Hello everyone! /smile.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':blink:' /> This is my first post. I just wanted to share my experience.

A friend and I started a paranormal group (IPIS), and we weren't getting any cases. So while we were working on finding places to investigate, we decided to try some experiments. Now, we don't have a ton of experience or the best equipment, but I think our little experiments did help in that it sparked more curiosity, and hopefully we can do further experiments later on when we have better equipment and more experience. It will definitely be an ongoing thing, if we are to determine anything from it.

Anyway, we decided to test some urban legends. First, we tested the Bloody Mary urban legend. This legend states that if you stand in front of a mirror (usually in a bathroom), spin around and say "Bloody Mary" so many times, she will appear to you in the mirror. Of course, there are many variations to this, as there are with most urban legends. Some versions of the Bloody Mary legend state that it must be done in a bathroom, others just state in front of a mirror, some state that you must stand still, some that you have to spin around, some that you have to stop in front of the mirror and say her name, others that you say it whilst spinning. And of course, the number of times the name is said also differs depending on who you talk to. The origins of the urban legend are often disputed also, as well as whether you should have your eyes open or closed.

It must also be said that the location of this experiment may have paranormal activity anyway, so this will need to be re-done in another location for comparison. We did the experiment in a bedroom, as it had the largest mirror and the most space to spin around in. We spun around with our eyes closed, saying "Bloody Mary" with each turn, and only stopped to face the mirror at the end. Our equipment included a low-frequency EMF meter, a digital camcorder, and a digital audio recorder. Not the best, but it's what we had at the time. We had two investigators present, and we both took turns on each trial. We did several trials, each time changing the number of times we repeated "Bloody Mary". We tried 3, 6, 7, 9, and 13, since these were the numbers we found most often when we looked up information on the urban legend.

We had the camera recording the EMF detector, so that later on we could go back and see whether it lit up or not. For the first few trials (3, 6, and 7) nothing much happened, aside from dizziness and some visual Matrixing, which is to be expected if you’ve been spinning in circles. On the fourth trial (9), I started feeling crowded and like the room was getting darker. When I stopped and opened my eyes, I swore I saw a figure hunched over in the corner of the mirror, but when I turned to look, there was nothing. The other times I had seen something, it was obviously from being dizzy and was due to matrixing, but this time when I looked in the mirror again, it was still there. The figure then moved closer and became bigger in the mirror. My partner and I switched places so she could try 9 times. Then we tried 13. Throughout the last few trials, one corner of the room seemed to get darker in the mirror, but would not change in the actual room. We checked to see if one of our shadows was causing this, only to find that both are shadows were on another wall. The door would be covered up, then the shadow would back off. This repeated for a while. After we had finished with all the trials, the air in the room seemed heavier, so we decided to repeat 9 times to see if the same thing or something else would happen. After I repeated this trial, we decided to take some digital pictures of that corner. I went to take a picture and just before the camera flashed, I thought I saw a tall, dark figure. At first, I didn’t say anything, because I thought it was my eyes. But then my partner said something, and we determined that we had seen the same thing. I have no idea what it was, but I have no explanation. We tried to debunk it by checking the objects, furniture, and etc. in the room to see if they would create the same shadow, and we could not find anything. We decided to end the trials and began talking about something else. Over the length of the conversation, the room started feeling like normal again.

We also had one other thing happen. When I did the 9 times trial, as I had my eyes closed, I suddenly felt claustrophobic, after I had repeated “Bloody Mary” about 7 times. I didn’t say anything to my partner, but at the same moment, she gasped. I kept going, and when I opened my eyes she told me the EMF meter had gone off. It was still lit when I looked at it. We determined that the battery was dead, so it was most likely just the battery and nothing paranormal, but it was certainly odd timing.

I don’t know if anything we experienced was indeed paranormal, but what I do know is that probably many people who try this are tricked into thinking they see Bloody Mary from a combination of dizziness, matrixing, and expectations. If what happened was indeed paranormal, there is no way to tell if it was indeed Bloody Mary or if it was related to what may already be in the location. I do know that I would like to test this and other urban legends like it further, to see if there is any validity to them.

Unfortunately, when I went to review the audio, something happened with the recording and I could not get it to upload or play back past about two minutes (we had almost 2 hours! /sad.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':(' /> ). I wanted to pull my hair out; we'll never know if we did get anything on audio from that night.

We have also tested the 100 Candles game, which I will post about later.

Trust me, I know there are good and bad spirits. I've encountered both kinds in soem way. We did use some precautions, though, and we will use more should we attempt this again. Thanks everyone for reading. If we do end up doing a second experiment with this, I'll post those results. I think we need more of a neutral location next time.

And also like I said, there's no way to tell if what we experienced was Bloody Mary, something already there, something else entirely, or even if it was indeed paranormal. It certainly was very interesting though.

Thanks, and no problem, I just hope I can do some more experiments along these lines, and test this one a lot more, with more equipment. If I do, I will also post those results.