The science of Bloody Mary: how it is real and unreal at the same time

Is Bloody Mary real? Or just a figment of our mind?

By Kaitlyn Liu

The rain pounds heavily on the creaking roof. The glass window in the bathroom shudders from the fierce wind as you light the candle, the dim light casting an eerie glow that sends shivers up your spine. You turn your gaze up towards the mirror, staring into the depths of your own seemingly murky eyes. Your lips move fluidly as the practiced words spill out of your mouth like a wicked incantation.

“Bloody Mary,

“Bloody Mary,

“Bloody Mary…”

What happens next?

According to legend, a supposed murderous ghost will be summoned out of the mirror, bringing with it, various undesirable misfortunes ranging from ripping the skin of one’s face to marking one for death. Some say the identity of the apparition is Mary I of England. Other alternative versions of the tale identify the spirit as a girl named Kathy. Despite the many rumors surrounding this urban legend, the thing that matters far more than the story is the fact that individuals often do see a ghastly apparition in the mirror…

The Optical Phenomenon

Much to the relief of otherwise traumatized teens, a scientific explanation lies behind the entire phenomenon. It goes by the name of the Troxler Effect, named after the Swiss physician and philosopher, Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler. Troxler describes the experience of ‘filling-in’ when one experiences a gap in their visual field. He explains how rigidly fixating one’s gaze on a certain point in a visual field can cause surrounding elements to fade or slowly disappear. When this occurs, the mind automatically tries to replace the missing components with an ‘experience’, which is usually determined by the atmosphere and background where the object is present.

This was further investigated by Giovanni B. Caputo, a psychologist at the University of Urbino, Italy. Caputo conducted a study where participants gazed at their own face in the mirror at a low illumination level, to which patients reported the appearance of apparitions and strange faces.

According to an article published by Scientific American Mind,

“The participants’ descriptions included huge deformations of their own faces; seeing the faces of alive or deceased parents; archetypal faces such as an old woman, child or the portrait of an ancestor; animal faces such as a cat, pig or lion; and even fantastical and monstrous beings.”

Caputo describes the cause of this “strange face illusion” as a result of our brains ‘filling-in’ the absence of visual information. The human sight is not one stable ‘photo’, but rather, a receiver that picks up scattered pieces of information which our minds piece together to create one complete image. This is a measure our brains take to prevent an overload of sensory information by filtering out unnecessary information the eyes receive to allow one to focus on the task at hand. However, in the absence of such information, for example, under low illumination, this process can become disrupted or distorted. Combined with the Troxler effect, which determines that facial features can possibly fade or disappear when one’s attention is fixated on a certain point, the brain attempts to ‘fill in’ these gaps in visual information, sometimes with surreal and sinister images.

The Legend

Perhaps it was due to this that the Bloody Mary legend requires the incantation of the name several times. When one chants the name of a strange spirit while intensely focusing one’s gaze on the reflection, it is bound to require their full attention, which easily fulfills the conditions for initiating the Troxler effect. Thus the surrounding elements in the dim room begin to fade, initiating the first step towards ‘summoning’ the wicked apparition. The appearance of strange faces is determined by the eerie mood of the situation where one stands alone in a dark bathroom at night with nothing but a single candle to light the way. Due to this, when one experiences gaps in their visual field from the Troxler effect, the mind may try to match the mood of the situation by ‘filling-in’ the missing elements with grotesque and perhaps even horrifying images. When taken into account that these challenges of courage were mostly performed by young individuals, it’s no wonder that the vivid imaginations of these people were able to formulate an ominous tale to explain this phenomenon.

And thus, the legend of Bloody Mary was born.

So beware… for the next time you look into a mirror at night, you just might see a ghastly figure staring back at you…