The Mirror

[fluffle9]

I tried something similar a few years ago with a couple of old dressing table mirrors. The culmulative reflections took on a distinct greenish quality like looking into a murky lake, no idea if that was down to an otherwise unaparent tinting in the glass, the imperfection of the silvering, or some sort of refractive index issue.

my bet's on tinting in the glass, as most glass does appear to be blueish if you look at it side-on.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

Mirrors and Morality

I suspect that one of the reasons we're sometimes skittish about mirrors is a suspicion that as our reflection in the glass is our physical reverse it may very well be our moral opposite as well. As we are goof and decent, or at least TRY to be, our reflection's feelings and desires may be quite in the OTHER direction.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

"In Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, there's a big thing made of never allowing yourself to be caught between two mirrors. The reason he gives is that the person walking away may not be the person you think it is - or something like that. Now, I don't know why and I can't find any reference, but this rang bells with me as soon as I read it. I can't find anything in any folklore that explains the resonance. Has anyone else heard of anything similar, outside Pratchett?"

There's a quite similar story by the late Fritz Lieber. A man has two framed mirrors hanging on opposite sides of a hallway in his apartment, reflecting each other, which creates a seemingly-endless tunnel or arcade of mirrors. One day the tenant spies something slowly moving towards him, one mirror-reflection every day. He eventually realizes that it's a woman he killed a couple or decades before (if memory serves, in that very hallway) and that she's apparently been coming for him one mirror-reflections per day over all that time.

 

[AmCuriousNJ]

An article from January 2019: "A Closer Look at the Bela Lugosi 'Haunted' Mirror"
https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/a_closer_look_at_the_bela_lugosi_haunted_mirror/
(Though some people at this forum might be 'put off' by the article being written for a skeptical publication, the writer seems to do a fairly even-handed job of investigating this reportedly 'haunted' mirror.)

Edited to add that this article mentions Fortean Times: to quote the article: "...the work of British folklorist David Clarke in the May 2008 issue of Fortean Times".