Episode 186 - The Horrifying History of Mirrors

This week Abby sits down with Kate Rotunda to discuss the vast and unnerving history of mirrors. 

Get Lunatics Merch here. Join the discussion on Discord. Check out Abby's book Horror Stories. Available in eBook and paperback. Music by Michaela Papa, Alan Kudan & Jordan Moser. Poster Art by Pilar Keprta @pilar.kep.

Transcript

Welcome And Episode Setup

SPEAKER_02 0:18

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Lunatics Radio Hour Podcast. I am Abby Brinker, sitting here with Kate Rotunda. Hello. Hello, Kate. You're back again, this time to talk about the history of mirrors and how that intersects with horror. Yes, indeed. A truly creepy concept. Yes. One of the scariest for me personally.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 0:41

As you all know by now, I hope Kate is a frequent lunatics contributor. She writes for our website. So if you head to lunaticsproject.com and click on articles, you can read her work there. And she's also been on the podcast a few times, and it's always been a really great, thoughtful conversation.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

This topic is interesting because it does intersect with some of the other topics we've covered, but we haven't talked about it from this angle before. So for instance, Bloody Mary was a huge series that we did two years ago. A lot of that revolves around mirror horror, right? Same with crystal balls. A lot of that's kind of similar. But we're really going to deep dive today into the history of mirrors, the mythology, the folklore, some of the weird superstitions that exist across many different cultures, and then talk through how some modern filmmakers play with that and weave it into their stories.

SPEAKER_00 1:30

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:30

So first let's acknowledge our sources. An Atlas Obscura article by Kate Golembouski, The Spooky Science of Why Mirrors Can Freak Us Out So Much. A post by Kenny Biddle from The Skeptical Inquirer, a closer look at the Bella Lugosi Haunted Mirror. An article from Haslift.net by Colin Dickey, Behind the Draped Mirror, a mental floss article by Emily Petsko, Bloody Mary, Why We Think We See Ghosts and Mirrors. A spiritual direction article, Exorcist Daily, Demons Hate Mirr. A furniture library article, The History of Mirr, Through a Glass, Starkly, a Long Reads article by Katie Kaheller, The Ugly History of Beautiful Things, Mirrors, Objects of Despair, Mirrors, a Paris Review article by Megan O.Guybelin, a Hawaii.edu article, Lakin, The Mirror Stage, and of course a little help from our friends at Wikipedia and IMDB, as always.

Sources And Research Framework

SPEAKER_01 2:23

Okay, so to start off with a basic history of mirrors. Mirrors are often referred to as one of mankind's most consistent civilizers. They have been around and were used as early as 2900 BC by ancient Egyptians. And I even read somewhere that sometimes mirrors with gems, jewels, made of gold cost more than uh certain girls' dowries. Wow. They cared more about having a fancy mirror than they did a dowry. It is derived from the French word mirror and the Latin word miari, which means to admire. Well, that makes sense. Yes.

Early Mirrors And Reflection Basics

SPEAKER_02 2:51

At the most basic definition, mirrors are objects that reflect an image, meaning that mirrors can be found in nature, right? So you have bodies of water, for example, things like that people have been using as reflection tools for a very, very long period of time. But humans have felt the need to manufacture mirrors for thousands of years. Like Kate said, mirrors are incredibly old. The earliest man-made mirrors that we know about were polished rocks. So, for example, pieces of obsidian, which is actually a volcanic glass. This practice dates back until around 6000 BCE. By 3300 BCE, many cultures were using polished pieces of metals like bronze or copper or silver to create mirrors. The Middle Ages brought about advancements in glass making, which got humans much closer to the mirrors that we know today. So this is a basic principle, but one that I think is kind of foundational to our conversation today. Yes. So let's define a mirror image. When we look at a mirror, left and right are flipped.

SPEAKER_03 3:49

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 3:49

We all know that, but let's just say that, right? Yeah. Sometimes, depending, bottom and top can be flipped, right, on the orientation. But typically we're working we're looking at like a reverse flipped image, right? A left and right flipped image. For example, B becomes D in a mirror. Lowercase B and D would be flipped. That's sort of how we're defining reflection, which is gonna come up a little bit because there's something disorienting about that, right? And there's a lot of origin of folklore and other things when you acknowledge going into a reflection that it's not a hundred percent truthful, right? For lack of a better word.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

There's a lot of superstitions revolving around mirrors. Well, not a superstition, but quick mythology. I think a lot of people are familiar at least with the term narcissus. Narcissus was a is a myth of a young son of a river god and a nymph who is well known for his beauty. The story goes that he saw himself for the first time in the reflection in a river and fell so in love with his own image that he died either pining for himself. Other versions of the story say that he killed himself because he could not be with his reflection, and other stories say he drowned because he got too close to the river. So that's a basic mythology to do with reflections and kind of the beginning of vanity in mirrors.

SPEAKER_02 4:59

I like the idea of him getting so close because he's like, I'm just so beautiful, and then he kind of gets swept away in a current.

SPEAKER_01 5:04

Yeah, I think there's like there's different versions of the story exactly how he died because of his reflection, but that's kind of the basis for the vanity of mirrors and the vanity included with narcissism.

SPEAKER_02 5:13

Yeah, totally.

Myths, Vanity, And Trapped Souls

SPEAKER_01 5:14

But some superstitions that are around it are ancient Romans believed that mirrors could trap the souls of those who looked into it for too long. They also believed that souls could regenerate every seven years. So if your soul were was trapped in a mirror and a mirror broke, you'd be without a soul for seven years until it regenerated, which is where the superstition of breaking a mirror leads to seven years of bad luck because you were soulless for seven years. I love that. The first ideas of well, we have some stories today of like Bloody Mary and Candyman, but the first ideas of bringing forth a face in the mirror was actually used by young women hoping to see their future husbands.

SPEAKER_03 5:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:49

They would look into a mirror and gaze and hoping to get in the background a glimpse of their future husband's face. So it wasn't always an evil entity that was appearing in the mirror. Ancient Mayans also reportedly buried mirrors with their dead because they believe they were windows to an alternate dimension where their gods and ancestors dwell.

SPEAKER_02 6:05

So cool.

SPEAKER_01 6:06

This is actually a common theme in a lot of different cultures where mirrors are often seen as portals to other realms, which I can kind of see. Yeah. You almost look into a mirror and you're like, that's my world, but altered. So it does feel like a different dimension.

SPEAKER_02 6:18

Yeah, exactly. Do you think going back to what you were saying before about if you look in the mirror too long, your soul gets trapped? Do you think that was like an allegory that was being used to try to like keep people from being too vain? Or do you think it was like this and I know you're, you know, this is just your opinion, but like this mystical thing of do we really think there's something about this that could steal our soul because it's so weird to see our reflection?

SPEAKER_01 6:42

I I am curious about that too, and I feel like it could be a mix depending on the culture, but I do think that one, there is a lot of of not wanting to be vain by looking in the mirror. But on this, on the other hand, there is something so strange about mirrors and the fact that, and we'll get to in a little bit, rituals done with mirrors, but just the fact that something can reveal to us something that was once unseen and parts of our world that we can't see without their assistance. So I do think that it was almost creating another version of yourself, possibly that would then take your soul. I don't know the exact logic behind it. I wish ancient Romans could tell me, but they've been they've been kind of quiet on that front. But I do I can see the idea that looking at a like fake version of yourself or a manufactured version of yourself, I can see the idea behind the soul almost getting confused. So I do think stuff like the narcissist myth is more about vanity, whereas I do believe the the soul trapping is something different. Yeah, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 7:47

It's so interesting and just something to keep in mind as we talk through everything we're gonna talk about today. There's so much metaphor and symbology associated with this, it's almost ludicrous, like it's so much. Uh, and people can interpret it in a million different ways, which is really fun. You know, like a mirror is such a broad topic that we're talking through. Yes. So it's fun to see the differences between and the nuances, right, between cultures and groups and time periods. Chinese mirror mythology is also worth mentioning. It was believed that only a mirror could reveal the true identity of demons who were disguised, like who could be disguised as humans, right? So the idea was if you held up a mirror to someone who looked like a human, but you were suspicious that they were a demon, their reflection would be true in the mirror. The ancient Chinese also believed that worlds existed inside and beyond mirrors, right? So it's like a mirror world, a mirror portal. This idea, like you said earlier, of mirrors being portals is gonna be a huge part of the conversation.

SPEAKER_00 8:44

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 8:45

In Japanese folklore, a mirror is part of the three imperial regalia, which also includes a sword and a jewel, and they each sort of represent something different, but the tr the but the mirror represents truth, which again makes a ton of sense, right? In medieval times, with the rise of Christianity, mirrors were associated with the sin of pride and were often thought of as tools for vanity. Though this is a really fun fact that I enjoyed. There is a British mirror called the Black Mirror that was used by John D, who was Queen Elizabeth I's court magician, and he used this mirror to communicate with angels, so he said.

Portals, Truth, And Eastern Traditions

SPEAKER_01 9:27

Or do you think it was just him? I think it wasn't angels. Oh so before we get into a little more of the rituals and more superstition surrounding mirrors, I want to talk a little bit about why we may think some of these things and why we view mirrors as such. Yeah. One thing that I found in my research was a psychological experiment called the Strange Face Illusion. And basically what it was is in 2010, a psychologist by the name of Giovanni Caputo conducted an experiment in which he had people stare at themselves in a mirror under low lighting for 10 minutes to see if they saw any distortion in their faces or anything appear in the mirror. Sure. So there were 50 participants. 66% of them reported seeing huge deformations of one's own face. 18% of them saw a parent's face with traits changed. Uh 8% of them said the parents were still alive, and 10 of them, 10% of them said the parents were still deceased. 28% saw an unknown person kind of face, such as like an old woman, a child, or a portrait of an ancestor, was about 28% of them said that. So 28% of them saw an unknown person, 28% saw an archetypal face, such as an old woman, a child, or portrait of an ancestor, 18% saw an animal face, such as a cat, pig, or lion, and 48% saw like fantastical or monstrous beings.

SPEAKER_02 10:40

48%.

SPEAKER_01 10:41

48% saw monstrous beings, and then 66% saw their own faces change.

Psychology Of Mirrors And The Strange Face Illusion

SPEAKER_02 10:47

Yeah. Oh, okay. Quick side tangent. Yes. Greg and Dana Newkirk. Mm-hmm. Who are the hellier people. Yes. They I'm thinking if this is in the unbinding or if it's just they put out so much content. But somewhere. It might be from actually, you know what I think it was. I we Alan and I saw their live show last October. And I think this was a segment of their live show. For anyone who doesn't know, Greg and Dana Newkirk are a sort of paranormal adjacent couple that have like a traveling library. It's like the haunted museum or haunted object museum or something. And they would go to different conventions and things and bring their items and people would interact with them. One of the items that they have is this dark mirror. I forget. That might be what they call it, something like that. And they play at their live show clips of people looking into the mirror and reacting.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:36

And it's like the like skeptics, and you see this footage of like people coming up and like challenging them, and then they're like, look in the mirror. And yeah. And they are horrified. It's like they put a GoPro on it and they watch them. And it's and I believe that a lot of it, I don't know what I believe, right? Sure. Because I'm more open to this than you maybe perhaps are. But because there's something about mirrors that freak me out. You know, and I'm home alone, I really hate a mirror.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 12:01

But it's crazy to see these people who are really skeptical like react to this and and they're looking at it for not that long.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:07

And they all see things that are really similar, like fires around them, like their face distorting. And I think some percentage of it, at least at a minimum, is this, right?

SPEAKER_01 12:17

Yeah. I think there's also something to be said of uh the human brain being told you're gonna see something weird. Yeah. And then preparing to see something weird. Yeah. Um, but yeah, so it isn't believed that these results are supernatural, of course. Sorry, but the of course to any believers out there. She's a skeptic people. You can only have one skeptic and one believer on your show at all times. That's right. It's gotta be the bounds. But rather a garbled interpretation of messages in their brain after trying to focus on something in dim light. And I've actually done this before. If you're not too scared, I would recommend looking at a mirror for a while and dim lighting, and you will see some weird things. Abby shaking her head.

SPEAKER_02 12:51

I'm onto it. What did you see, Kate?

SPEAKER_01 12:53

It's not necessarily something scary, but your face does begin to look weird. And I would say it looks because of the shadows, and because I would say looking in the mirror for too long anyway alters your face, it just doesn't look like your face anymore. In my opinion. For what happened with me, because like I read about this and I tried it. I didn't do it for 10 minutes because she super has the time. Um, but I looked at my face in the mirror and between the shadows, I did uh I had like a little candle in my bathroom. Yeah. I turned the lights off and I had a candle. And between the shadows and just staring too intently, it's like when you say a word so much it doesn't sound like a word. It's like you stare at your face and you're focusing on different aspects of it at different times, and it just kind of looks to me, it looked almost like meltier than normal. Like just like slightly off. And it is an uncanny valley thing, and I think we'll talk about that a lot this episode is this is very uncanny valley. Between your eyes trying to become accustomed to the low lighting and seeing things in the low right lighting, and then just the almost subconscious idea that something weird is going to appear in the mirror. Like there's kind of that thing where you open a mirror at the bathroom. If you have like a cabinet mirror and you close it, you always expect something to be right behind you because like it's a part of your world you're not normally seeing. So when you study it for so long, it becomes a little iffy. And your your brain to me, it's scarier that your brain can't keep track of things more than it's scary that something could be in the mirror. Like the idea that your brain can miscommunicate with your eyes so much that you start seeing something that's not there is scarier to me than a supernatural being in the mirror.

SPEAKER_02 14:21

Yeah, totally. That makes a ton of sense.

SPEAKER_01 14:24

But this is also this kind of uh experiment could also explain why so many people believe they see demons in the mirror. Right. Um, because just your brain is trying to make sense of the dark and a part of a world that it can't fully it's seeing through something else.

SPEAKER_02 14:37

Okay, this is also a good time to mention the Toxler effect, which is sort of just giving a name to what you're talking about, Gate. So seeing something in the mirror or seeing some kind of distortion in the mirror is a very known thing that's been studied to your point. It's called the Toxler effect or Toxler's fading. And in short, the what's happening in your brain is that when you're focusing your eyes on a particular point, right? Because you can only, when you're so close to a thing, look so closely to it, the rest of the image starts to fade away. And this is, and to your point about being sort of melty. Yes. This is an illusion caused by the brain, which is ignoring like unchanging static imagery. So you're not moving, you're staring at, you know, the mirror, you're static, everything around you in this frame is static. And so your brain is like conserving attention, yeah, and it's just looking at the eyes or whatever you're focusing on, and everything else starts to fade.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

Yeah, absolutely. And I think also the reason mine was a little more melty is because I did it by candlelight. So the candle light flickering also. I think it was fun. I think if you're not too scared, I not you. If it's the listener, someone else. Abby is too scared. I'm too scared. Not interested. Someone else is interested, it's an interesting effect on your brain, and the it's I don't know, it's a little fun. It's a little optical illusion.

Toxler Effect And The Uncanny

SPEAKER_02 15:51

Yeah, a little science experiment in your bathroom. Laken's mirror stage is also worth mentioning. In short, it's the moment when a child recognizes itself in a mirror for the first time. Lackan reinterprets Freud's work to develop his theory on mirror stage. I'm going to quote here from the Hawaii.edu article. Quote, drawing on work in physiology and animal psychology, Laken proposes that human infants pass through a stage in which an external image of the body, reflected in a mirror or represented to the infant through the mother or primary caregiver, produces the psychic response that gives rise to the mental representation of an eye. The infant identifies with the image, which serves as a gasalt of the infant's emerging perceptions of selfhood. But because the image of a unified body does not correspond with the underdeveloped infant's physical vulnerability and weakness, this image is established as an ideal eye, towards which the subject will perpetually strive throughout his or her life. For Lacken, the mirror stage establishes the ego as fundamentally dependent upon external objects on an other. End quote.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 16:55

Yeah, I think it is interesting if mirrors are so important for us, sort of like identifying ourselves in our space and our ego and all this stuff in the world, only in context to like the other versus the self. You know, it's it's an interesting, important concept.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

Well, there's there's currently a lot of discourse online with a terrible sentence, but there's currently a lot of discourse online about the fact that insecurity and just self-image is at such like a forefront of our culture right now. And one of the reasons for that is because some people believe we were never supposed to see ourselves this much. Between mirrors and telephones and cameras, we have a constant access to what we look like. So we are constantly fixated on that. And it's also a version of ourselves that like is altered. A mirror version of yourself is altered. The camera, what you look like in the camera is altered. I read once online that said if you were to pass yourself on the street, you may not recognize yourself because you've never actually seen what you look like. You've only seen a reflected back version of you. You wouldn't be able to recognize the traits that someone else would.

SPEAKER_00 17:56

Right.

SPEAKER_01 17:57

But I do think that while it is important to be able to identify yourself and see that, there is something to be said for too much of it. That there is like it does. It plays into kind of separating yourself from who you actually are and what you look like.

Mirror Stage And Modern Self-Image

SPEAKER_02 18:12

Yeah. I mean, even just think about how recent, in addition to phones and mirrors, like photography and videography is like the fact that you can see this rendering of yourself. Yeah, it's yeah, it and it's there is an overexposure, I think, of yes, consuming, also just consuming content about other people and seeing other people and holding yourself to certain standards, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:35

And an altered version of other people.

SPEAKER_02 18:36

Yes, as well. Totally, totally.

Covering Mirrors In Death And Mourning

SPEAKER_01 18:38

Um, but moving on to more spiritualness with mirrors. Finally. The first thing I want to talk about is something that I think is said in this common knowledge, but the reasoning behind it may not be, uh, is covering mirrors when someone dies. I actually tried to find a lot of origin on this, and it is a little it's one of those things another time where I read one superstition where someone was I literally was a quote from someone being like, I don't know, but my family does it, and I'm not gonna take the chance. But there are many superstitions that lead to mirrors being covered after death in various cultures. Some have no distinct origin as to why they're thought. One of the reasons is that it is believed that ghosts can be caught in mirrors, possibly in relation, I think, to the Roman myth that souls can be trapped in mirrors. So if you are nothing but a soul, then you could be trapped in mirrors. I also saw one, and this I think was more of a personal theory on someone that a ghost would see themselves in their ghostly form and instead of moving on would get so fixated on what they look like, they would then physically become a ghostly form and trapped like that. But I think that was just someone's personal theory. It's also believed that whoever looks in the mirror after a death in the home will die themselves. That I could not find an origin on, but that is a superstition in some cultures. In Judaism, the practice of covering mirrors is not just about ghosts, it's also about a display of humility. Same with dressing in black, it is to take away some of the vanity of yourself and place it more on the dead. There's also a custom of covering mirrors when praying, because one should not pray in front of a mirror because it could either distract you or it appear that you were bowing to yourself. So in that case, it's less about the Superstitiousness of a ghost getting caught in the mirror and more about paying respect to the dead by not taking part in the vanity of mirrors. Right.

SPEAKER_02 20:08

Exactly. And there's two cultures that I could find that particularly had different versions of this. So Victorian England, mirrors were covered to prevent the soul of the dead from becoming trapped, like you just said. And the other is Japanese culture, where you would cover mirrors while mourning to keep the soul from becoming like distracted, but also more so like tempted. Yeah. Like they want the soul to settle. And it was like keeping them active instead of letting it sort of settle into the afterlife.

SPEAKER_01 20:35

Yeah. And I think it's it's also something to be said about like I'm curious if maybe if it has something to do with no longer being an earthly form and mirrors being such an earthly thing.

SPEAKER_02 20:44

Yeah. I don't know if that's true.

SPEAKER_01 20:45

That's just like a theory, maybe that like mirrors are so human that if you're a soul, you may not want them to be distracted by something like that. Like their appearance. I assume if you're a ghost, your appearance should not matter anymore. Right, right. Yeah, exactly. Moving on to some rituals done with mirrors, there is something known as scrying, which is also known as seeing or peeping. And it is the act of using a reflective medium, such as a crystal ball, a mirror, or a pool of water to receive prophecies and visions. So if you've ever been to a fortune teller using a crystal ball, they could just as easily be using a mirror. It is the same thing. It is essentially the same practice. Well, well. At times.

SPEAKER_02 21:18

Yes. It could be. There's like some very there's some nuance there.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

Yes. Well, catropacy is when it's used a mirror specifically. Yes. Reflective services are often used in the broader idea, is because it is supposed to reduce mental clutter. And some of these practices stem from the fact that mirrors show what was previously left hidden or unseen, which is in their belief one way of stepping even further into what is not seen. So like divination. So if it could reveal what we have not seen, like our faces or the world behind us when we're facing a certain direction, who's to say it could not reveal more unknowns of the world that we cannot see with our eyes?

SPEAKER_00 21:52

Right.

SPEAKER_01 21:52

This practice was also used to read the stars or catch the light of the moon. Mirrors were pointed at the night sky, and the reflection was used to try and reveal the future. So bringing almost the stars closer to you and the moonlight closer to you. That's beautiful. And then I have a quote from an article, uh, The Ugly History of Beautiful Things. Perhaps this is why mirrors have long been associated with magic. If they can let you see something you normally can't yourself, maybe they can permit you to see other things beyond your vision, spirits perhaps, or ghosts, or maybe even visions of the future. So just the idea that a mirror is more than just reflecting back at you, but it is truly opening your eyes to a part of the world that you could not see without it. I love that so much. It's very poetic, I feel like.

SPEAKER_02 22:30

To shift gears slightly. Okay, have you heard of the Three Kings ritual?

SPEAKER_01 22:34

It sounds vaguely familiar, but I don't know. Please enlighten me.

Scrying, Divination, And Seeing The Unseen

SPEAKER_02 22:37

So Three Kings is a ritual similar to like a Bloody Mary kind of thing. It's like this midnight ritual idea. But it's I spent a long I've spent many days of my life, many hours of my life, reading Reddit, Reddit posts about different like summoning rituals, like Bloody Mary type rituals, border on like creepypasta, right? But but generally different people trying these rituals and then reporting back. There's a subreddit called the Three Kings, or I think it's just Three Kings subreddit, and it's sort of an archive of all of these different types of rituals and people's experiences with them, which again, even as someone who like goes into it knowing they're like creepypasta or could be, it's a really fun way to spend like a rainy afternoon.

SPEAKER_03 23:20

Yeah, yeah.

Rituals, Reddit Lore, And Optical Tricks

SPEAKER_02 23:21

But I want to talk about three kings a little bit because it's one that has always been on my mind, but it's also one that is particularly tied to mirrors. So there's all these rules to how it's supposed to work, right? You're supposed to set up your space, which I think could be like a basement or a garage, spare room in a certain way with chairs, it's you know, in certain uh configurations, and you're supposed to like go nap and then come back. There's all this like very like highly specific rule, uh, rule like rule building around how you pull it off. But you set up your space. There's like a main chair and two side chairs. The point of the ritual is like you go in and you are meant to be one king and you're summoning the other two kings that will sit in these chairs. There's a mirror set up for you to see the reflection of those chairs. Okay. So again, it's all like the angles of the room, it all depends on you know, there's all these highly specific directions. There's like candle flickering, there's a bucket of water, there's like all this stuff that's going on. But when you read these accounts on Reddit, it's so scary. Um, like, and even just as like creepypasta, they're very effective, right? Because there's like this one sort of constraint, which is this one ritual, and people can like, you know, add things, whether or not they're real, who knows? But I do believe some people try to do this. The idea is if you're successful at summoning, you know, these other it's almost it feels like in some ways, like sort of like hereditary, right? Or it's like you're you're summoning Pyman, you're not, but like two specific named kind of like kings or entities, and then you're supposed to be able to see them in the reflection. I believe what ends up happening is like the placement of the candle and how the chairs and the mirror is configured, you're seeing like this uncanny reflection of yourself. Sure, right? Like a shadow. Yeah, and there's like a fan, there's like all this shit that's happening. So just one big optical illusion. Right, but like that's also the part about it that's really cool. It's like whoever figured out how to create this optical illusion and sold it on the internet as like this terrifying story. This terrifying trope like Bloody Mary, it's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01 25:16

Yeah, and like building off of that a little bit and building off what you said before about um the uh couple that has the mirror that makes people go insane. I while researching rituals with mirrors, I came across the Legosi mirror. Okay, I don't know anything about this, which is a mirror that hangs in Zack Baggins of Ghost Adventures fame.

SPEAKER_02 25:35

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 25:35

Already off to a rough star. Yeah. He has a museum of haunted objects. Yeah. And the Legosi mirror hangs in it. And according to a couple of sources that have been in the museum, allegedly during the tour, they say that Bel Legosi used this mirror as like a scrying tool to speak to his dead wife. Yeah. Legosi was obsessed with the occult and that he used this mirror. And it is said that after Lagosi passed, the mirror was owned by several people who died while it was in their possession. When touring the museum, the guests, before they look in the mirror, are asked to sign waivers before they look in because people have gotten sick or gone crazy, blah, blah, blah. I will say that while reading about this, I found one guy who went on the tour and he said after he went on the tour, he looked this up. It would appear that none of Legosi's wives died while he was married to them, and that he has little to no connection to the occult that is reported. Yeah. But this mirror is in Zach Baggin's museum. Sure. So I don't know where they made up the story about Legosi and all of that, but it is interesting that superstitions exist, like similar to what you said with the Reddit thing, where it turned out to be an optical illusion. Superstitions exist and the fear of mirrors exists so much that you could make up a story for a mirror, and a mirror is an object that would appear to be haunted. Like you could so easily believe a mirror is haunted, or that you will see something crazy in the mirror because of the like subconscious aversion to it.

SPEAKER_02 26:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:48

So I think it's interesting this story is evidently not true, but the fact that it would be so quick to believe it because of a fear of mirrors.

Haunted Objects And The Lugosi Mirror Debate

SPEAKER_02 26:58

Yeah. And like the more I think about it as we talk through it, like I have a rule where I will not look in a mirror at night.

SPEAKER_01 27:05

At all? No. Do you just like avoid it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:08

Like when I go to the bathroom at night, like in the dark, not at night, I guess, in the dark. So like if the lights are off and I go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, I will not look in the mirror. I will not make eye contact with myself. Now, there's a few reasons for this. One of them is like I played a lot too much Bloody Mary as a kid. Sure. Another one, though, like even what you're describing, the melting face or whatever, even if I know logically, scientifically, that's like a an illusion, knowing myself, being self-aware of my like really um gullible and vulnerable, you know, state when it comes to the paranormal, I just feel like that's the kind of thing that's gonna stick with me. And it feels almost like an opening or an invitation. Like to look at yourself in a mirror at night feels like you're tempting something.

SPEAKER_01 27:51

Well, do you think that since you played so much Buddy Mary when you were a kid and nothing happened, that she's like a little late on the other thing? We don't know that nothing happened.

SPEAKER_02 27:57

We don't know that nothing happened.

SPEAKER_01 27:59

Well, she didn't come and kill you. Maybe. Or maybe I'm a maybe she's running, she's running a little behind. Yeah. And that if you look at yourself at night, she's gonna appear and be like, oh shit, I forgot about you.

SPEAKER_02 28:09

No, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 28:09

I don't know that nothing happened.

SPEAKER_02 28:11

That's fair. We know that nothing happened.

SPEAKER_01 28:13

I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 28:14

I don't know that we have proof of that.

SPEAKER_01 28:15

Um, well, another thing before we get more into Bloody Mary is something very interesting I found, which was while scrounging the web for little things on mirrors, I came across a blog written by uh someone claiming to be an exorcist.

SPEAKER_02 28:28

Mm-hmm. Love those.

Exorcism Anecdotes And Mirrors As Truth

SPEAKER_01 28:30

And his name is Monsieur Steven Rossetti. Okay. And he claimed that during an exorcism he was performing, a mirror happened to be present in the room, and the possessed person caught a glimpse of themselves and the demon screamed at the sight, asking for it to be removed from the room. I have a quote from the exorcist that says, When possessing a human being, demons experience some of the physical attributes of the energemen, which quick note is a possessed person. Even though they do not have a physical body, it seems that when they are possessing a human being and looking in the mirror, they see a glimpse of their horrible self. As I sometimes say to the demons, God made you beautiful and now look at what you have become. Uh he also says that mirrors are not often used in exorcisms, but he thinks it would be a handy tool.

SPEAKER_02 29:11

I have a deep here's here's one of those things in life. Exorcisms. Exorcisms bullshit and exists, right? From the Catholic and Christianity churches. Yes. But it's one of those things that like, and maybe this is unique to me, so I'll just share from my experience. But growing up as someone who's like loose, like in a loosely Christian household, but really someone who grew up without like you know, didn't go to church every week, didn't you know, again, celebrated Christmas, whatever. Yeah. But wasn't like a an expert on the Bible or any of these things. To me, the fact that exorcisms exist, yeah, which is horrible, but feels supernatural. And and not to give like credit, I I I think that they are abusive. I have friends who have who are subjected to exorcisms for for reasons they should not have been, right? I think they're horrible. It's like spooky of the church, I feel like to believe enough. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:02

They have a whole like the Vatican has a whole like group of people who go and determine whether something is a miracle or is required of an exorcist. Like they have a whole it's so supernatural of the church. Yes. Well, I mean in a religion. Yes, I was gonna say, I don't want to go too far into religion. Like the entire basis of religion is supernatural. But going back to the mirror thing, I think it's an interesting thing. And what I said before, again, this is my own opinion, and I don't know if there's theories on this, but the idea that mirrors are something of the human realm that don't exist anywhere else. So the idea of a demon possessing a person and seeing either their evil self or themselves as a person being so freaky to them is kind of interesting and also funny, but just the catching a glimpse of evil, and it's another thing with like mirrors revealing the truth. Right. Like that is what is like you're not able to see the truth of your face. You're not e able to see the truth of like what you're doing at the moment, and the mirror is what is really telling you the truth. So I think it's interesting to suggest that like a possessed person seeing the truth of their actions or of their evil would freak it out.

SPEAKER_02 31:05

Right. It also goes back to like some of those ancient beliefs we talked about at the beginning of the episode. It looks different in a mirror, right? The mirror, the mirror captures it in a way that the human eye can't. Yes.

Bloody Mary Origins And Variations

SPEAKER_00 31:15

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 31:17

All right, let's talk about Bloody Mary.

SPEAKER_00 31:18

Let's do it.

SPEAKER_02 31:19

I know we did a whole series on Bloody Mary, I think two years ago. But again, the we can't talk about the intersection, in my opinion, of horror and mirrors without talking about Bloody Mary. Did you practice Bloody Mary or things like this when you were growing up?

SPEAKER_01 31:33

Of course I did.

SPEAKER_02 31:34

You did.

SPEAKER_01 31:34

And I would like to know that you're sitting right next to a mirror and you've said it several times.

SPEAKER_02 31:38

I know. I know. This is very brave of you. Not staring at myself though.

SPEAKER_01 31:42

I did, yes, I did Bloody Mary a lot as a child because of course you do. Did you freak yourself out? Or were you always a little skeptic? I was always a little skeptic. I was always the one that was like scaring people of playing the game, like knocking on the door, doing stuff like that. Um, but there is still obviously as a child, and even to this day, even though I am a skeptic, there is almost like a primal fear when you're doing things like this where you're like, I truly, truly don't believe it, but especially when I was little, like, yeah, there's a little bit of fear of like what if something happened? Like, what if this but no, for the most part, it was just for fun. Um, and I like to watching my friends get scared because I was a little sociopath.

SPEAKER_02 32:18

Yeah, very self-aware. So you can listen to episode 129 on our sort of very extensive deep dive into this, but just to kind of visit it at a high level. Bloody Mary, for those who are not aware, is a very popular sleepover game. And at least in parts of the US, I think there's there's I know there's other versions of this globally that are similar but different, right? The instructions are simple. You walk into a bathroom, sometimes in complete darkness, sometimes with a candle or two candles burning. You look into the mirror and you say her name three times. Some variations say 13 times. Again, to your point earlier, who has the time? But that's that's out there. If you're successful, your prize is to witness a bloody witch. Best case scenario, right? It's just seeing her. It's just seeing her. Worst case scenario, you wake up with like scratches all over your body the next day, other stuff. I remember, I have a memory. My sister's gonna like text me after she listens to this and tell me I made it up, which happens constantly in my household. But I have a memory of doing this with my sister at my cousin's house, and then the next day her showing me scrape scratch like scratches all over herself. She, I I really believe this happened, but I also feel like it could have been She scratched herself. She got no, she got scratched by a cat or something, and you know, whatever. So I would love to hear what happened there, Becky. But still, we we tried over and over again, right, as kids to convert Bloody Mary. There are several theories to the origins of this ritual, which is interesting because this is really tied to folklore in a way that not all of these like sleepover games are. So the biggest theory is, of course, that Bloody Mary can be traced back to the violence of Queen Mary I of England. Another theory is Elizabeth Bathory, who is one of my favorite topics in history. We've talked about quite a bit on this podcast.

SPEAKER_00 34:05

Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_02 34:06

She's also known as the Blood Countess, and she was accused essentially of killing tons of like virgin children in order to bathe in their blood and stay forever yet.

SPEAKER_01 34:14

I did a report on this in middle school.

Mirrors In Film: Portals And Hauntings

SPEAKER_02 34:16

Yeah. There's a a few movies about it. I have a whole article on the website if anyone wants to. Maybe maybe I'll uh maybe I'll record a solo episode on that because I I really like that topic. And the third is Mary Worth. And so Mary Worth is a bit of an ambiguous historic figure. Some versions of folklore identify her as a woman who killed enslaved people as they tried to escape to freedom. Other versions claim that she was burned at the stake during witch trials. So she's sort of this like vague, generally evil like character in folklore. But those are like the three different people that might have come together to create Bloody Mary, or, you know, just generally inspired the ritual in different ways as it kind of snowballed into practice. Yes. One of the earliest depictions of mirrors acting as portals to another world in film dates back to 1950. Jean Cocteau's Orphe or Orpheus, which is, I believe, a French film. It's a surrealist film, and it's uh, as you might expect, a modern retelling of the Orpheus uh myth. Um, and it's about a poet who's obsessed with both his wife and the princess death. And so it's like a fun, like underworlds, mirror portal kind of a movie.

SPEAKER_00 35:29

Oh nice.

SPEAKER_02 35:29

Surrealist like cinematography. The Shining from 1980 is perhaps one of the most iconic and one of the simplest moments in film, like in when you think about the history of mirrors and horror, right? With red with the Red Rum reveal, which is such a huge and important moment in in the film.

SPEAKER_01 35:48

And then, yeah, generally there's a lot of mirrors and horror films. I find that there are two categories of mirrors. There's mirrors that are just another haunted object. They don't necessarily exist because they are mirrors, but they act as just another object that has been haunted, and mirrors are scary, so they work, or they're portals to another realm. So there's a movie called Mirror Mirror from 1990, which is about a young girl and her mother moving into a house that belonged to a young woman who killed her sister, and the young girl um finds a mirror there, like a fuller-length mirror, and decides to keep it from the previous owner. And the mirror starts kind of whispering things to her and giving her these abilities and kind of corrupting her. And um, there is like a like a creature or a it's almost like a different world behind the mirror. So in that movie, the mirror acts as both a portal to another realm, possibly, because it it kind of includes things coming out of the mirror and speaking through the mirror, but it also just exists as the mirror as a haunted object rather than the reflection having anything to do with it. Another one of the more famous horror movie mirrors is Oculus by Mike Flanagan from 2013. Um, and that movie, the mirror truly is just a haunted object. It being a mirror has very little to do with the abilities it has, other than the fact that I think it alters what they see sometimes, which could be suggestive of a different mirror world. There's scenes where they can't, it's showing them things that aren't really there. So I guess you could argue that that's help happening in that other world. There's also ghosts coming out of the mirror at a certain point. So you could argue that that's a portal. But I think in Mirror, Mirror and Oculus, the mirrors act more as just like if you like Annabelle almost is just a haunted doll. Like I think it's just like another thing that is haunted, little to do with the mirrors. Right, right. And then there's movies and uh mirror scenes in movies that have to do with like that take the reflection of the mirror into it. One popular one is the movie Look Away from 2018, in which a young girl starts seeing a different version of herself in the mirror and it starts speaking to her. And basically the plot is that she has almost the twin she absorbed in the womb still in her brain, and they swap places in the mirror, basically. But in that one, the mirror is a reflection of this other version of herself living in her. So in that they really take the reflection part into account there that it shows the truth of what's in her, something she could not see before, and that this version of her lives in the mirror world, and that is like almost trapped in her brain and is revealed through her reflection.

SPEAKER_02 38:11

Yeah, absolutely. Another really good example is Candyman from 1992. Similar to Bloody Mary, right? It's the way you summon Candyman is that you say his name three times into a mirror.

unknown 38:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:25

You know, it it's a very, it's it's a very it's like there's so many Bloody Mary variants, and who's to say which came first. There's Little Boy Blue, there's like a ton of them, and Candyman is uses a similar mechanic.

SPEAKER_01 38:37

Yeah, but the interesting thing with Candyman, I think, is where the origin of saying it into a mirror comes from, which is the original story of a woman who was killed in her home because the way her apartments were built uh behind her mirror was just there was no wall, it was just access to another apartment. So people kind of broke in through her mirror cabinet into her home. So it was almost like he was actually literally coming from the mirror because he was coming from the apartment next to hers through the mirror in the wall. So it came became like a bloody Mary thing, but it started as like a physical thing.

Doppelgangers, Us, And Identity

SPEAKER_02 39:05

Yeah. Did you see that like social media video from last year, two years ago? No. It was I'll find it. I'll try to link it in the description of this if I can find it. But it was like this chronicle of somebody who lived, I think, in a New York apartment building and was having issues with their bathroom or whatever. And like pulled the mirror down or somehow got behind the mirror, and it there was literally just like an open wall to another place building, even. Yeah. Yeah, that was crazy. I'll try to find everyone's like, this is Candyman in real life.

SPEAKER_01 39:34

Yeah, which is basically what it was. So it took this like physical representation of the mirror, and then the movie and the story became like him coming out of the mirror metaphysically. Yeah. Um, I think also the movie Us has a lot of mirror imagery in it. Um, and you guys did a great episode on doppelgangers recently, which kind of plays into this a little bit, but the beginning of the movie starts with a house of mirrors and then revealing that one of them is not a mirror and is in fact her doppelganger, and there's even scenes of like ballad. LA where they're in front of the mirror. And it's just this kind of again, it's just this uncanny feeling of the thing looking back at you in the mirror, the potential of it being alive.

SPEAKER_00 40:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:09

And I think it has to do with a lot of I, in my opinion, I personally am a huge I anthropomorphize everything. Like everything has feelings, everything has emotions. So it's like kind of hard not to do that, especially when you see a human-looking thing in the mirror, to give that almost separate entity something else. So us creates a literal entity, but it plays into the idea of another entity living in the mirror or something being there that is you but not you. Right. And they use mirrors as a way to introduce you into that world.

SPEAKER_02 40:38

Yeah, it's such a good point. I mean, yeah, and I love talking about us with this because like I don't know, it seems so obvious maybe to use mirrors in a movie about doppelgangers, but it's done in such a great way. Yeah. And you mentioned the beginning, but the fun house like mirror room in the beginning is so effective and terrifying. Yeah. Because of exactly what you're saying.

SPEAKER_01 40:58

Like just the idea that surrounded by these humanoid things and then one of them actually coming at you. Like the fear that the mirror is gonna reach out and grab you actually happening. Right. Um, because I think that's something every like little kid or drunk person or people on psychedelics think is gonna happen. Something's gonna reach out and grab you.

SPEAKER_02 41:17

Well, they say also if you're on psychedelics, don't look which I've never been, but don't look in the mirror and don't look at faces.

SPEAKER_01 41:24

Yeah.

Mirror Scenes: Poltergeist, The Craft, Black Swan

SPEAKER_02 41:24

Yeah. It's like don't look at anything. Because well, the point they Yeah, because it's gonna change.

SPEAKER_01 41:29

It's gonna change.

SPEAKER_02 41:30

That's something again, it's like the uncanny valley. That thing changing a face more so than a hand is gonna scare you.

SPEAKER_01 41:36

Yes, because there's the I don't know the actual scientific term for it, but the idea that people look for faces and everything. Like it's so easy to find faces and patterns or in cars and all that because the when you're a baby, you look for faces, like you learn what a face is. So the idea of a face changing is detrimental to our psyche a little bit. Like that thing that you're so familiar with is so ingrained, becoming distorted. Yeah, absolutely. Um, there's also a lot of movies that don't revolve around mirrors, but include a lot of horror movies love to include mirror scenes. Sure. And I have a couple of scenes that I think are speak to the mirror showing the truth or not the truth, like the idea that if you want to check if you have something on your face or something in your teeth, you look in the mirror. That's the truth. That's the truth to you, that's how you know. Um, so when that's altered, for example, in the movie Poltergeist, there is a scene where a man goes into the bathroom and sees his face melting and becoming grotesque and disturbing and all of that, and he runs out screaming. And you could argue, like, why don't you just like touch your like you know it's not happening, you don't feel it, you don't touch your face, all of that. But the only connection you have to what you look like is the mirror. Right. So if that's telling you something, something that you have been surrounded by your entire life that is just a flat piece of reflection, it changing would terrify you and where you think it's the truth. Right. Same with one of my favorite movies, The Craft. There is a scene at the end where um the friends who have become evil, spoiler alert, look into the mirror and see their spells done onto them times three is the point, is that they are they are reliv they are living the consequences of their spells times three on their own bodies. Right. So the mirror in that scene is revealing their evil truth, while they may be like beautiful on the outside, the mirror showing them like the truth of their inside or the truth of their actions. So I also really like when the mirror is used as like kind of symbolism to be the inside of you, like what you look like. So when the craft is like yeah, it's supposed to be like their inside, their their ugliness at that point. So I think it's just such a fundamental thing in your life that you trust that if it's telling you something, you believe it. So like the m just seeing yourself different in the mirror is so like scary. Like it's right.

SPEAKER_02 43:36

That's how you ground yourself in reality. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and when it's yeah, it's such a good point. You think to your point about the about poltergeist, like just touch your face. Yeah. But you almost don't have that, you don't have that instinct to fact-check it.

SPEAKER_01 43:48

Yeah, exactly. And it's like that's what's yeah, I'm supposed to that's my connection to me. That's the connection I have to what I look like. I can't see myself through other people's eyes. I can only see myself through my own, and this is my tool in that.

SPEAKER_02 44:01

And going back to earlier in the episode when we talked about when a baby first or a child can first identify itself in the mirror, it's like that's how you identify yourself in a like as a human versus the world. Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_01 44:14

So yeah, it's really interesting um to see movie scenes utilize that horror of not being able to trust what you see or blindly trusting what you see in the mirror.

SPEAKER_00 44:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:25

And it showing you something else.

SPEAKER_00 44:26

Right.

SPEAKER_01 44:27

Um, another example is in Black Swan, she starts seeing her actions change in the mirror. That's also you can just argue that that's her going into psychosis. But it's an interesting point that the mirror is used in that point to show that she's going crazy. Like the fact that the mirror plays such a big part in it. Well, one, when she sees writing on the mirror, and then two, when her actions change in the mirror, that's such a part of our reality. Yeah. That when that starts changing, you really know you're going crazy. That like that's when you can't trust anything around you. That like it and I think it's crazy though, like, think about how many reflective surfaces and how many mirrors are in our lives day to day and like what you would do without them.

Vampires, Souls, And Silver Backing

SPEAKER_02 45:02

Yeah, another really great doppelganger movie, too. Yes. Again, I I enjoy the doppelganger trope deeply, but also the mirror element is so fun. It's such a good tool for kind of showing us, right? The evolution in Black Swan. Totally. Any vampire movie belongs on this list because of the whole trope that vampires cannot see their reflection in the mirror. Now, two interesting things here. One, I looked into this mythology a little bit to be like, oh, when did this come up? What I could find was that the mythology was really mostly created and perpetuated by literature and film more so than mythology. One of the earliest examples is Brahm Stoker's Dracula from 1897. That's one of the first times in a thing, it's it says like a vampire's reflection isn't in a mirror. Yeah. And this evolution does make sense. Again, thinking back to some of the examples we talked about earlier, cultures who believe that mirrors reflect the soul. And so if a vampire doesn't have a soul, then it doesn't have a reflection. I'll also say Alan popped in briefly earlier to distract us and talked about how mirrors have silver something, nitrate backing. And so, of course, a vampire who is not totally into silver might have, you know, an aversion to that.

SPEAKER_01 46:20

And it would also beg the question, could you see a vampire in the modern day mirror if it is the silver thing? Right. Because modern day mirrors do not use that.

SPEAKER_02 46:27

Right. So you would think maybe.

SPEAKER_01 46:29

Though some literature and media and um Buffy the Vampire Slayer suggest you can't see reflection of any sort, not just mirrors. Like if you couldn't see it in the window, couldn't see it in water.

SPEAKER_02 46:37

Right. One of my favorite types of episodes, tracing back something that's so common and seemingly innocent, right? Like a mirror, all the way back, as far as we can think about in history. And what we find over and over again on this podcast is that when you do that, there's so much common ground between cultures and fears and superstitions when it comes to things. And it's really fun. Yeah. You know, mirrors in horror films make perfect sense. They can be used metaphorically, they can be used to hint at something scary happening with a small budget, right? They're a really great tool for that.

SPEAKER_03 47:09

Yeah.

Why Mirrors Work In Horror

SPEAKER_02 47:10

And they play off of the human fear of looking into a mirror at night, which I have. Mirrors also, on the other hand, symbolize truth, guilt, our hidden selves, our true selves. How many times in movies, right, are characters just looking at a reflection in order to show us something about that character? It's such an easy thing to put a character in front of a mirror, and they are looking at themselves, and you can tell they're going crazy, or you can tell that they're deeply sad, or they're X, Y, and Z because they're interacting with themselves in this way, which is impossible to get in any other way, right? It's the only way you can really interact with yourself, maybe through a phone now, but like generally, yeah. There is also horror in not being able to trust ourselves and sort of the uncanniness of looking at yourself being flipped in a mirror. You know, it's one of those things where like sometimes I wear a necklace that says a word, and how many times do I put it on backwards? Because you trust that the mirror is the right way. Yeah. And then you like you have to remind yourself, right, it's a mirror image. It's it's not verbatim of how I'm looking right now.

SPEAKER_01 48:10

Yeah. And it's also a question, I think, if you look in the mirror and see something different, is it you have to question, is the mirror lying to me, or are my eyes lying to me? Right. Because a a mirror is a static thing. So you have to be like, oh, am I seeing something wrong? Yeah. So it's kind of the only way our eyes can like one of the only ways that we see ourselves in a way that we can't like turn away and see it a different way. We have to focus on that in order to like see ourselves. We can't like turn around away from the mirror and be like, oh, let me look at it from a different perspective. No, you need the mirror. So it could be like your eyes are lying to you about what your reflection looks like.

SPEAKER_02 48:44

I also just think it's one of those things that I feel like maybe as humans in 2025 we are forgetting some of like the basic scientific principles of life. Like there's all these TikToks I keep watching. I hate to keep referencing TikTok, but it's where I'm spending my time. There's all these TikToks where people are like putting they're putting up like a towel or something to block their reflection, right? Yeah. But then if the camera goes far enough around, you can still see their reflection. Okay. And it's because of the way like the light is bending and ref you know, whatever. Yeah. To them, like their reflection is blocked.

SPEAKER_00 49:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:18

But you could still see their reflection in the mirror if you move where the camera is. And so it's this thing where people are like, it's witchcraft, it's magic. Like how and you're like, wait, it's 2025. Like, we could Google this, you know. But there is this, like, and I see it all the time, like this it's almost like people are in awe of mirrors and how they work, even though we've been using them for thousands and thousands and thousands of years.

SPEAKER_01 49:40

People are just so quick to trust that it works like a mirror without knowing anything about it. And like, I don't know anything about I don't know how mirrors work, I don't know how the science behind reflections, but you are just so quick to be like, okay, this is what I look like, this is what I use to see what I look like, and I'm not gonna question why or how it works.

SPEAKER_02 49:54

Yeah, totally. Okay, Kate, before we leave everybody, if you had to pick one moment in horror, one mirror moment, what what do you pick? Oh what's the ultimate mirror horror moment? Because I mean there's just thousands and thousands of them.

SPEAKER_01 50:11

I would have to go with either the poltergeist scene where he's dr like becoming completely altered, or and we didn't mention the scene because I don't think it has to do with like the reflection of mirrors, but the scene in Evil Dead where Ash's mirror devil comes out and attacks him. Yeah. That's less to do with like the actual reflection of the mirror, but I think it's a good use of it. Like showing like this. The payoff. Yeah, exactly. So I think those two are good because yeah, it's just so unexpected.

SPEAKER_02 50:39

I think my favorite is it I hate to be so basic, sure, is the shining. Like I just I remember for the first time when I saw that. I didn't know what it was gonna be. I had no idea, and I was like, sure. Like that's so clever. It like really scared me. Yeah. Yes, yeah, yeah.

Favorite Mirror Moments And Closing

SPEAKER_01 50:56

It was so good. Also, wait, sorry, before we go, not to go back to Twin Peaks, but there are some good mirror moments in Twin Peaks with, and I don't want to spoil Twin Peaks, the reveal of Laura Palmer's killer. They do some good mirror moments throughout the rest of that show. Very true. Um, and I would actually say the very last episode of Twin Peaks has a great mirror moment. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:19

Very true.

SPEAKER_01 51:20

Really changes a lot of what you think of certain things. It does. It does. It's so true.

SPEAKER_02 51:25

Yeah, I mean, I think one of uh just as a side note, one of the scariest things that can happen in in horror generally is like a very simple act of a character changing in a mirror. Yeah, not being what you think they are. Because yeah, there's just something so human and possible about it. Yeah, yeah. Well, Kate, as always, this was such a pleasure. Yes, it was so fun to talk to you about reflections and how horrifying mirrors can be, and to, you know, share some of my deep insecurities about bathroom mirrors at night. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. We'll talk to you guys soon. Yes, goodbye.