Lady in the Mirror
Newsletter sent 11.13.2020
Have you ever stared in a mirror and said, “Bloody Mary” three times? According to urban legends, Mary Queen of Scotts arrives and haunts you, cuts off your head, something like that. What if I told you that was true? That it happened to me. Well, Mary didn’t show up, but someone else did.
Let me rewind a bit. It was early fall, a nice crispness to the air. The sun was setting earlier, so we didn’t have much time before the streetlights signaled us to head inside. Me and two best friends from the ‘hood decided to hold a séance in my garage, which was detached from the house and down a small hill off the alley behind our house. No windows. Low light seeped around the old, warped door. We sat on blankets my dad used when he worked on the car, stained with oil and car whatnot, set the mirror on a cardboard box, and lit three candles. (The power of three is a real thing, y’all.) We stared in the mirror, held hands, and called Bloody Mary…Bloody Mary…Bloody Mary. The flames flickered. Could easily have been a draft, right? We waited. Kept staring, holding our breath so we didn’t break the spell. Then a woman appeared in the mirror. She was middle-aged with dark brown hair pulled back with what looked like pearls in her hair. She had white, wide collar and a brown dress, and perfect posture. She didn’t say a word. Her mouth never moved. All she did was stare back at us, creeping closer until her face encompassed the whole mirror.
We screamed, blew out the candles and high-tailed it out of the garage. Only when we reached my friend’s back porch did we confess what we saw. The youngest of us didn’t see a thing. She screamed because the rest of us did. But me and my other friend saw her. Ever since then, I’ve never looked at a mirror in the dark. If I’m at a hotel room that has a big mirror across from the bed, I cover it with a towel. You see, the woman never went away. She was still there no matter where I lived, waiting in the dark.
Covid lockdown has had me scrolling social media for random content. One night I came across a woman who said something that caught my attention: “Sometimes we do stupid things when we’re young and naïve and trap spirits in places they don’t want to be.” The Bloody Mary incident flashed in my mind. The speaker gave instructions on how to remedy the situation. That night, before bed, I did as the speaker instructed. Lit only by three candles, I stared in the mirror until the woman appeared, like she had over the last fifty years. I sincerely apologize for what me and my innocent friends did all those years ago. I released her spirit and cut the spiritual cord. She didn’t even blink. She simply disappeared. I hope she’s finally resting in peace.
I still don’t look in the mirror at night, or any reflective surface. Frankly, I’m too chicken.
In my debut novel, Dead Reckoning, Grave Intentions, Book 1, Joni pours salt over the threshold and on mirror frames because the most evil things hide in the mirrors. Guess what inspired that idea?
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