Abstract
Expressive cultural practice involving the ghostly figure of Bloody Mary, a staple part of folklore of children and adolescents in the West, represents unique amalgamation of ritual practices, folk beliefs and demonological narratives. This phenomenon, extensively studied by Western folklorists since the 1970s (e. g.
Langlois 1978, Klintberg 1988) is closely connected to wider discourse of youth ghostlore, often interpreted as ritual reflection of prepubescent anxiety (Dundes 1998). The paper, using data documented during longitudinal field research of Czech contemporary folklore, presents growing popularity of this expressive practice in Czech setting in the last twenty years, starting with the late 1990s.
Reflecting global, ever-shifting contemporary culture flows, especially changes in local realities of "ethnoscapes", "mediascapes" and "ideoscapes" (Appadurai 1996) connected with repatriation, global popular culture and later vernacular internet texts, this practice seems to be both parallel to and a transformation of more traditional ritual practices such as children's spiritism of the 1970s and 1980s.