Thank you to Sharon Leong for writing this post. Sharon, who teaches each year at the Nevada Ghost and Paranormal Series, is a talented paranormal investigator based out of San Francisco.
One of my most memorable spiritual encounters happened about twenty years ago, shortly after my purchase of an antique mission mirror.
I had just gotten a divorce and was determined to redecorate my apartment in a style that reflected me as an individual. I’d always been attracted to antique furnishings and sought to transform my apartment into something reminiscent of the Belle Époque of Oscar Wilde’s Paris. And although cautionary tales abounded of questionable energy attached to antique furniture, I was confident that I would be able to discern anything that harbored negative energy.
I should have listened to my inner voice as I stood before the mission mirror hanging at the top of a flight of stairs leading into the bargain basement of a local antique shop. Although I was drawn to it, I had reservations about purchasing the mirror – it was missing two brass hooks from the frame – and, truth be told, it frightened me a little to look at my reflection within its beveled edges. However, against my better judgment, I bought the mirror.
As soon as I got the mirror home, I hung it in the front hallway and then forced myself to look at my reflection. I stared into the mirror and sighed with relief when nothing happened.
Later that evening, I was working at my computer when a loud crash sounded from the kitchen. I ran into the room and saw my framed portrait of Oscar Wilde lying face-down on the floor. How it wound up on the floor was peculiar as it was originally sitting high on a shelf, directly behind two 3-inch stacks of French coins flanked by a pair of green Eiffel Tower earrings. The stacks of coins and earrings were still on the shelf, undisturbed. So in order for the portrait to have landed on the floor, it would have had to have leapt over the stacks of coins and earrings. And there were no earthquakes, nor trucks rumbling by when that happened. For some reason, I immediately knew the mirror was behind this. Something attached to the mirror did not like Oscar Wilde.
That raised my ire. I’d had enough of being made to feel uncomfortable by whatever was lurking inside the mirror and immediately gave it a good scrubbing down with lemon verbena oil, underscoring each swipe of my cleaning cloth with a demand, spoken aloud, that the spirit leave my apartment if it did not respect me or my things.
The mirror has not bothered me since. In retrospect, what I learned from that experience was that I had the spiritual strength to stand up for myself in potentially adverse situations, which, along with my Wildean redecorating efforts, had helped shaped and defined me as an individual.