Is there a connection to the paranormal and mirrors?
Two of the most popular beliefs/folk tales/legends concerning mirrors and their connection to the paranormal are:
1. Some people believe in the practice of covering mirrors in a house when someone dies. The belief is all types of evil spirits and demons come to visit a family in mourning. When a soul leaves this world, it leaves a void, an emptiness that is prone to be filled by dark forces. This is because wherever there is a vacuum, negativity can creep in. And so the house of mourning, the place where the loss is felt the most, is a magnet for evil spirits.
2. The Devil's box is a box with 6 mirrors all identical size, all facing each other forming a cube.. with the mirrors facing inwards. The reflective properties supposedly create a perpetual and focused feedback loop of paranormal energy that bounces off the mirrors surface. The idea is that when that energy or spirit goes inside the mirrored box the energy can becomes trapped in an endless loop. Either that or its simply get lost within the infinite reflections of its own image. Older Wiccan traditions are purported to having used such devices.
Some of you may be familiar with the popular 200-year-old Myrtles Plantation mirror haunting. I checked it out myself. You can check out pictures of this mirror on the internet. There are some peculiar markings on this old mirror. Are they handprints belonging to the poisoned Sara Woodruff & her 2 children? My research indicates this story not to be true. One might even be inclined to see claw marks or even a face as suggested. Might it be pareidolia? One has to question if there is any solid evidence to back these claims or is it just hype to drum up business!
From a personal experience of mine I can relate a mirror-related incident at a location where no such claims about a mirror and the paranormal have been entertained. The Old Homestead House Museum in Cripple Creek, CO. was a high-end brothel during the Gold Rush late 1890's. While just being a regular tourist in this museum, a story was told of this particular mirror being one of the few items that was saved when fire devastated almost the entire town in 1898. I took several pictures of this mirror when I was alone in this particular room. On one of my pictures, an anomaly caught my attention and when zoomed in reveals a "face". This face is too obvious to be pareidolia and I remind you that no one was standing in front of the mirror or in the room when I took the picture! That very picture accompanies this article. I have been trying to research old library records to find a match but I have had no luck so far. It is definitely not one of the former madams. This lack of confirmation to a known living person of the past however is the kind of evidence that will be needed to lend credibility to my claim.
Most older mirrors are two-layered consisting of a transparent glass layer over a silver metal coating back. The definition of visible light: electromagnetic radiation within a range of wavelengths that we have the ability to see with our eyes. A basic explanation for Electromagnetic radiation interaction with matter is described generally in three ways: (1) it is absorbed by an object (2) it is reflected by an object (3) it can pass through an object. This principle applied for every wavelength of light and it's interaction is dependent on the light wavelength and the object material.
What causes a silver-backed mirror reflection? The scientific generic explanation is that silver atoms and their electrons are not densely packed. The Electrons are what carry electricity. They interact with visible light waves which cause the electrons at the surface of the silver to move and thus cause the incoming light waves to reflect back. When infrared light frequencies are used with a silver-backed mirror, electrons can match the speed of the slower infrared frequencies and reflect them back, however with some higher ultraviolet light frequencies, the electrons pass through the mirror. Glass is a material that hardly affects the wave and instead absorbs it (allows it to pass through). So, if you have a mirror of silver-backed glass, you now have the feasibility of the hypothesis of spirit communication that is argued by some to exist. If a silver-backed mirror is indeed a type of doorway or portal, it would take the higher ultraviolet range of frequency to accomplish that. This idea makes for some interesting future testing to establish an actual theory.
Now I want to relate to one of my paranormal investigative techniques not used by many to my knowledge concerning mirrors.. It involves using a laser reflection off and captured from, a mirror in a unique attempt to capture EVPs.
The Sound Cloud EVP included in this article is mine from a previous paranormal investigation I had conducted. Using a laser pointed at an angle at an antique mirror over 100 years old at a client's home, the receivor of the laser reflection was able to pick up a sound wave (yes, light can carry sound) of a young girl saying "what is" followed by a few more syllables that are not intelligible. Although not conclusive, my best guess is the voice is saying "what is that thing," of course, referring to a device or its effectiveness that the entity may not have encountered before. It is as if she was looking out from inside the mirror. The mirror, being an antique was also one with a silver metal back coating. Unknown to me at the time, but later revealed in an interview with an regular visitor to the home (boyfriend of one of the daughters) who had no knowledge of my EVP, that while in the back yard, someone looking out an upstairs window had captured his attention. For a moment, he had seen what he thought to be a young girl standing there who then vanished from view.
Here is the Soundcloud link:
https://soundcloud.com/moon-joey/the-child-spirit-in-the-mirror
While all of this information is fascinating, it leaves us with no definitive proof of the relation between the paranormal and mirrors, however...
the next time you are in an antique store or visiting Grandma and Grandpa, try to remember that you yourself may not be the only thing visible in the mirror!
- MoonJoey
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