Haunted Objects: Stories of Ghosts on Your Shelf (22 page)

Although Gus never admitted how much the medal had cost, he said it was more than $20, but well worth the investment. His uncle got better almost immediately, and Gus felt the saint had everything to do with it.

Gus told the story often when Stephany was a child, and she felt it was a part of the family history. “We didn’t have many stories. No one in our family was famous or had done anything too crazy. Daddy had that damn story, and I used to love it. I know he probably lied about most of it, but I didn’t care. The telling made it real, and I guess that was enough for me,” she said.

When her son, Philip, was born in 1995, Gus’ energy multiplied. After her husband left, Stephany was forced to move in with her parents, but that suited them just fine—especially Gus. He loved Philly and gushed over him, and he doted on his daughter. The little boy sat in his grandfather’s lap for hours, listening to him tell stories and hum songs. “He would whisper to him in Portuguese, which I never learned. I don’t know what he was telling him, but Philly knew and would smile and laugh,” Stephany said. “He couldn’t even talk yet, but he could hear what [my father] was saying.

“You know, you remember the weirdest things about someone. [Daddy] had these huge hands. I remember his smile, the chain, and his huge hands. When he picked Philly up, my little guy would disappear in Daddy’s hands. He would scoop him up and there would just be his spiky hair poking out from the top of his fingers.”

An example of a Saint Raphael medal.

Gus died of pneumonia in 1997. The death came fast, and no one quite knew how to deal with it. But Stephany knew Gus must be buried with his Saint Raphael medal. She was almost beside herself with frustration when the funeral director returned it to her after Gus was buried.

“There is a policy that they can’t have jewelry on so people aren’t going to rob the graves. I just wanted him to have it, and they handed it back. I felt he couldn’t find peace without it.”

On Gus’ birthday, about seven months after his death, Stephany went to the gravesite to place flowers near the headstone. As Philly slept in the carriage next to her, she dug a small hole and put the metal in the ground. She cried and laughed at the same time. “It was something he would have done,” she admitted.

A week later, while finishing up homework for her nursing class, Stephany noticed something on the kitchen counter.

“It was Raphael,” she said. “I had just cleaned the kitchen before getting to work, so I know it wasn’t there. I saw it shine in the light and picked it up. I saw that medal my whole life and I know it like I know my own face. I can’t explain it, but it was in my hand.”

Being a spiritual person, Stephany viewed it as a sign: Her father was okay and didn’t need it any more. “He wasn’t going to be sick anymore, so maybe someone else needed it. That’s the only thing I could think of,” she said.

She knew the medal was for her son. She placed it on his bureau that night and kissed his forehead.

“That kid could sleep. Even as a baby he slept through the night. So I hear him up having a major conversation with someone, and I come in. It was a little after midnight, but he was sitting up in bed. He was holding the chain out in front of him and giggling. I asked him where he had gotten it, and he said Grandy gave it to him. Grandy was his name for Daddy. I asked him where Grandy was, and he pointed to the wall and said he was with Raphael. He couldn’t say the name right, so it sounded more like Ralphy L.”

Although she was disturbed by the incident, she also felt a bit of relief. Giving the medal to Philly had been the right decision. More importantly, her father was looking after her son. If she believed the dead could help the living—and she did—there was no reason to be scared.

She placed a stool in her son’s room the next day so he could reach the medal on the bureau whenever he wanted it. Unfortunately, the idol never worked for him. Less than six months later, Stephany was in a car accident and Philly died. To this day, she refuses to share the details of what happened, but she is able to speak of what she felt afterward.

“I hurt so much I didn’t want to breathe. I’m a good person with a deep faith. My brother went away, and my daddy and baby died. I didn’t think I could take it,” she said.

So she decided to give the medal to her son one last time. She took it straight to her son’s grave a week after he was buried. She dug a small hole, buried the medal, and covered it with a rose.

“It was his. I had no one left to give it to. It got me through those weeks. I was almost obsessed with burying it. Part of me thought it would come back,” Stephany said.

When she went to the cemetery to lay flowers on her father’s grave, the medal was hanging on the headstone.

“I lost it. I wept so hard I almost threw up. It wasn’t sadness. I knew at that moment they were together.”

If she was looking for a signal from the Other Side, the medal was a mixed message. She felt in her heart it was a sign, but she didn’t know what to do with it. Was it now hers to take? She thought so and carried it in her hand the whole way home. When she got back to her apartment, she placed it in an old cigar box, something she felt her father would have liked, and tucked it under her bed.

“I would still cry,” Stephany said. “Sometimes I would open the box and hold [the medal] and think of them both. It was very comforting, but one of them, probably Daddy, thought it was too much. He wanted me to move on. I think he took it back.”

On one particularly bad night, she reached under the bed to get the medal, and it was gone. “It was like slapping me across the face. I got it. Daddy forced me to take the training wheels off. He made me practice math. I know his way. This was him.”

It was not like she never saw it again. Sometimes she sees the chain on their headstones when she visits the cemetery.

“It’s not every time, and I can never tell whether it will be on Philly’s or Daddy’s [stone]. It is shining in the sunlight. I never touch it. I leave it there and know it will show up again sometime. I think of it as their little game with me and something they share.”

Stephany has no idea where the chain goes when she isn’t there. Some things can’t be explained by science. She just leans on faith and believes in love.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

P
eople have been gazing at their own reflections since the beginning of mankind. Imagine what it was like being the first person to bend over to get a drink from a pool of water, and to see that strange creature staring back! Over the millennia, we’ve perfected the art of staring at ourselves.

The first manufactured mirrors came around 6000 B.C. and were made from polished obsidian, which came from volcanic lava. The silver-backed mirror—the precursor of the aluminum-backed version we use today—was perfected in 1835 by Justus von Liebig, a German chemist who devised the process of silvering that greatly improved the use of mirrors.

And as long as mirrors have been around, they’ve been the subject of great superstition. Mirrors have long been said to be a reflection of the soul because they can only reflect and cannot lie. They don’t reflect the person’s perception (although how the person views the reflection is, of course, subjective), but rather just what is truly there, imperfections and all. That’s why vampires and witches can’t see their reflections in a mirror—it’s believed they no longer have a soul. The vampire lost his, and the witch gave hers up willingly to the devil. That’s also why hanging a mirror near your front door eventually became commonplace—not only did it allow you to see what you looked like as you were heading out the door, it also allowed you to see if those entering your house had a soul. Imagine how awkward it was if they didn’t!

One of the most common superstitions regarding mirrors is that breaking one will lead to seven years’ worth of bad luck. This belief likely originated with the Romans, who believed the soul renewed itself every seven years; breaking a mirror would cause a person to endure hardship until the soul could be cleansed.

But why was a broken mirror considered so unlucky? The Romans, among many other ancient civilizations, also bought into the “reflection of the soul” theory about mirrors. In their view, a broken mirror meant the reflection of a broken soul.

There were ways to get around the seven years of bad luck, however; the most popular way was to take all the broken pieces of the mirror and grind them into dust. Other methods involved burying the broken pieces or setting them afloat in a southward-flowing river. Did it work? Well, when dealing with superstition, it all goes back to belief; if you believe in the curse of breaking a mirror, then why not believe in the supposed reversal of the curse?

Many cultures and religions also call for the covering of all mirrors when a person has died, but for different reasons. In the Jewish faith, mirrors are covered because the mourning period is supposed to be about the person who has passed and not about the vanity of the living. In Romania, people believe mirrors must be covered because if they are not, the spirit of the deceased may enter them and become trapped in the reflective world.

Other superstitions that deal with mirrors:

• A baby should never see its own reflection until after its first birthday; some cultures believe it will stunt the growth of their souls, others think it will bring death.

• It is bad luck to hang mirrors facing one another.

• If you think a house is haunted, hang a mirror on a south-facing wall. If there are ghosts present, the mirror will fall every time you hang it.

• Never bring home a mirror from the home of a deceased love one, or they will haunt it and you.

• If you look into a mirror in a room where someone has recently died and you see their reflection instead of your own, it means you will soon die as well.

• A couple who first sees one another in a mirror’s reflection will go on to have a long and happy marriage.

• Buddhists are said to believe that negative spirits can enter the door of a house if it has a triangular-shaped roof, but it can be prevented by hanging a small circular mirror in front of the door.

• Mirrors could be used for divination or scrying, two different ways of telling the future. Included with this theory was the idea that if you stared into a mirror on Halloween, you’d see your future husband.

Mirror Legends

There are also plenty of legends that have developed over the years regarding mirrors. The best-known is that of “Bloody Mary,” the long-summoned character of folklore whose origin is hard to pinpoint. The basic outline is always the same, no matter where the story is being told—in a darkened room, you stare into a mirror and call out three times for “Bloody Mary,” and she’ll appear with the intention of killing you. Whether the story also involves candles, spinning around three times, or any other variation, it still all comes back to the dark room, the mirror, and the chant.

The legend comes from England, and one school of thought is that it relates to Queen Mary I, who was called “Bloody Mary” for her treatment of Protestants while restoring the Roman Catholic Church to England. Others say the nickname was also used to mock her for the many miscarriages she suffered in trying to conceive an heir, even undergoing a “phantom pregnancy” in 1555 because she so badly wanted to have a child.