HAUNTED WIRRAL: The heart-shaped mirror

In this latest story, Tom tells the spooky tale of the heart-shaped mirror...

There are more to mirrors than meets the eye.

They have a long history of being used for scrying (gazing into a mirror, crystal or reflective surface to obtain visions of the future or past), and they have always been regarded as windows to the Devil because vanity, being a form of pride, is classed as one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

There are many demons associated with mirrors, the most powerful one being Lilith, a sinister female who was originally Adam’s wife, but she was replaced with Eve because she refused to lay under Adam, and ended up roaming the night.

Lilith is said by the occultists to often enter this particular reality via the looking glass, especially in the bedrooms of lovers when she attempts to possess the female so she can drive her to kill her partner.

In Ancient Rome, the Speculari were a group of special priests who employed Catoptromancy – divination by mirrors – to heal the sick, see the future, and detect criminals, and the great prophet Nostradamus looked into the future by gazing into the reflective surface of black-ink infused water in a brass bowl.

Many years ago when I lived in Wavertree, I bought a long green-tinted mirror from an occultist.

It was bordered by golden leaves, and every person who visited me would be drawn to the mirror, as if they were hypnotised by it.

A plumber summoned to fix a pipe went straight to the mirror and kept adjusting his hair and admiring himself until I reminded him of the job at hand, and one unbearable summer I dozed off one afternoon, then awoke to witness a man climbing through the open window into the room.

He passed a portable colour TV, a laptop, and went straight to the mirror, and although I was sitting less than twelve feet away, he did not see me.

I coughed.

He didn’t react, but took the mirror from the wall and left the way he had come with the beguiling looking glass.

In 2009, a 28-year-old woman named Amy moved into a flat on Kings Mount, Prenton.

It was the first time Amy had had a place of her own and her 69-year-old Auntie Rhea helped her to do it up, as she was very artistic and something of a hippie with quite a bohemian lifestyle.

When the walls had been painted and a psychedelic mandala rug had been laid out, Auntie Rhea kindly gave her niece a huge heart-shaped mirror that had been found in the attic of Rhea’s late friend six months ago.

The mirror was mounted over the fireplace, and then the upcycled furniture was put in place and the flat started to feel like a home.

Amy was always getting tattoos, and on the evening of the flat-warming party she was looking in the mirror at the raw tattoo of her astrological sign – Libra – on her right shoulder, when she saw something strange.

Aunt Rhea looked very young in the heart-shaped mirror; her hair was dark instead of snowy-white, and she did not have a wrinkle in her face.

Amy asked her best friend Hollie if she had spiked her drink with acid, and Hollie seemed shocked at the question and growled “No I haven’t!”

Over the weeks, the relationship between Amy and her friend Hollie became quite strained because Amy thought she was trying to take her new boyfriend Josh from her.

Amy knew a certain dark secret about Hollie – a secret she’d promised her friend she’d never divulge – and Amy got drunk one night and disclosed the secret to all.

Hollie became a social leper overnight and tongues wagged and the rumours rippled out via social media and torrents of texts.

Hollie’s friend Abbi attacked Amy on Woodchurch Road and punched her for the character assassination of their mutual friend.

Amy got her revenge by reporting Abbi to the Department for Work and Pensions for working as a barmaid and claiming benefits.

That day, Amy looked in the heart-shaped mirror and received the fright of her life; the reflection of her face was terrifyingly twisted and sinister-looking.

Amy screamed and ran out of her flat.

She told Auntie Rhea what she’d seen, and after much thought, Rhea said: "I think that mirror reflects back your true inner nature. The friend it belonged to was always dabbling in the occult."

"You looked young in it, Auntie," Amy recalled, and her aunt nodded knowingly and said, "I’m young at heart."

The final straw came three days later when Amy’s 13-year-old niece Amber paid a visit to the new flat.

Josh was there, and in the reflection in that unearthly mirror, Amy saw him come up behind Amber and kiss her neck.

She turned to Josh and cried, "Stay away from my niece!" startling him.

"What are you talking about?" Josh asked with a puzzled look, as he was standing six feet away from Amber, and Amy’s niece also returned a perplexed expression at her aunt’s outburst.

"You know what I’m talking about! You’re into kids!" Amy yelled at him, and she threw her arms around Amber.

The accusation seemed to touch a nerve in Josh and he ran out of the house, never to return.

Amy gave the mirror back to Auntie Rhea, and it now lays draped in a sheet in the latter’s cellar.

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