I bought the mirror on a Wednesday afternoon, which I suppose is fitting since my life has always been a bit ordinary. I’m twenty-four, work as a graphic designer from my flat in Manchester, and I’d been looking for something to brighten up my bedroom. The charity shop on Market Street had this gorgeous Victorian mirror—oak frame, beveled edges, only thirty quid. The woman behind the counter seemed almost relieved when I said I’d take it.
“Been here three months, that one,” she said, wrapping it in newspaper. “People don’t fancy old mirrors much anymore, I suppose.”
I should have asked why.
The first week was normal. I mean, it was just a mirror, you know? I hung it opposite my bed, and every morning I’d wake up to see myself looking like absolute rubbish, same as always. But then, about ten days in, I noticed something odd.
It was a Monday morning—I remember because I’d had that video call with the difficult client scheduled. I was rushing around getting dressed when I glanced at the mirror and froze. My bed was made. Perfectly made, with the corners tucked in the way my nan used to do it. But I’d just climbed out of it. The duvet was still rumpled behind me, pillows thrown everywhere like usual.
I blinked hard, rubbed my eyes. Looked again. Now the reflection matched reality—unmade bed, yesterday’s clothes on the chair. Obviously, I was just tired. Working too much, not sleeping enough, the usual.
The next morning, though, it happened again. This time I was certain. My reflection showed my bedroom exactly as it had looked the previous morning—yesterday’s coffee mug on the nightstand, the book I’d finished and put away last night still sitting open on the bed.
I stood there for probably five minutes, just staring. Looking back, I realize I was trying to rationalize it, you know? Maybe the mirror had weird glass that created some kind of optical illusion. Maybe I was remembering wrong. But deep down, something wasn’t right, and I knew it.
I started testing it. Every morning, I’d deliberately change something—move a lamp, hang a different picture, rearrange my pillows. And every morning, the mirror showed me yesterday’s arrangement. It was like looking through a window into the past, always exactly twenty-four hours behind.
It sounds mad, I know. I didn’t tell anyone. I mean, who would believe it? “Hey, mate, my mirror shows the past.” They’d think I’d lost it completely.
For about two weeks, I just… lived with it. It was unsettling, sure, but not dangerous. Just a weird thing. I kept meaning to take it down, but I never quite did. I suppose part of me was curious. Fascinated, even.
Then came the morning that changed everything.
I woke up around seven, groggy, needing coffee. Glanced at the mirror out of habit. Froze.
There was someone in the reflection. A figure, standing at the foot of my bed, right where I’d been sleeping. Just standing there, perfectly still, facing the bed. Facing where I would have been lying yesterday morning.
My heart dropped into my stomach. The figure was tall, wearing what looked like dark clothes, but the details were fuzzy, like they were slightly out of focus. I couldn’t see a face—just a shape, human-shaped but wrong somehow.
I spun around. My room was empty. Obviously. This was yesterday’s reflection. Yesterday morning, while I’d been sleeping, something had been standing over me.
I felt my heart pounding so hard I thought I might be sick. My hands were shaking as I grabbed my phone, but what was I supposed to do? Call the police? “Hello, yes, I’d like to report an intruder from yesterday morning that I’m only seeing now in my haunted mirror.”
I should have trusted my instincts right then. Should have left the flat immediately. But I convinced myself I was being paranoid. Maybe it was just a trick of the light, a shadow, my dressing gown hanging weird on the door. The reflection was never crystal clear anyway.
I went to work—well, to my desk in the living room. Tried to focus. Couldn’t. Every hour or so, I’d creep back to the bedroom, look at the mirror. The figure was still there. Hadn’t moved. Still watching where I’d slept.
About six that evening, I couldn’t take it anymore. I threw a blanket over the mirror. If I couldn’t see it, it couldn’t bother me, right? I wish I’d just smashed the bloody thing.
That night, I barely slept. Kept waking up, listening. The flat was quiet—too quiet, that heavy silence that feels like it’s pressing down on you. Around three in the morning, I was lying there in the dark, wide awake, when I heard it.
Breathing.
Not my breathing. Someone else’s. Slow, steady, coming from the direction of the mirror.
I lay frozen, every muscle locked. The breathing continued. In. Out. In. Out. Patient. Like whoever it was had all the time in the world.
My hand crept toward my phone on the nightstand. The movement seemed to echo in the darkness. The breathing stopped.
The silence that followed was somehow worse.
Then I heard it—footsteps. Soft, deliberate, crossing my bedroom floor. Coming closer to the bed.
I don’t remember deciding to move. Survival instinct just kicked in. I was out of bed, out of the room, had my keys and was out the front door in seconds. Ran down two flights of stairs in bare feet, didn’t stop until I was standing on the street in my pajamas, gasping, shaking.
I called my brother. Stayed at his place that night. The next day, I went back with him in broad daylight. We took down the mirror—I wouldn’t look at it, made him cover it first—and he drove it straight to the tip. Smashed it himself, just to be sure.
I moved out two weeks later. Couldn’t stay in that flat. To this day, I still can’t have mirrors in my bedroom. And sometimes, late at night, I think about what the mirror would have shown me the next morning—my empty bed, my bedroom door wide open, and maybe, just maybe, that figure standing exactly where I would have been sleeping.
Because the thing is, the mirror didn’t just show the past. Looking back, I realize it was showing me the truth. That figure had been in my room every night, standing over me while I slept. I’d just never known until the mirror finally showed me.
I’ll never forget what the charity shop woman said when I bought it: “People don’t fancy old mirrors much anymore.”
Now I know why.
