Before our marriage, my husband purchased a home built sometime previous to 1870 in the center of a small old town in Michigan. It is a lovely house (we still have it) with high ceilings and wide archways between some of the
rooms. When we moved in we had very modern furniture, which really didn't look right in the house, so our friends would bring us antiques whenever they could find them very cheaply (or free). One friend brought us a very
large, round antique mirror that he had found in a house his company was hired to tear down. It was the kind with a gilded wood and molded frame with a medallion at the top.
The glass, while it had some dark spots and shadings, was in exceptionally good condition. This was back in the mid- to late-70s and we had parties almost every weekend. In the summer when the doors were left open, no one bothered knocking, they just opened the screen and came in. Late one Friday or Saturday evening shortly after receiving the mirror I was sitting on a low sofa against the east wall of the living
room. Also on this wall was a large archway leading into the dining room,
which is where the main entry door that we used was located (there was also
a door leading into the living room from the front porch, but no one used
this one). The mirror was hung on the north wall, right next to the couch where I was sitting. Everyone else was sitting in the middle or at the opposite end of the room (large room).
I was looking to my right and noticed in the mirror that a young man was walking through the archway into
the living room and stopped right at the threshold. At first glance I did not recognize him, so I turned on the couch to look at him directly . . . and there was no one there! I looked over at the mirror again -- and there
he was. He was not a big guy, about 5'8" or 5'9", thin build, dark hair (short for the times) and wearing what looked like one of those blue-gray workshirts.
I looked toward the archway again -- no one was there. I shot off the couch and into the dining room, to see if anyone was playing a trick on me -- there was no one in any part of the house other than the living room. It made me very uneasy and I could never sit in that area again. In fact, I moved that couch a week later, and even though the mirror still hangs there all these years later, I try to avoid looking in it. A couple of years after this happened I joined the local historical society. I met a wonderful tiny old lady in her 90s. She told me that she had been in my
home many times in her youth and I found out from her that during prohibition, the people who owned the house would have parties with bootleg liquor.
There was an argument late one evening and a young man was killed by a blast from both barrels of a shotgun at close range in the area of the front entrance to the dining room. I'm not sure if it was him or not, but
for three or four years after that, every night at 3:10 am, I would hear slow, but steady footsteps (on the creaky wood floors) walk from the archway, through the living room and up to the bedroom door. They always stopped right there (thank God!), and I tried to make sure they could come no further by hanging a crucifix on a hook on the inside of the bedroom door. After a few years either it stopped, or we grew so accustomed to it that we don't notice it anymore. So, do you think my spirit came with the mirror, or that the mirror just enabled me to see him?
By:
fred.yogi@yahoo.com Linda P-C
Mon May 12, 2008 7:35 pm
