When Katie Summers, a 29-year-old newlywed from Asheville, North Carolina, picked up a dusty antique mirror at a neighborhood yard sale, she thought she was scoring a vintage decor win. The mirror, ornate with iron scrollwork and flecked with age spots, cost her just $15.
“It looked like something out of an old movie,” Katie said. “Charming and creepy in the best way.”
She placed it in the hallway outside her bedroom, eager to restore it. But three days later, things took a turn she couldn’t explain.
On the third night, around 2:17 AM, Katie got up for water. That’s when she noticed it—the reflection in the mirror wasn’t right. She was standing still… but her reflection blinked. At first, she thought it was just exhaustion playing tricks. But then the reflection smiled back at her.
“I didn’t smile,” she said. “I was frozen. But it grinned like it was proud.”
Terrified, Katie covered the mirror with a bedsheet and moved it to the garage the next morning. But that night, the sheet was on the floor—and the mirror was back in the hallway.
Even stranger? Her phone began showing photos she never took. Blurry images of her sleeping. In some, she was alone. In others, there was a woman who looked exactly like her standing at the foot of the bed.
Katie took the mirror to an antique dealer the next day. He didn’t touch it. Instead, he asked if she had experienced any “unusual echoes.” When she asked what that meant, he said, “Things that repeat but never happened.”
That was enough. Katie smashed the mirror in her driveway that night. But instead of shattering, the glass absorbed the hammer like water.
Now, Katie sleeps with the hallway light on.
And the mirror?
She swears she left it outside. But every morning… it’s back on the wall.