Mirrorshifter

Subject: Mirrorshifter Thu Dec 06, 2012 9:59 am

Quote :

I really don't want to hunt down all my old posts in the various paranormal Forums and image boards I have partaken in, so I will try to write up a summary of the events instead. I think it's going to be more accurate and compressed, so you get all the information you may need without having to read all my scared prattling from back then.

So without further ado, I present to you my personal nightmare.

The whole thing started in August 2004, I think. Back then, I was your usual, run-of-the-mill horror-freak, intrigued by the paranormal, sure, but I didn't believe any of it. I read creepy stuff on the internet, Lovecraft would have been my idol, had he not been a rampant racist and sometimes I liked to pretend that ghosts and demons and eldritch monsters were real.
I searched forums and image boards for the next scary story and often I found people claiming to have seen real paranormal events, but of course everybody assumed it's just some kind of game.

I found out the hard way, that those who eat all that horror stuff up are sometimes the most sceptical. One night, I went to the bathroom after a huge horror-story-binge and naturally, I was exited, giddy and jumpy. So when I looked in the mirror above the sink and saw something crawling along the wall for a split second, I froze, almost soiled my pants and stood there for about a minute, listening, scared to move. But soon I attributed it to the stories. Being easily scared and imagining things after such a thing wasn't unheard of. And that theory solidified in the coming days, because nothing happened.

I experienced similar events numerous times over the next few months, constantly explaining them away as a symptom of a serious Lovecraft-addiction. It was only until quite a bit later, that I picked up on what was really going on. During another night, again in the bathroom, Something crawled along the wall again. Of course I was afraid. But I was sure that I was irrationally so. That changed abruptly, when I saw a pair of human dangling beside my head in the mirror. I froze, my muscles aching with tension, as I slowly turned and looked at where the feet should have been. But nothing. I relaxed, let out a sigh of relief and chuckled a little awkwardly. Hahahaha, I'm such a coward. I turned back to the mirror to tell my mirror image what a fucking coward he was and...
There it was. Something that looked very roughly human, was covered in blood and stared at me with an eyeless face from the mirror. My heart jumped, I reacted instantly with a loud scream, struggled with the locked bathroom-door for a few seconds and raced to my room, where I hid unter my blanket like a scared infant.

I didn't expect it to be a dream. Dreams feel very different. I knew that there was no possible, rational explanation for what I had seen. I was scared out of my wits, but in some odd moments (mostly during the day), I was excited, too. Something real, a real horror had transpired in my home and I decided to share the story with /x/ on 4chan.

You can imagine, they didn't believe me at all.
So I was laughed out of almost every paranormal-themed community I knew, but I didn't give up. I wanted everyone to know that such things existed. very naive of me, I know. It got especially bad when I told my family about what I had experienced. They told me I was insane and after a while I actually believed it. I went to a psychiatrist and I got pills, but when those didn't help get rid of the thing in the mirror, I stopped taking them.
I still think it was right to seek psychological help, but it didn't work out. Luckily I wasn't diagnosed as anything dangerous.

So there I was, living in one house with a terrible abomination, that robbed me of my sleep, without anyone to talk to about it. My whole future was falling apart right in front of my very eyes.
Right then, though, two people stumbled over one of my desperate, panicky "Help Me"-threads and decided to help me survive this nightmare. Klein and ArkMaster. They dragged me to the other Forum and there they taught me what I needed to know. It was an amazing community without those pesky sceptics and trolls.

Learning about the basics of surviving in this paranormal world left me with four possible strategies:
Driving it from my home with a proper ritual,
communicating and pleading with it,
destroying it
and moving out.

I didn't feel comfortable with the last three options, because communicating with this thing didn't sound very appealing and attempting to destroy it might have made it mad. I didn't consider moving out, because I felt that giving in would have been weakness. Yay, me. So brave, so damn stupid.
So I got all my research on driving out incorporeal entities done and felt that I knew all I needed to. I performed Mirror Surveillance and the Fog Binding Ritual, but to no avail. If you want further details on what I did there exactly, just ask me. I logged it all.
I tried it several times, in fact and I failed over and over again. Reluctantly I realised that driving it out wasn't an option anymore and went on to the next one. Talking to a creature that constantly thought up new horrible forms to appear in a mirror as, was no appealing plan, but I figured that talking AFTER trying to kill it would not work at all.

I don't want to go into too much detail. Let's just say, it didn't care and had it not been for Base Protection it might have done something terrible to me.

I was desperate. Klein and ArkMaster couldn't think of any other way to get rid of it. They didn't advise me to attack it, I got that idea from the other Forum-goers who swore that base Protection would be all I needed.

Quote :: Alright, this is getting too much to bear.
As you know if you read this thread up until now, you know I tried everything. I tried what little banishment rituals I know, I pleaded with it and I even tried to drive it out with a rosary and holy water ("Supernatural" lied to me). I kind of accepted that I can't get rid of that thing. Every time I go to the bathroom at night, I anticipate what I might see in mirror, but there is just no way to prepared for what this thing has in store for me.
And it's getting creative, too. So last night I decided to have one more go at finally finding peace again. I planned it all out. I did Base Protection and even the Violent Redirection Ploy (Tied it to my TV. I loved that old thing...) and waited till nightfall. Then I grabbed a hammer, went to the bathroom, where it jumped me most of the time. I entered, eyes closed and shut the door behind me. I was breathing heavily. I called out, "Are you there?" Kinda stupid in hindsight, but I just wanted to fill the silence, don't judge me! And of course it didn't answer. As far as I know it probably doesn't even have a concept of language.
Hesitantly, I opened my eyes and looked in the mirror.
I wish I hadn't. It was more hideous than ever. Imagine a human body, only more rough, lacking details like the nose, eyes, mouth, hair and fingers. The hands were simply lumps of skinny flesh. It didn't wear clothing, but the skin was coloured and textured differently where clothes usually are. But that wasn't all. On top of looking like something akin to a really unnatural humanoid being, it also had twisted its spine around in an impossible way and its head was hanging upside down from the twirly mess.
And I smashed the mirror.
Okay, I don't know exactly what happened after that. There was a lot of screaming involved. Terrible, painful screams and I'm pretty sure that some of them were mine.
I'm sitting in my room now and I locked the door. Before I locked the door, I took the mirror that usually hung next to my desk and tossed it out into the corridor. It left a splatter of blood on my wall. I'm not going to sleep tonight. And when the morning comes, I'm out of here. I guess, I'll sleep at a friend's place until I found a new flat.
Please learn from my mistake: Violence is not the answer to most of these paranormal things. You can't hurt or scare them, because, frankly, they're better at that, than you can ever be. If you can run, do it.

I don't like to remember how that brilliant plan turned out, but it all went downhill from there. I wanted only one thing from then on: To leave and never come back to this building again. But it wasn't possible. I was broke, my job didn't earn me enough to move or even afford the rent of a flat. And so I had to stay. I slept at friends' places as much as I could and searched for jobs everywhere.

Well, now I'm just about to get out of here for good, so all this might just end well, soon.

This was a short, rather emotional summary on what happened. I will add details on the Mirrorshifter itself below. May the information be useful to you.

Subject: Re: Mirrorshifter Thu Dec 06, 2012 10:00 am

Quote :: Known forms of the Mirrorshifter

All-but-Human
Most common, so far, has been the shape of a humanoid being, wearing clothes like a normal human would, but missing eyes and being covered in blood. This is actually a whole class of shapes, since the kind of human the creature mimics, is a unique one for every time it shows up. I have seen little boys and huge, muscular men as well as tall and even old women.
Sometimes the mirrorshifter hangs from the ceiling or crawls along the walls in this shape.

The Puppet
This shape is a little difficult to describe. It looks kind of like a humanoid being, again. But it's featureless. Every single joint is severely broken, leaking blood and held together by primitive, artificial joints, made from rusty iron. Several parts of the body are attached to strings that hang from above and seem to move the ghastly thing, like a puppeteer would a puppet. Sometimes the strings end in disembodied hands that control the meat-puppet.

Twisted
This is a variation of All-but-Human. The humanoid shape is twisted in impossible ways, bones broken but still standing on both feet. Sometimes this shape twists even further after appearing, resulting in infernal cracking noises.

Distortion
Sometimes there's nothing on the other side of the mirror except for a distortion of the image. It's like something invisible is bending the light in strange ways.

Mirrorhands (Title drop Ha. Ha. Ha.)
The hands of at least a dozen people are pressed against the other side of the mirror. They twitch and move very slowly but constantly. I noticed recently that this form also involves faint whispering from the mirror.

Image Possession
This is easily the one that disturbs me most. I look in a mirror in my home or even just any reflective surface like my window or something and suddenly my mirror image presses its hands against its head and starts to scream in pain and horror. It goes completely insane and rampages through the image of the room, spitting blood everywhere and finally falling to the ground. After that, nothing changes in the mirror image. I don't know how long it takes to normalise, but it's probably around eight hours.

Subject: Re: Mirrorshifter Thu Dec 06, 2012 10:06 am

Quote :: Further Details

The Mirrorshifter appears at random intervals, ranging from mere hours to three weeks. It doesn't seem to be very interested in killing, as I'm sure it could have killed me a thousand times now. However, it has also made a few attempts at my life. I assume that my actions must have aggravated it, then. If that theory is true, it would mean, that the Mirrorshifter reacts violently to rather peculiar things.

Things you should never ever do with a Mirrorshifter in your house:
Break anything reflective.
Create very bright light during the night.
Laugh at the mirror. (I did that to give myself courage once. Didn't go over very well.)
Talk to the Mirrorshifter. (I am not sure why exactly it attacked me. Might have been the tone of my voice or something I said. It doesn't seem to really understand the concept of human language, so I assume it just doesn't like the way our voices sound.)
Touch something it moved less than a day after it moved it.

There were also times when it tried to brutalise me without any comprehensible reason. Be vary. Take notes of its behaviour, because it is very strange, indeed.

I have talked about attacks for a while now and haven't even mentioned how it does it. The Mirrorshifter has shown to be capable of a limited form of telekinesis, lifting mirror images, which causes their real-world counterparts to react. I was stabbed three times before I finally removed all mirrored items from my kitchen and scratched my good silverware.