If you do play this game and happen to see a being in one of the mirrors, which are you supposed to only gaze at indirectly? Yup, more Caputo Effect. You Can Access A Creepy Mirror World Whenever You WantĪ new twist on the classic mirror game, this Reddit-popularized rite involves setting up candles, a fan, mirrors, three chairs - one that you sit in and two that you place mirrors upon - and then engaging in a series of ritual actions that are supposed to allow spirits or creatures of some sort to take up residence in the mirrors, occupying the roles of "queen" and "fool," and answering your questions. When the effect was studied in a lab by placing subjects in front of a darkened mirror for several minutes, they began to think they saw the image of a different face in it - when in reality, they were seeing their own reflection, with added details created by their minds.Īlso, no matter what, it's definitely not Queen Mary I coming for you through your bathroom mirror - she got that name due to her taste for putting Protestants to death while trying to re-establish Catholicism as the reigning religion in 16th century England, not her taste for mauling tweens who are bored because they can't get a good phone signal at their parents' vacation cabin. Why was he in the mirror? Were he and Bloody Mary having a thing? We'll never know.Īnd what if you do actually see something in the mirror while you're tromping around in the dark, invoking a deceased British royal? Odds are that you're simply experiencing the Caputo Effect, a psychological effect that leads us to react to sensory deprivation with imagination. ![]() However, folklorists locate the roots of this story not in an actual ghost who liked to victimize people through the looking glass, but in an older ritual where young women chanted a special incantation in front of a darkened mirror in order to try and get a look at their future husband. I'm being sassy right now, but I'm sure childhood games of "Bloody Mary" are at the root of my mirror fears - and I'm not the only one this myth is the basis of the still-good 1992 horror movie Candyman. In all versions, when you're done with the ritual, a ghoulish woman is supposed to lunge out of the mirror and, I don't know, ghoul around at you? In some versions, the woman you're invoking is a murderer in others, a demon and in yet other versions, Mary I of England, who was nicknamed "Bloody Mary" during her reign. ![]() In some versions, you do it in complete darkness in others, you clutch a candle or flashlight. If you've been to a slumber party (or, at least, a slumber party held before the advent of Netflix), then you're familiar with the game "Bloody Mary." Game players enter a darkened room, and chant some variation of the phrase "Bloody Mary" into a mirror a varying amount of times (in my neck of the woods, the go-to incantation was "Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, show your face" three times, but the legend can call for up to 13 repetitions of the phrase). So it makes some sense that our culture has so many enduring legends about mirrors, and that said legends are often creepy as, well, a mirror in a dark room. But ghosts aren't the end of it - mirrors play a role in many myths as a place where reality and the supernatural meet. My anxiety around a poorly-lit mirror would seem to imply that I actually suffer from a case of spectrophobia, the fear of ghosts - which is actually often associated with mirrors, because the items hold a lot of supernatural baggage for many of us. But I'm a journalist, and I have a duty to report the facts, even when the facts are that I am a gigantic adult baby. ![]() Why am I so freaked out by darkened mirrors? Do I think that some vengeful, Ring-style ghost is going to come out of said mirror and get me? Or do I think I am going to accidentally look into a mirror and see that a vengeful, Ring-style ghost is already here, hanging around behind me and waiting for just the right moment to dramatically eat my brain-meats? I couldn't really say all I can tell you is that I have actually moved a motel bed in order to not sleep next to a mirror. But put me in a darkened room with a mirror and I become, well, basically an idiot. ![]() I mean, I don't have catoptrophobia or eisoptrophobia, which are the actual medical terms for straight-up fear of mirrors I've been known to waste massive amounts of time using mirrors to do respectable, adult things, like trying to straighten my bangs. I am theoretically a competent adult woman - a human being who holds down a job, dutifully gets her fire extinguishers refilled each year, and sort of knows her credit score - but I have always been kind of scared of mirrors.
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