For as long as I can remember, I have been attracted to the paranormal. Horror books and movies, creepypastas, ghost stories, haunted houses, ouija boards, these kinds of things. Loved those stories, and I feel like I’ve read them all. And ever since I was a teen, which brings me back to fifteen or twenty years ago, I have been lurking on the internet. Until I stumbled upon this sub. Stairs in the woods, national park rangers’ stories, haunted campgrounds, possessed towns, out-of-this-world basements… Reading scary stories became my night-time routine.
I wouldn’t say I believed all this stuff was real, though. To me, it was just a nice way to pass the time and get a little shiver out of me before I fell asleep. Yes, I used to be just like y’all. A skeptical person. Even though I can remember experiencing a few things that didn’t seem quite normal, I always thought it was my brain playing tricks on me.
Until my old mirror broke.
***
Let’s go back to how it all began. When I was twelve or so, back in 2006, my mom got me a little desk mirror. A double sided round mirror, to be exact, you know the ones ? A make-up or vanity thingy, with one side which magnified the face ? That kind of mirror.
I was entering my teen years, and had been asking for a mirror of my own so I wouldn’t have to do my make up and straighten my hair in the bathroom. With two younger siblings, that space wasn’t private enough for the teenage edginess that was growing on me, back in my angsty middle school and high school years.
Our mom never had much money. Our clothes were always second-hand, given by her work colleagues and already worn out by their older kids. My own clothes always ended up being worn by my little sister, and then passed down to the youngest one.
And yet, mom managed to buy me a brand new mirror. Well, it was just a tiny one. But it was new! Before getting it, I used a little rear view mirror I’d taken from my bike. So this was a big upgrade! I thanked her a lot, and put the mirror on my desk for a while. The cats, however, didn’t like it there : the mirror ruined their sleeping spot. So I stored it on my wall shelf during the day and the night, only getting it in the morning so I could do my hair and my make up.
***
Back then, I had already had a few experiences with the invisible forces that rule our world. Or so I thought.
My bedroom used to be the kitchen of our home, until my mom decided to turn it into her eldest daughter’s personal space : she decorated it with me, bought me a bed-bunk with storage space underneath, a wooden desk, and it became my bedroom. I used to joke about it, and say that my feet slept in the fridge while my head rested in the oven.
As I grew up, I’d always get an uneasy feeling every time I was sitting at my desk. It felt like something was watching me from behind my shoulder. Specifically, the presence came from the corner of my bedroom. I remember that, as a kid, back when this was our kitchen, I wouldn’t sit near that specific corner next to the door. I had to be the furthest away from it.
Once it became my own bedroom, it only got worse. The corner emanated some kind of dark energy ? I couldn’t describe it with words, it was more of a feeling. All I can say is this corner felt like impending doom. Like there was someone, or something invisible waiting there, quietly lurking.
Sometimes, things I’d had put on the wall shelf would fall unexpectedly. I’d rearrange the books, the toys, the music CDs, to no avail. They’d keep falling off. Only the tiny mirror wouldn’t budge.
I used to get sleep paralysis, still do but not as much as when I was a teen. And not as much as when I occupied that house. Back when I still lived with mom, those sleep paralysis were strong. I’d always experience apparitions in that same corner : a weird gnome sitting on my wall shelf, next to my books. In the darkness of my room at night, he looked like a wood-puppet. A cursed marionette, some kind of twisted Pinocchio. He wouldn’t talk, just kept staring at me as I laid there completely helpless. Sometimes I would hear a laugh.
Some nights, there was a deep, masculine voice coming from the corner. Whispering all night in a language I didn’t understand. It obviously came from there, but the more it spoke, the more it felt like its words would come as thoughts. As if it entered my own brain. Those nights, I thought I was turning crazy. Mom always told me I had too much imagination.
As I grew older, my old mirror got stained. Spots all over it. However, it wasn’t dirt : had it been dirt, I would’ve been able to clean them, right ?
***
I left my rural childhood home in the french countryside at eighteen, and took off to university in a big city. Got my own apartment, which was an hour drive from home. And after I left, it got dusty. My first flat had two mirrors, so I didn’t feel the need to take my little one with me. Nor that I wanted it with me.
See, I always had a weird feeling related to that mirror. I felt like it was the cause for all my troubles, all my sleepless nights, all my nightmares. I ended up believing that my sleep paralysis demons came to me through it. This mirror seemed like it was a portal to another dimension.
I called it the “mirror world”. Not very imaginative, I know. But that was technically true and practical to call it that way.
To close and seal the entrance - or exit - to that mirror world, I came up with a technique. As a down-to-earth, rational person, I decided that my brain twisted reality in order to make me believe in scary stories. Had I conjured evil forces with my imagination, then the only way to ward them off was to imagine a blockage.
My technique, however, was very fragile and silly. I was content simply to turn the mirror. For me, the magnifying side was not a door to the mirror world. This side didn’t allow them - ghosts, demons - to cross into my dimension. In short, it was simply a window for them : they could watch, but not pass.
So I turned the round circle of the mirror in a way to make the magnifying side look up. That way, the “normal” side HAD to look down. My train of thought was that, this way, nothing could come out. If the mirror “door” didn’t reflect anything, spirits couldn’t manifest as they couldn’t see their destination.
And it worked! My final year at my mom’s house was sleep-paralysis free, ever since I started to use that technique to seal the mirror world.
***
This is why I didn’t take the mirror with me as I started my adult, university student’s new life. I wanted to feel free, not have to worry about checking the mirror every day and feeling uneasy about it. I couldn’t throw it away, cause who knows what would’ve happened? Maybe I’d have released evil in the world, had I done it? So I decided to leave the mirror in my childhood room.
I set it on the highest shelf, in the “locked” position, covered it with a little cloth, and told my siblings to never touch it. They knew how much it made me uneasy, so they promised they wouldn’t.
Then I took off to live my life. Barely came back home, cause I became really busy with university, my new job, my friends, partying, meeting some romantic interests only for them to break my heart, getting a cat of my own… When I came home, I ignored my mirror, and I never stayed the night.
My mother was, still is a hoarder, after all. My bedroom quickly became a storage unit, and my bed was hardly accessible. I didn’t bother trying to sleep there. The hoard was alive, there was no point fighting it. I had tried a lot when I was younger, but whenever you clean or empty a space, the hoard comes back stronger to eat it all. That’s just how it is. So I never slept again in my childhood room.
***
One night, however, my sister made a suicide attempt. I won’t go into the details. But the next day, when I heard what had happened from mom… I was a mess. We all were. The ambulance had taken my sister during the night, and mom didn’t know what to do. She felt awful that she couldn’t do anything to help. Our younger brother was away at boarding school, and we didn’t want to worry him too much.
So I took the role of the adult. I came back home to support my mother. She was a wreck. I told myself, at least with me there, she’d have someone to take care of groceries, food, and drive her to the hospital everyday from then on.
My sister, she made it. She survived… But she was too sedated to talk to us. I didn’t need to hear any explanation from her as to why she tried to die. I was just happy she was still alive, and swore I would do anything I could to support her. I don’t know whether she heard me or not as I cried and apologized next to her bed.
When we came back from checking on my sister at the hospital, that day, I decided to tackle my bedroom. I needed to have a space for myself, if I was to stay there indefinitely. As I started to free my bed from the hoard that had accumulated, I felt off. Something was wrong. I couldn’t put my finger on it.
I looked around… Then it hit me.
The mirror. It wasn’t on the shelf.
The adrenaline, the fear of losing my sister forever, the stress of that day… I felt my anxiety rise up in me. There was an inevitable creeping, crippling panic attack crawling inside me. In a rush, I stepped over and dodged the piles of boxes, books, clothes, approaching the shelves. The corner of the bedroom. Where was it ?! I had to know.
There was nothing. No trace of the mirror.
Except a lone shard on the floor.
As I picked it up, it slipped through my fingers, cutting me in the process. I picked it up again, my bloody thumb stained it. Then my panic skyrocketed. Reflecting in the mirror shard wasn’t my own scared face. There was a shadow. A smiling shadow, with sharp teeth and bottomless, malicious eyes.
“Hey Kusu-. Long time no see. I missed you, kiddo.”
I screamed and dropped the shard. As it broke in countless little pieces, I heard the ominous whisper again.
“By the way… How is your sister?”