Horror Various Authors: Dark Reflections. v1. 14 Jun 2026

[GrannyGrump]

Gathered here to pique your goosebumps, stories about haunted, possessed, and magical mirrors, by such master story-tellers as George MacDonald, Algernon Blackwood, Barry Pain, E. F. Benson, Doyle, Whitehead, and Lovecraft.

Explore the mystique of the mirror in these twenty-one eerie tales.

( 21 equals 3 times 7 years’ bad luck )
Will you risk it?

By various authors.
My own compilation.

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A list of the titles:

Spoiler:

My Aunt Margaret’s Mirror

by Sir Walter Scott
A haunting gothic tale of a woman consulting a mystic mirror to witness her husband’s attempted bigamy and its tragic consequences. A moral fable on the dangers of seeking forbidden knowledge and the consequences of betrayal.

The Steel Mirror

by William Wilthew Fenn
A vivid, haunting dream about a mysterious, antique steel mirror which acts as a prophetic or magical object. The events that unfold in the dream appear to be a dark foretelling of the future

The Face in the Glass

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
A young woman’s reflection begins to show her as haggard and aged, ultimately warning of approaching, premature death

A Dark Mirror

by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
Instead of reflecting clear, colorful images, this peculiar glass casts back livid, shadowy reflections. The unnamed narrator peers into this “dark mirror” to witness a grim tableau representing the Brontë family.

The Haunted Glass

by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
A man becomes trapped in a bizarre, cyclical loop of death and rebirth.

The Glass of Supreme Moments

by Barry Pain
An enigmatic woman shows him, in a magic mirror, the supreme moments in the lives of his friends. His own supreme moment is death and she is Death.

The Magic Mirror

by Thomas J. Vivian
A sailor gives his sweetheart an ancient Persian mirror in which she sees his fatal love affair with another man’s wife.

The Face in the Mirror

by Helen Mathers
Strains of music draw her to an abandoned room in her friend’s manor, where she finds a mirror displaying a ghost re-enacting its death.

The Silver Mirror

by Arthur Conan Doyle
The mirror replays the 1566 assassination of David Rizzio in the presence of Mary, Queen of Scots.

The Chippendale Mirror

by E. F. Benson
The mirror’s surface inexplicably darkens to reveal horrific glimpses of the supernatural. The mirror — which hung in the victim’s bedroom — has recorded Mrs. Yeats murder in all its grisly glory.

In the Mirror

by Valery Bryusov
A woman who fills her room with mirrors becomes infatuated with her reflection, and loses her sanity as the reflection tries to take her place in the real world.

The Looking Glass

by J. D. Beresford
An aging delusional aunt struggles to accept reality; her neice discovers the truth about her look-alike aunt

The Magic Mirror

by Mary S. Brown
The narrator encounters a mysterious girl’s reflection in mirrors. She communicates through written messages, explaining that she cannot fully appear due to existing between dimensions.

The Trap

by Henry S. Whitehead
and H. P. Lovecraft
A boarding school teacher discovers that his recently acquired antique mirror acts as a trans-dimensional prison created by a dark sorcerer in search of immortality.

The Mirror

by George Burrowes
A strange and tragic story of a looking-glass that reflected what did not lie before it.

The Florentine Mirror

by Frederick Cowles
An antique mirror in an elaborately grotesque frame hosts a centuries-dead ghost, and the current owner is falling under his evil spell.

The Magic Mirror

by Algernon Blackwood
A man on a cruise ship regales his friends with the story of a haunted artifact from Tibet that can bring immense wealth but inevitably causes a tragic demise.

The Mirror

by Liam Kennedy
Who — or what — was the murderous wraith in that old dressing-room? The terrifying experience of an opera singer.

The Snow Queen

by Hans Christian Andersen
Gerda embarks on a perilous quest to rescue her best friend, Kai, after he is corrupted by an evil mirror and abducted by the icy Snow Queen.

The Magic Mirror

by George MacDonald
Cosmo’s mirror has enslaved a princess to appear in the reflection of any room in which it is set.

The Mirror

by Catulle Mendès
A fable-like allegory: A hideously ugly queen bans all reflective surfaces in her kingdom to avoid seeing herself, ultimately learning a tragic lesson about inner beauty.

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Contents were originally published 1828 ~ 1940. This book is in the public domain where copyright is “Life+70” or less.
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