A Ghost In The Mirror

The Ghost In A Mirror is a story from More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. It explains a game that some people play to summon spirits from the dead.

The Story
This is a scary game that young people sometimes play trying to conjure up a ghost in their bathroom mirror. Many don't really believe that a ghost is going to appear. But they try to raise one anyway, for the fun and excitement. Some are willing to settle for any ghost, but others have a particular ghost in mind. One of these is a ghost named Mary Worth, who is also known as Mary Jane and Bloody Mary. She is the heroine of an old comic strip, but some say she actually was a witch who was hanged at the infamous witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692.

Another of these ghosts is "La Llorona," the Weeping Woman who wanders the streets of cities and towns from Texas to California and throughout Mexico, looking for her lost child.

Still another is Mary Whales, a young woman who is supposed to have been killed in a car accident in Indianapolis, Indiana, about 1965. Her ghost is one of the "vanishing hitchhikers." It is said that again and again she thumbs a ride home in a passing car, then vanishes before she gets there.

Here is how Ghost Hunters try to raise a ghost:

1. They find a quiet bathroom, close the door and turn off the lights. 2. While they stare at their face in the mirror, they repeat the ghost's name, usually forty-seven times or a hundred times. If any ghost will do, they say "any ghost" in place of a name. If they do manage to raise one, its face will slowly replace their face in the mirror.

Some say a ghost is likely to be angry at being disturbed. If it gets angry enough, they say, it will try to shatter the mirror and come right into the room. But a player can always turn on the lights and send the ghost back to where it came from. And when that happens, the game is over.