The Cursed Mirror (Korean Summer Horror Story)

I wasn't going to post this but here we go.

Our house in this old Seoul neighborhood was packed with stuff passed down through generations. Antiques, old furniture, all of it inherited from my grandma. But the one thing that always stood out was this mirror. Heavy wooden frame, intricate flower carvings all over it. Just hung there on the living room wall like it owned the place.

Grandma used to tell stories about it all the time. Said it was made in the late 1800s. Said it could bring serious misfortune to the family. I just brushed it off, y'know? Old mirror. Old lady. Old stories. Whatever.

Then one night my parents went out and I was home alone.

I was just watching TV, normal night, when I heard this sound coming FROM the mirror. I looked over and. I froze. There was someone else in it. Standing right behind where I should've been. Same face as me. But the eyes were cold. Completely blank.

I walked toward it. Got closer. And the figure just... vanished. Just me again.

I told myself I was tired. Sat back down on the couch. But that feeling in my chest didn't go away.

I couldn't sleep that night. Kept seeing those empty eyes. Eventually I got up and went back to the living room, I don't even know why. The mirror looked totally normal. I stood in front of it.

And then my reflection SMILED.

I didn't smile. I wasn't smiling. But it was.

I ran back to my room and pulled the blanket over my head like a child and honestly? Valid response. After that I avoided looking at the mirror for days. But every time I got close to it there was this dread, building and building. And then one night the reflection reached its hand out toward me. Reached OUT. I screamed and bolted.

Okay so the next day I called grandma.

Her face went serious immediately. She said the mirror carried a curse that had been in our family for generations. An ancestor got cursed by a sorcerer, and the curse attached itself to the mirror. A soul got trapped inside. Has been bringing misfortune ever since.

She also said: never look at it alone, never look at it in the dark, and get rid of it as fast as possible.

But here's the thing. You can't just smash it or burn it. That makes it worse, apparently. So we called the local mudang¹ to come seal it.

The mudang showed up, took one look at the mirror, and went pale. Like visibly pale. She said there was a powerful spirit inside and they needed to perform a purification ritual to calm it before sealing it.

She set up her tools in the living room. Lit incense. Started chanting and circling the mirror. The whole time weird shapes kept appearing and disappearing in the glass. She kept going, focused, sweating. And finally the shapes stopped.

"It's safe now," she said. "But never use it again."

Dad wrapped it up and we carried it into the mountains and buried it deep inside a small cave. We promised each other we'd never go back.

Months passed. Life went back to normal. Mostly. I still woke up sometimes at 3am thinking about that face. That smiling face that wasn't mine.

Then one day I went hiking with friends near that area. We ended up at the cave. I don't know why I suggested it. We walked to the exact spot where we buried the mirror.

It was empty.

No mirror. No wrapping. Nothing. Like it was never there.

I got out of that cave so fast.

Some nights I still dream about it. The reflection crawling out toward me. And sometimes I catch myself in the bathroom mirror at 2am and I hold my breath for just a second before I move.