse sitting in the floor of the passenger side. Realizing she couldn't just go on with it, she lifted it from the floor and saw that inside it was filled with wallets, watches, jewelry, and a large bloody hunting knife.

During World War II a couple were driving home one night and picked up a hitchhiker. The man barely spoke during the ride, but as he got out he thanked the couple and told them to repay their kindness, he'd answer any question they may ask. The driver smiled and said "Alright, when will the war end?" the hitchhiker replied "The war will end in July as surely as you will have a dead man in your car before you get home." Unsettled, the couple said good-bye and drove off. Before they reached home they saw a wrecked ambulance by the road, they picked up the driver and a badly hurt patient. By the time they reached the hospital, the patient had already died. As the shock wore off, the couple regretted that they hadn't asked the hitchhiker what year.

Two teenage lovers were parked at a local make-out spot when the music on the radio was interrupted by a Special Bulletin. A dangerous Lunatic had escaped from the nearby Insane Asylum, he could be identified by the Hook he had in place of his right hand. The girl insisted she be taken home immediately. When they arrived at her house, the frustrated boy marched over to open her door for her, and hanging from the handle was a bloody hook.

A couple had just moved into a small castle they'd recently purchased and were excitedly searching all the nooks and crannies. In a large underground room they found many empty barrels that had been tapped years ago, and one that appeared to be full. They immediately tapped it to find that it contained a delicious brandy. They drank and served it at parties enjoying not only it's flavor, but that it could have been hundreds of years old. Months later when the barrel ran dry, they noticed it was still too heavy to be empty, they cut it open and found a shriveled corpse curled up in the barrel.

Corpses were actually preserved this way at one time.

As a woman was getting into her car she noticed a man with a strange look on his face walking quickly toward her. She jumped into the car and drove away, but before long she saw the man was following her in another car. She panicked and drove home as quickly as she could, swerved into the driveway and screamed for her husband.

Her husband ran out just as the following man pulled up, jumped from his car and yelled "Lady, there's someone hiding in your back seat!"

A young girl was left alone at home for the first time with only her dog to protect her, she heard a bulletin on the radio about a Dangerous Lunatic that had escaped from a nearby asylum, she immediately locked all the doors and went to bed. A dripping sound from the bathroom made it difficult to fall asleep, she reached down under her bed to make sure her faithful dog was by her side, he replied by licking her hand enthusiastically.

The next morning when she woke up and went to the bathroom, she found her dog hanging from the shower nozzle, blood dripping from his torn throat, on the mirror written in blood were the words "People can lick, too!"

While out shopping around the big city with his mom a small boy wants to go pee. She starts to take him to the women's rest room, but he wants to go to the men's room so she lets him go in and stands around waiting outside. Five minutes or so later, a group of youths come out, laughing and snickering, and disappear into the city. Ten minutes go by. She's getting anxious, and stops a chap walking by to ask him if he'll go in and hurry up her boy.

He obliges, but promptly staggers out and vomits. Inside, the boy has had his throat cut and his penis and testicles hacked off and shoved in his mouth.

During the war a soldier faithfully wrote his mother every week so she would know he was all right, until one week she didn't get a letter and immediately began to worry. Within a couple of weeks she got a letter from the Army saying that her son had been captured and was being held in a Prisoner-of-War camp, and they assured her that they had no reason to believe the American prisoners were being mistreated in any way. A few weeks later the woman finally received another letter from her son, it read: "Dear Mom, Try not to worry about me, they are treating us well and I'll be released as soon as the war is over. Make sure that little Teddy gets the stamp for his collection. Love you, Joe" The woman was overjoyed to hear the news, but was confused because she had no idea who "little Teddy" was. She decided to steam the stamp from the envelope and have a look. When she did she saw that written on the back of the stamp were the words: "They've cut off my legs".

This may be one of the oldest Urban Legends in existence, it's been circulated during every war since the Civil War. It's ironic since POW camps didn't stamp their mail, being a government institution the mail was metered. It was especially popular during Vietnam, and the part of the body cut off varies.

A young man and his new bride were honeymooning in Paris when his wife went into a restroom and didn't return. With time the man began to fear the worst and went to the police. The police thought it was most likely the girl simply had second thoughts about the marriage, but they checked it out anyway and found no evidence of foul play. As weeks turned into months the man finally gave up on finding his beautiful wife but his life fell into a shambles he was so filled with grief. Unable to hold a job or go on with his life, he took to wandering the world looking for anything that might ease his pain.

Years later in Borneo he came upon a freakshow in an old shabby building, he went in on a whim. In the last filthy cage he saw a twisted, scarred and mutilated woman rocking back and forth and groaning strange animal-like noises. He screamed as he recognized the birthmark on his wife's face.

A young woman was driving alone one night near the local Insane Asylum when she heard on the radio that a dangerous Lunatic had escaped. Within minutes she heard a pop and felt one of her tires go flat. She built up her nerve and got out and began to change the tire. Just as she slid the spare on she noticed a man in a plain white uniform staring at her from the bushes. Startled, she dropped the lugnuts and heard them scatter on the ground, as she vainly searched in the darkness for the scattered lug-nuts she heard the man slowly approaching.

Terrified, she asked herself in a trembling voice, "What am I going to do now?" and the Lunatic replied "Why don't you take one nut from each of the other wheels and put them on the spare?" She did, and was soon on her way.

One of the Ball Brothers, of the canning jar family, had a great fear of being buried alive. He had a telephone installed in his tomb so he could call out if this happened to him. A few days after he died some of his wife's family got worried because they could only get a busy signal on her phone.

Upon entering her home, they found her dead, a look of fright frozen on her face, clutching the phone. When they went to entomb her after the funeral a couple of days later, the phone inside the crypt was off the hook.

While drilling the world's deepest hole in Siberia, the geologists noticed the drill bit began to rotate abnormally, among other strange happenings, when they reached a depth of ten miles. They measured temperatures up to 2000 degrees at the deepest part, and then lowered a microphone into the pit.

After hearing the sounds of all the suffering souls in hell, they stopped the project in the hope that what is down there will stay down there.

A young coed was lying in her room alone one night, her roommate had warned her she'd be out late. As she was about to fall asleep she heard a gurgling groan coming toward the room. Frightened, she jumped in the closet and locked the door. The sound came closer until it was obvious it was right outside the door, then whatever it was began to scratch on the door. It didn't stop for what seemed like a long time, and even after the trembling girl was afraid to move, and eventually fell asleep curled up in the closet. The next morning she opened the door to find her roommate lying dead, her throat cut and her fingers and nails bloody from scratching the door for help.

A young coed was returning from a night out with her friends and she didn't want to disturb her sleeping roomate, so she crept into the room and found her way in the darkness, undressed and slid into bed. The next morning as she awoke and turned to say something to her friend, she saw her mangled body on the blood-soaked bed, and written in her roomate's blood on the wall were the words: "AREN'T YOU GLAD YOU DIDN'T TURN ON THE LIGHT?"

A young couple were parked under a tree on a dirt road one night. When the time came to go home, the car wouldn't start so the boy told the girl to lock the doors and he'd go for help. As time went by, the girl's nervousness about her situation grew worse, and by the time she started to hear a scraping noise on the top of the car she was terrified. The police found her the next day, as they took her away from the car they told her not to look back, but she did. Her boyfriend was hanging from a tree limb, his feet scraping the roof of the car.

A story is told about a soldier who was finally coming home after having fought in Vietnam. He called his parents from San Francisco. "Mom and Dad, I'm coming home, but I've a favor to ask. I have a friend I'd like to bring home with me."

"Sure," they replied, "we'd love to meet him."

"There's something you should know" the son continued, "he was hurt pretty badly in the fighting. He stepped on a land mine and lost an arm and a leg. He has nowhere else to go, and I want him to come live with us."

"I'm sorry to hear that, son. Maybe we can help him find somewhere to live."
"No, Mom and Dad, I want him to live with us."

"Son," said the father, "you don't know what you're asking. Someone with such a handicap would be a terrible burden on us. We have our own lives to live, and we can't let something like this interfere with our lives. I think you should just come home and forget about this guy. He'll find a way to live on his own."

At that point, the son hung up the phone. The parents heard nothing more from him. A few days later, they received a call from the San Francisco police. Their son had died after falling from a building they were told. The police believed it was suicide.

The grief-stricken parents flew to San Francisco and were taken to the city morgue to identify the body of their son. They recognized him, but to their horror they also discovered something they didn't know, their son had only one arm and one leg.

A girl got on a train one night. She sat down opposite this woman, who was sat between two men.
She wasn't too bothered about them, except the fact that the woman seemed to be staring at her, but she couldn't quite see because the woman had her hood up.

At the next step, a man got on the train and sat next to the girl. After about five minutes the guy wispered to the girl, "Get off the next stop with me, it's important that you trust me."

At the next stop the girl got off the train with the man and watched the train speed by. The man then turned to the girl and said "Thank God, I'm a doctor and that woman was dead, the two men beside her were holding her up."

A teenage baby-sitter put the kids she was watching to sleep in their beds and went back downstairs. The late night news was on the TV -- the reporter said a psychopath from a local mental institution was on the loose and that police thought he might be in the area. He cautioned residents to lock their doors and windows because this guy was very, very dangerous. Well, the teenager checked the locks on the windows and the doors, but she forgot the door on the cellar bulkhead. Needless to say, the psychopath broke in about an hour later, coming up from the cellar, armed with an ax. The children heard some noises downstairs, but thought it was the baby-sitter moving some furniture around. Then it got real quiet. All they heard for the remainder of the night was this noise: "Thump! Thump! Dra-aag... Thump! Thump! Dra-aag..." Evidently, they were too afraid to get up to see what it was.

In the morning, their parents came home and were horrified to find the babysitter at the top of the stairs, dead with both arms hacked off at the elbows. She'd been climbing the stairs on the bloody stumps of her arms, pulling her badly injured body along.

Two guys were driving down the highway one night, when they see a lovely young girl standing by the road shivering. They stop and offer her a ride, and lent her an overcoat. When they dropped her off at her house, they forgot the overcoat as she got out. The next morning they dropped by to get it and see that the girl was ok, her mother told them her only daughter died in a car accident long ago, and showed them her grave as proof. Neatly folded on the grave was the overcoat.

This one is told many different ways, in some the girl disappears before they get to her destination, so the guys stop at the house to see what's going on. In some the guys take the girl to the prom before she leaves with the overcoat. Sometimes she died exactly a year ago to the date, others she died many years ago, but something like this happens every anniversary of her death. Usually she died in the place where the boys picked her up.

A young woman was traveling in a foreign country with her mother when the older woman became very ill. A doctor came to their room to examine her and told the daughter he'd need her to get some medicines from across town immediately, and that'd he'd stay with the patient. The daughter did as she was told.

It was late in the evening when she finally made it back to the hotel through the crowded city, and to her surprise her room was locked. She went to the front desk to see why the doctor had left her mother, and the man at the front desk told her no one was staying in that room, and hadn't been for days.

The young woman became more and more frantic and the clerk eventually took her to the room to inspect it. Inside she found that not only was her mother not there, the furnishings and decor were completely different than she remembered. She never saw her mother again.

While drilling the world's deepest hole in Siberia, the geologists noticed the drill bit began to rotate abnormally, among other strange happenings, when they reached a depth of ten miles. They measured temperatures up to 2000 degrees at the deepest part, and then lowered a microphone into the pit.

After hearing the sounds of all the suffering souls in hell, they stopped the project in the hope that what is down there will stay down there.