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Oh come on, you call that a scary story? This one will truly shake you to the core. Now, a friend of a friend told me this happened to her second cousin. Tragic stuff. 

*** 

‘Seriously? Bloody Mary?’ Samantha laughed. ‘Can’t think of anything better?’ 

‘Why, are you scared?’ Daphne playfully raised her eyebrows. Samantha’s face dropped and Daphne immediately knew the right button had clicked; no one wants to be called a chicken at their own sleepover. 

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‘You wish. Who’s up for this then?’, Samantha looked at the other three girls, her eyes burning into each one. The choice was simple – either do what the popular girl wanted or become a social piranha. Neither of them wanted the latter. ‘See Daph? We’re all brave girls here.’ 

‘Never doubted it’, Daphne’s face never faltered but her voice betrayed annoyance. Winning against Samantha was a challenge she liked to take on, and yet never won. All in the name of friendly rivalry.

‘Right, so I assume you all know how this goes?’ Samantha said when the girls trailed after one another into the bathroom, handing each of them a candle.

‘We need to call her name three times?’ Michelle, one of the girls, said. 

‘I thought it was nine’, Claire, the other girl, countered. 

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‘It’s obviously thirteen, bad number and all’, Angie, the third girl, rolled her eyes. 

‘It varies’, Daphne spoke before Samantha could. ‘But the number that appears most in different versions is five. Since we have the right number, who doesn’t each of us say it once?’ 

‘Surely it would work better with all of us saying it together’, Samantha said while lighting the candles. When she got to Daphne’s, there was a moment of hesitation. ‘Or are you afraid it will actually summon her?’ 

‘Together it is then’, Daphne smiled, the candle casting shadows on her face. Samantha turned away and squeezed herself in the between Michelle and Angie so she’d be right in the middle. The girls arranged themselves in a half circle in front of a square mirror, their elbows just about touching. 

‘Alright ladies, shall we?’, Samantha stared each one down, Daphne being the only one to return the look. ‘What’s with the long faces? It’s just a stupid urban legend’, the other girls laughed but the sound fell flat. ‘Everyone on the count of three. One… Two… Three’, there was a second of silence that seemed to stretch out to eternity. Then Samantha’s lips parted as she spoke, with the others following just a fraction behind. 

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‘Bloody Mary. Bloody Mary. Bloody Mary’, Samantha stopped to catch a breath, the others trailing after her. ‘Bloody Mary. Bloody Mary.’ 

Silence. The girls looked at the mirror, the only thing staring back being their reflections. 

‘Well, of course that wasn’t gonna do anything’, Samantha giggled. ‘Alright ladies, I don’t know about you but I could use some Ryan Gosling-’ 

There waa a crack and all the candles simultaneously blew out, bringing the bathroom to total darkness. Michelle shrieked and dropped her candle, splashing hot wax everywhere. 

‘What the hell!’, Angie shouted. ‘You got wax on me, you idiot!’, she ran towards the sink. 

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‘Calm down, I’ll get first aid’, Samantha went to the door and turned the knob but it didn’t open. ‘What the-?’, she jiggled the door to no avail, then turned the lock but nothing happened. ‘Who jammed the door?’ 

‘You came in last’, Daphne almost whispered. Just as she said it, multiple things happened all at once. 

The lights flickered as the mirror shattered, causing the girls to go into chaos. Angie backed away covering from the shards and bumped into Michelle, who screamed and slipped, bashing her head against the bathtub. Claire backed up against the wall and covered her eyes from the lights which now resembled a club rave scene. 

‘God, she’s coming for us!’ Angie shouted as the lights turned off for the last time. Something cracked and tumbled, followed by a scream that seemingly came from underground. After that, silence followed, but there was no comfort in it. 

The lights turned on. Angie and Claire looked up. Michelle rubbed her head, a bump already forming on it. It took a moment for the three to register the visual in front of them. 

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Samantha lied on the floor, painfully still, glassy eyes staring at the ceiling. There was blood all over, stemming from the wound in her chest. Daphne was looking over her, as if in a trance. 

‘Daphne?’, Claire whispered and very carefully stretched out her arm to poke Daphne’s shoulder. Seemingly awakened, she looked down and after a drawn out moment, her face twisted into anguish.

‘Oh god’, she whimpered. ‘It was her! Bloody Mary! She did this!’

Angie looked at her, head tilted. 

‘Was it?’ 

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1 Comment

1 Comment

  1. Jennifer Weigel

    August 25, 2022 at 8:23 am

    When seeking a body to possess, always find that most willing to support your cause… no sense in wasting precious energy…

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Original Series

Nightmarish Nature: Vampires Among Us

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This is the kickoff to a new series exploring nature that is kind of horrifying, at least in ways. Our first subject is Vampires Among Us. There are lots of animals named for vampires, sometimes due to folklore and sometimes for their appearance (like the Vampire Squid), but most of these animals don’t have blood sucking tendencies.

Bats & Birds

There are legit vampire leaf-nosed bats in Central and South America that drink blood. They feed on mammals and are often shown to feed on livestock. They’d be kinda cute if they weren’t so creepy. There are also vampiric birds: some finches in the Galapagos have developed the taste for blood of other birds, mainly seabirds that flock to the islands to raise their young.

Vampire Bats
Vampire Bats

Leeches & Lampreys & More

And then you get into leeches and lampreys and other denizens of the water that are known to attach themselves to larger creatures and drink their blood. Leeches were even believed to have medicinal value (and still are in certain circumstances). And there are also numerous plants that are known to be parasitic and feed on other plants, wrapping their roots or vines around others to steal nutrients.

Lamprey Teeth
Lamprey Teeth

Spiders

Now I’m going to drift off into the realm where this becomes truly horrific. Spiders. Now, spiders aren’t vampires per se, seeing as how they actually kill their prey – they don’t just feed off of it while it remains living and wanders about its business. But because of their structure, they cannot eat solid foods, so they have to inject their prey with enzymes to liquefy it so they can slurp it out like a protein shake. That’s sort of vampirism on steroids if you ask me, just the kind that no one is coming back from.

Spider Eating
Spider Eating

Bloodsucking Bugs

But let’s get back on topic. Now let’s consider mites and ticks and fleas and mosquitoes and the like. Some drink blood for their survival; others do so as part of their reproductive cycle (like mosquitoes which otherwise eat fruit and nectar but need the extra protein from blood to grow their eggs).

Ticks need to feed on blood once at every stage of their life cycle and can pick up diseases along the way (like Lyme Disease) but don’t always do so. Different ticks are more likely to come in contact with different things and often humans are not their preferred meal but they are opportunistic and will feed on whatever is available when necessary. Symptoms of illness from tick bites may take years to develop and can have really weird side effects (like the allergy associated with Lone Star Ticks which makes a person unable to consume mammalian flesh).

Spider
Spider

Anyway, here are some brief glimpses of vampirism in nature. Thank you for joining us for Nightmarish Nature and may you avoid getting bitten by any true vampires among us… And I still think spiders take first place in the creepy eating category here, even if they aren’t technically vampiric.

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Original Creations

Buried Treasure by “Dread Pirate” Jennifer Weigel

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This story came to me in a sort of roundabout way from a rather unusual source. So I thought I’d share it with you, dear readership, and see if you can make heads or tails of it. – Jennifer Weigel

Spanish Moss on Live Oak limbs, marker drawing by Jennifer Weigel
Spanish Moss on Live Oak limbs, marker drawing by Jennifer Weigel

Dread Pirate Rum Tum Tugger could tell this was the right spot.

The site, beneath the sweeping limbs of the Live Oak, Spanish Moss swaying gently in the breeze, was a perfect match to the crude map he had bought off that soothsayer Deuteronomy.

The earth moved easily, as if it had been excavated previously. He dug in with greater fervor with each swipe. The sandy soil gave way to reveal something hard. He scooped and smoothed the remaining detritus from the surface as he uncovered a box.

The carton was simple.

No markings; no ornamentation; no writing. Just a plain cardboard crate, brittle from having been buried for so long but still sturdy. He hoisted it from its burrow.

“Ha HO!” he shouted to the passing breeze, rousing a small cloud of birds that erupted from a nearby thicket. They captured his attention for a moment, but he quickly refocused and returned to his task.

The box was locked but no difference.

Any self-respecting ruffian like himself could pick a lock in seconds. And he did so with panache, as was his way. He pried the lid open and licked his lips.

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Inside was the legendary Kernel of Eternal Life, a small sparrow’s heart, still beating.

Promotional Poster for Dread Pirate Queen Miss Kitty performance art by Jennifer Weigel
Promotional Poster for Dread Pirate Queen Miss Kitty performance art by Jennifer Weigel

Artwork description: Myself as Dread Pirate Queen Miss Kitty wearing black bell sleeve shirt and black vinyl skirt with strapping leather belt over leopard print shirt and tights, with strapping leather boots, pirate head wrap and leopard cat ears.

Image text reads: Purr! Avast ye mateys, Dread Pirate Queen Miss Kitty invites ye to check out her booty stash and dig ye up a dungbie prize. Seek ye some buried treasure! Just grab ye a plastic litter scoop and dig… dig… dig… to ye heart’s content.


I created this image for a promotional poster for a performance piece in a charity art show in which I, as Dread Pirate Queen Miss Kitty, hawked a carnival sideshow style sidewalk installation. For a mere $5 donation to the animal shelter the show supported, gallery goers could dig around in a kiddie pool full of litter to find a prize: a cheap plastic trinket from the dollar store. I had some takers, including one kid who seemed to really enjoy the digging and whose parents were all in, saying “You know, you can totally do that at home too.”

Portrait of myself with dark makeup and crow skull headdress, backlit by the sun.
Portrait of myself with dark makeup and crow skull headdress, backlit by the sun.

For more cat antics, we invite you to read C-2747’s logbook here on Haunted MTL. Feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or on her writing, fine art, and conceptual projects websites.

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Original Creations

Queen of Everything Mother’s Day Wishes

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Happy Mother’s Day to the Queen of Everything… nothing gets by you.

Happy Mother's Day Queen of Everything card
Happy Mother’s Day Queen of Everything card

Artwork description: A Happy Mother’s Day card featuring a picture of a Nefertiti doll with swooping hair, glitter makeup, and elaborate gold and blue headdress and evening gown.

Image text reads: Happy Mother’s Day! You are the Queen of Everything and you shimmer brighter than the twinkliest star in the sky. Stay sparkly and shine on in your magnificent glitter bombasticness. You ARE truly everything everywhere all at once and you’ve seen and heard it all. Eyes in the back of your head and superpowered hearing mean we can’t get away with much no matter how hard we try. So Queen on and rule over home in sparkly sentinel.

Queenly scary early morning makeup mishap
Queenly scary early morning makeup mishap

And may this be a testament to why us kids shalt never get you out of bed too early or run amok while you are getting ready to start your day… Because being the Queen of Everything takes planning and preparation…

Feel free to check out this Mummy Dearest Mother’s Day card from 2021 here on Haunted MTL.

Portrait of myself with dark makeup and crow skull headdress, backlit by the sun.
Portrait of myself with dark makeup and crow skull headdress, backlit by the sun.

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