Mary Shaw had a very specific protocol for getting revenge on the town of Ravens Fair.
First she came after the men that murdered her, then their wives, then their children.
But why was the family of Michael Ashen, the boy that set her off, protected for almost
70 years?
You would think they would be her highest priority targets.
Stick around to the end of this video to find out why.
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Beware the stare of Mary Shaw.
She had no children, only dolls.
And if you see her in your dreams, be sure you never, ever scream.
Welcome to Horror History, my name is…
Steve Buscemi?
And today on Horror History we’re gonna be analysing the life… and the afterlife
of the antagonist of the 2007 horror film Dead Silence -- Mary Shaw.
In a (very old) interview with Bloody Disgusting, the writer, Leigh Whannell, said he felt ventriloquism
was under-utilized in horror movies, and he was inspired to create the character of Mary
after reading about some of the world’s greatest ventriloquists.
“I was reading about incredible guys who could drink a glass of water and have the
doll talk and stuff like that, so that really inspired us for the character of Mary Shaw
in the film, who’s the ghost ventriloquist and all the different abilities she has.”
They also hilariously try to plug the movie’s website.
“And if you want to find out more about it go to www.deadsilencemovie.net.”
Nooo!!
The stickman got to them.
To fully understand Mary Shaw’s past, let’s take it back to the birth of Mary Shaw, over
one century ago.
On July 26, 1869, Ravens Fair residents Ron Shaw and Betsy Shaw gave birth to a daughter
and named her Mary.
Young Mary has a fascination with dolls, and eventually took up the hobby of creating them
herself.
In her time, she created 101 traditional dolls, which included the likes of Holly, Kenneth,
Gregory, Andy, Russel, Gerry, Donny and of course -- Billy.
Mary considered these dolls to be her family, and instead of getting married and having
kids, she referred to the dolls as her children.
I imagine her reclusive behaviour and creepy connection to her dolls caused the people
in town to bully her, resulting in her becoming mentally unhinged.
We’ve definitely covered one of those before.
“And here is my lovely doll.
So I actually put my actual human hair.”
As a result of this, Mary kept a scrapbook, keeping track of the families who made fun
of her.
She also used photographs and newspaper articles to memorize the names and faces of the families
in their small town.
At some point she also began making sketches for what she considered to be “the perfect
doll”.
Her idea was that she could create the perfect ventriloquist puppet by using what she referred
to as “existing parts”, namely, by hollowing out a human body and replacing the eyes and
jaw to create a life size ventriloquist doll.
To do this she catalogued hundreds of design sketches in her scrap book and also began
to study human anatomy and likely taxidermy.
Mary ended up becoming a very talented ventriloquist, and in the glory days of the town in the 1930s,
she ran a performance called The Amazing Mary Shaw and Billy in Ravens Fair, which saw sold-out
shows at The Guignol Theater in Lost Lake.
Mary also lived backstage in the theater she performed at, providing her a relatively safe
hiding place to continue to develop the ideas behind her human-doll experiments.
One evening, Mary was performing to a packed house at the Guignol and asks a boy named
Henry Walker to bring Billy to her from underneath his seat.
When he does so, she doesn’t address him by name at first...
“You there...”
...but when she thanks him, she reveals that she does already know his name, which unsettles
him.
“Say thank you!”
“Thank you Henry.”
“Is that right young man?
Is your name Henry?”
Once her performance begins, she is called out by another boy named Michael Ashen.
“I can see your lips moving!”
After revealing that she knows who he is as well,
"Young Michael here doesn't think you're a real person."
she becomes very angry with him
for interrupting her, but instead of getting upset herself, she channels it through the
puppet, Billy.
“I think we should show this boy just how real I am.
I’m just as real as him.”
“No, I’m afraid we must go on with the show.”
“No!
I’m as real as you are and I’ll show you.”
“Leave him alone, Billy!”
“I’ll show him what it’s like mother!”
“Listen to me!
That’s enough!”
“I’m as real as you!”
She stares at Michael during the applause and asks him,
“now, who’s the dummy?”
This was a foreshadowing of what was to come next for Michael, because weeks later, she
kidnapped him and turned him into, as far as we know, her first ever life-size ventriloquist
dummy.
It would appear that she also took pride in her actions and the turmoil that it caused
the community, because she documented his disappearance in her scrapbook.
Because of Michael’s rudeness at the theater, the Ashen family and many of the other families
in attendance suspected Mary Shaw as the kidnapper, but because she kept Michael’s body hidden
behind a secret passage in her dressing room, the boy was never found and
some of the townsfolk decided to try to take justice into their own hands.
The mob consisted of men in the Ashen family, as well as other families in town that suspected
Mary Shaw was responsible.
They caught up with her and forced her to scream, so that they could cut out her tongue,
which if you think about it is like taking a basketball player’s hands, a musician’s
ears, or a Twitch streamer’s boobs.
Mary’s prized possession was her voice, and they took that from her as they ended
her life.
While the townspeople expected that this would be the end of it, it was only the beginning
of the terror she unleashed on the town, which started with a strange set of requests documented
in Mary’s will.
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The contents of Mary Shaw’s will revealed two very unorthodox requests.
The first was that she wanted each of her 101 dolls to be buried alongside her at the
Ravens Fair Cemetery.
The second, which is perhaps even more unusual, was the request that she herself be turned
into another life size doll.
The method by which Mary became a spirit is not detailed in the movie, but we do at least
see that her ghost has the ability to possess the ventriloquist dolls and give them one
of her voices, or the voice of one of the victims whose tongue she removed.
It’s a bit unclear if Mary is an apparition as opposed to a wandering spirit that needs
a vessel, or a physical entity that comes back from the dead -- we see examples of all
three in the movie, which does feel like a cop-out at times but I think we’re supposed
assume that it’s all three.
She spends most of her time in a human form, but she’ll take over the dolls from time
to time, and she can also just disappear entirely if she wants to.
The first time she used her newfound powers was not long after her death in 1941.
Henry, the son of the town’s mortician, had snuck into the room containing her coffin
and accidentally knocked it over.
Her corpse fell on top of him and then she yelled out “JOHN CENA!”
He tries scrambling away, and when he looked back she was no longer there, but rather,
standing upright on the side of the room, and she began to come for him!
It wasn’t until his father came in and turned on the lights that she disappeared and the
room went back to normal, or at least as normal as a room can look when it contains an old
lady who got her tongue cut out and then requested to be turned into a human size doll.
It seems that light is actually a weakness of hers, and this may be related to how she
was in life, where part of the illusion that made her act work was that she was silhouetted
in darkness while the spotlight was on Billy, so that the audience would be less likely
to look at her and possibly see her lips moving.
Many ghosts and unrest spirits linger because they have some kind of mission that must be
fulfilled in order for them to rest in peace, and in Mary’s case it is to silence all
those who silenced her.
“To silence all those who silenced me.”
From this point forward, each of the men involved in her murder were killed one-by-one, after
which she came after their families.
She started with the wives, then went after their children, and in some cases, also took
out their grandchildren as well.
The people started to realize a pattern though.
Just as light seems to be her weakness because of the way she was in life, the act of screaming
is her strength, probably as a statement of revenge for the brutal manner in which she
was killed.
A legend circulated in the area.
“Beware the stare of Mary Shaw.
She had no children, only dolls.
And something something scary.
Something something BOO!”
Most of the victims were unable to resist screaming when being terrorized by Mary’s
ghost, and the families of the deceased were left behind in photogenic arrangements with
no tongues.
The remaining families in town quickly dwindled, but through all of this, there was one man
who refused to scream during Mary Shaw’s hauntings.
And his name is “JOHN CENA!”
Well, that’s twice I’ve done that joke now, so you know there’s probably only gonna
be one more.
The man’s name was Edward Ashen.
But how did he manage to avoid Mary’s curse if he was only a child at the time?
My theory is that the spirit of Mary wasn’t always as thorough as she is now.
If this is the case, then the ghost of Mary Shaw could have overlooked the last member
of the Ashen family, because he was still in the womb, a mistake she made sure not to
make further down the line.
Edward would have been raised with all the warnings and legends in town teaching him
not to scream if he ever saw her, and by the time she discovered the existence of a brother
in the Ashen family, it was too late, and she would have to find a more clever way to
get him to scream.
But as she took out the other families, the legend continued to grow, and people became
cautious about ever muttering her name.
If only they had known you can get around that by saying “she-who-must-not-be-named”
or “the darklord”.
They would also avoid going near her grave.
By the 1980s, most of the potential victims were either dead or had learned how to get
by safely, and no new murders took place.
Kids in town began to see the poem “beware the stare of Mary Shaw” as more of an urban
legend, rather than an actual legitimate warning, so some parents began to send their kids away
to live in the city, fearing that the town was still cursed.
As a result, the place fell into a state of disarray during the 90s, with no one there
to run the shops, the place was basically only occupied by the older generation who
couldn’t bring themselves to leave.
So, she seems to disappear for a number of years, but when she does eventually return
to finish the job, a local woman named Marion, the wife of Henry, from all those years ago
who seems to have the abilities of a medium, senses the return of the vengeful sprite.
She hides in a crawlspace, repeating the phrase “the silent time is here,” which ironically
is exactly what Ticketmaster says when you try to get a refund for cancelled shows.
Mary, as far as we know only has a few targets remaining.
She wants to finish taking out the family of Michael Ashen, the one that first silenced
her all those years ago.
She had already tried and failed to get a scream from Edward Ashen, and his son Jamie
had been sent away as a boy.
Jamie also had a son on the way, and this time, Mary was not going to let an unborn
offspring escape.
She started by taking a new approach with Edward, who had now been through two divorces,
so Mary transformed herself into Ella, who presumably slid in Edwards DMs until she became
the third wife.
Unsuspecting of her true nature, he was eventually caught off guard and turned into the next
“perfect doll”, or life size ventriloquist dummy.
It’s unknown if this was at the same time as the stroke mentioned in the movie, or if
that was just entirely fabricated.
“What happened to you?”
“Your father had a stroke two months ago.”
The next victim would be Jamie’s unborn child, which was bad news for the wife that
was carrying it.
Since Jamie was starting his family in the city, away from Ravens Fair, Ella slash Mary
packed Billy in a box and sent him on his way to infiltrate Jamie’s apartment.
Which makes more sense than Child’s Play 3 where Chucky somehow packs and sends himself
all while inside the box.
"A Good Guy!"
The package is addressed to Jamie, who leaves his wife alone to go pick up takeout.
Using the Billy puppet, she takes out Lisa, starting by sucking all of the sound out of
the apartment, luring her into the bedroom where Billy is using a playful laughter sound,
and startling her with a sudden scream, before taking her out and ensuring that the child
she was carrying can never be born.
When Jamie gets back she tries to do the same to him by using the newly acquired voice of
Lisa to lure him into the room.
The sight of what had been done to his wife is not enough to draw a scream out of him,
and he ends up heading home to Ravens Fair to plan her funeral and search for answers
of his own.
He gets to his father’s house to ask about Mary Shaw, but Mary, taking the form of Ella,
answers the door instead, and tries to throw him off by saying the legend of Mary Shaw
was just a story that parents made up to scare kids, like the boogeyman, or the pink guy.
That night at Jamie’s motel, she tries once again to get him, by sucking all the sound
out of the room and speaking to him before he falls asleep.
When he wakes up, she appears before him, but he’s able to turn the light on, causing
her to disappear before he screams.
The next night is her third attempt.
He uses the Billy doll to make the graveyard go silent as he's attempting to bury it, and turns
the dolls head suddenly, but it’s still not enough to get him.
As he’s leaving, she circles his car, laughing as she does so, and tries to surprise him
by holding the now unearthed doll up to his car window, but is able to get no more than
a gasp.
After three failures, she realizes that she’s dealing with the son of Edward Ashen, she’s
going to have to do something much more grand if she wants to get a scream from him, so
she digs up the other 100 dolls from the graveyard.
After one more failed jump scare attempt involving a mirror while Jamie is investigating the
theater during the day, she abandons the idea of using cheap scares and begins to build
a more elaborate trap.
Her plan involved using the voice of Henry Walker, one of the few men left alive from
the heyday of the town, but Henry’s wife Marion makes contact with her first, which
is part of why I think she has medium abilities.
We don’t see this scene directly, but we do hear it from the other room, and if we
turn up the volume we can hear Marion begging Mary to leave her husband alone.
Marion: “What do you want with him?
What is it?
What do you want?
We did what you wanted.
We put you in there with your family, all together.
Why can’t you just leave us alone?”
Mary Shaw: “Why won’t you”
Marion claims that she hasn’t done anything wrong, but Mary Shaw seems to think differently.
“Yes you did.
You talked.”
Marion’s pleads are not enough to sway the evil spirit, who then goes dead silent.
Because, you know… the name of the movie.
When Henry discovers his wife talking to the doll, he fears the return of the curse, and
decides it’s best to re-bury it, but before he has the chance to do so, he hears a crying
sound, which he thinks is his wife down in the crawlspace.
As it turns out, it is not Marion, but rather, Mary, who locks him under the house.
He probably knows he’s done for after hearing a greeting from Billy’s voice and seeing
Mary Shaw’s 3-weeks expired sausage lookin’ fingers creeping around the pillar, so he
screams and Mary takes his tongue, and subsequently, his voice, and uses it to lure Jamie back
to the theater with the promise of more information about his Lisa's killer.
Another creepy detail about Mary Shaw in ghost form is her tongue, which allows us to see
just how many victims she has taken the voices of.
Each additional one is tacked on, creating a long and horrifying strand.
That's one ahegao face that I never want to see.
When Jamie and the Detective arrive, Mary possesses a clown doll to speak to Jamie and
tell him that the baby his wife was carrying was her real target.
I think her new strategy is to get an emotional reaction out of him, rather than just simply
trying to startle him.
The first emotion she goes for is anger, and when that doesn't work, she goes for fear,
by possessing the 100 dolls and making them do freaky stuff that looks like it would be
in an episode of Courage the Cowardly Dog.
They burn the display of dolls and try to escape, but Mary takes another victim by getting
a scream out of the detective.
She almost gets Jamie, but he catches himself and escapes to go take care of the last doll,
Billy, which had been left at the funeral home.
I think Mary was anticipating this move, and she had one last trick up her sleeve to try
to trick him into letting out a scream.
In order for it to work, she needed to get him back to the Ashen house, so she possesses
Edward's body to go and take Billy from the funeral home.
In the overheard conversation between Marion and...
Mary without the N, Mary Shaw is upset with her because she supposedly talked, which presumably
means she warned Jamie about the curse when she wasn’t supposed to.
Interestingly, she’s left alive, and I think it’s all part of Mary’s plan; she knows
that Mrs. Walker will talk again, and tell Jamie that his father came and took the doll,
which will lead him back home, where Ella, aka: Mary Shaw, will be waiting for him.
I don’t know why it has to be there, but… yeah, I never claimed this one was perfect.
So that’s exactly what happens, it ends up being the shock of finding out his father
was a puppet all along and his stepmom was the one controlling him that finally coerces
a scream from him, and after collecting his tongue, she’s now able to close her scrapbook,
after having created dolls of the whole Ashen family.
We can assume that Mary’s spirit can rest easy after that.
The only survivor is Marion, and it’s not hard to imagine Mary Shaw would come after
her next, having outlived her usefulness.
And seeing as how there hasn’t been another movie since then, I would have to assume this
means Mary’s spirit has had its fill of revenge and can finally move on.
But to be fair, there’s not really any confirmation that there aren’t survivors from any of
the other families.
And if there are, I’m sure we’ll see Mary Shaw rise up once again.
Remember to subscribe to CZsWorld for new horrors every week ring that deathbell for
“JOHN CENA!” and I’ll see you in the next one.
Assuming we stay inside.