They really creep me out. I’m so afraid of mirrors that I brush my teeth in the kitchen, so I don’t have to stand there looking into the mirror for two minutes. It’s not as if I need the mirror anyway – I know where my teeth are.
I’ve been afraid of mirrors ever since I was a little girl,
when I first realized that nine out of ten murder-ghosts pop out of mirrors
(the tenth one is posing as a hitchhiker). I know most of these killings are associated
with summoning a murder-ghost on purpose like an idiot, but I’m not taking any
chances. Even though I’m a grown woman in the 21st century and I
should “know better,” I’m convinced that someday something is going to leap out
of a mirror and eat my head.
According to an
informal survey of my Facebook friends, I’m not the only one who’s afraid of
mirrors. Dozens of superstitions and legends about mirrors have sprung up over
the centuries, in cultures across the world, so I guess it’s part of the human
condition to hate mirrors even as we feel compelled to peer into them several
times a day.
Mirrors are
supposedly capable of showing a person’s soul, which is why vampires don’t have
reflections. Some cultures have believed that mirrors are capable of trapping
a soul, either after death, during sleep, or even in the course of normal
mirror use, which is why the ancient
Romans believed (and we still believe today) that breaking a mirror will
bring seven years of bad luck – because breaking the mirror damages your very
soul, WHICH IS NOW INSIDE THE MIRROR AND NO LONGER IN YOUR BODY, EEP. That’s
why people in some cultures cover
their mirrors when someone in the home is sick, or has recently died –
because they don’t want the person’s soul to be trapped in Mirror Land, which
is probably not the happenin’ place that Through
the Looking Glass made it out to be. I guess the need to comb, fold, fasten,
plait and glue your hair into unnatural positions every morning trumps the need
to protect your very essence. On the plus side, if your house is haunted, you
can just hang up some mirrors, and they’ll suck the ghosts right up.
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| This mirror is stealing the soul of a dog. |
Creepily enough, as I was writing this, the wall mirror in
my bedroom fell off the wall ALL BY ITSELF and scared the crap out of Shoe aka Fatty. I leapt to
conclusions and yelled at him, which didn’t help matters.
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| He says it fell because I fastened it to the wall with "mirror-hanging tape." He may be right. |
