#0120701

[penninstitute]

Case #9991002

Statement of Hannah Winters, regarding… mirrors. Original statement given October 2nd, 1999.

I hate mirrors. I hate everything about them. But the worst part is looking at a mirror, and being able to see yourself reflected back at you. Yourself in your purest, most… most quintessential form.

I hate it. I hate how looking at myself makes me feel. It scares me, the way my own eyes stare into me. The way how it… copies my every move, how it is me, fully and entirely. It almost feels mocking. Look at yourself and all your imperfections, you’ll never like what you see when you look in the mirror, hate yourself for it. Strive for an impossible goal, because you fear the thing looking back at you more than you fear the harm that comes with working for a goal like that.

… so I hate them.

I also hate how they crack. Whenever I look at mirrors, they always… splinter, break, shatter, and I’m left to stare at myself in the broken reflection. It’s not normal. Other people don’t have this problem, I know they don’t.

Without fail. Every time I look at my reflection, the mirror shatters.

It’s scary. Startles me each time it happens. I can never explain it, either. I’ve given up trying. Nobody really realizes it’s me doing it, anyways, but. I think I’d prefer it that way.

How do I explain it to someone? That’s almost just as terrifying as the mirrors themselves. If I admit it was me, I admit that I fucked up somehow, because how else would I have broken it?

I don’t know. I just hate mirrors. I don’t know if this’ll mean anything to you.

FOLLOW-UP NOTES

... Aside from the mirrors that shatter when looked at, this statement isn’t... too remarkable. Ms. Winters makes an... interesting argument for why she hates mirrors, but the reasons aside from the shattering aren’t exactly supernatural material.

One thing that struck me while reading this was the similarities to case #0120701, specifically the cracked mirror described in that statement compared to the shattering mirrors here. Whatever the Fault is, it may be prevalent here as well? I’m not sure.

[penninstitute]

Case #0120701

Statement of Kenneth Summerfield, regarding a mirror found in his late grandfather’s attic. Original statement given July 1st, 2012.

Have you ever had to clean out a relative’s home after they’re gone? I hadn’t, personally, not until my Pa, Jamie Summerfield, passed away last year. I’m not sure why I’m coming to you about this now--the mirror’s long gone, for one thing, and I don’t particularly care about it anymore, for another, so I guess that’s just another mystery for you to solve.

He died in March last year. I wasn’t too close with him, he’d always been a bit distant, but I’d been one of the ones that volunteered to go through his house.

He didn’t have very many possessions in most of the house. It was all very minimalist--but the rest of the house isn’t the important part, anyways.

The strange thing at the time had been that in my grandfather’s will, he’d said that only I was to go through the attic. I don’t know why me, and I’m hoping you might be able to help me on that front, because the whole thing that came after was… I don’t know why he chose me to go through all of the things I found.

I finally started on the attic in early August. It was a nice day, with a gentle breeze coming in through the windows, and I pulled down the dusty ladder that led up to the attic and made my way up.

It was a cluttered mess, compared to the rest of the house. Objects and artifacts were scattered across it, boxes of books and random trinkets. Almost immediately, things felt off. I felt like I was being watched and threatened and welcomed all at once. It felt like there were presences there, like there were other things waiting for me in that attic beyond simple trinkets and dusty old books.

There was a box with the word Leitner scribbled across it, just filled with books. There was a note scribbled underneath the Leitner reading “do not read”, underlined several times.

… I will admit, I played it safe and did not read the books. Even just holding them gave me a bad feeling. I donated them all to a local bookstore.

Not gonna lie, there were lots of boxes that I just donated without looking through. Holding them gave me an awful feeling, so there’s a pawn shop in southern Vermont that’s loaded up with potentially haunted artifacts now, I guess. Whoops.

It was weird, mostly because my grandfather just didn’t seem like that kind of person, y’know? Like, you’d think you would know if you knew someone who collected haunted artifacts. Or if you knew someone who believed in the supernatural, at the very least. I honestly would’ve pegged the guy as a skeptic, but he was just full of surprises after his death, I suppose.

The strangest thing, though, was the mirror. It was leaned up against the wall, covered by a heavy cloth, which in turn was covered in dust.

I pulled the cover off to find a large, ornate mirror, with a large crack running from one corner to the other. I wasn’t sure why it was up there, but when I looked at it--I watched more cracks appear when I looked at myself in that mirror. Tiny little things that spiderwebbed from the first crack, leaving it in a sorrier state than before.

I… it was weird. This was weird. I don’t really know what came over me, but suddenly I was just--in that moment, staring at myself in the mirror, I hated myself. I noticed every little flaw, every little thing I despised, between the cracks in that mirror.

I saw things I wanted to forget. I remembered things I would’ve preferred not to remember. The memories were so painful and vivid and I don’t know what caused it, because I was just looking at this mirror with a crack in it, and I felt awful. I… will admit, I started crying, even.

I saw every failure of mine in the cracks of that mirror. Every little thing I so despised.

The upper right corner of the mirror was so cracked you could hardly see a reflection in it. I averted my gaze from the mirror and almost instantly the pressure of the memories and the awful thoughts lifted.

I covered the mirror back up and donated it to that same pawn shop all the other artifacts went to. I didn’t want to look into it much further.

That’s it, really. The house was eventually cleaned out and sold off. I don’t know where that mirror is now, or if it’s even still around, but I hope I never see it again.

ARCHIVIST’S NOTE: Could be a sign of the Fault’s emergence. I should tell Adam and Isabelle to add it as a category for artifact storage and the hunting department. I don’t care what Eszes says about it--it’s clearly going to start showing up like this more often.

FOLLOW-UP NOTES

- A mirror that causes self-deprecation aside, the thing that intrigues me the most about this statement is Natalie Hall’s note at the end of it. Looking through employee records, I found that at the time of this statement, Adam Hawthorne and Isabelle Zellweger were the heads of artifact storage and the hunting department, respectively. The fact that Natalie refers to them by first name and as though they’re in on whatever the Fault may be is interesting to note.

- As for the Fault, I... have no idea what that is. None of my assistants have any ideas either. I may look for more information on my own time, but it doesn’t seem like it’s something that’s going to be easy to find.

- As for the statement itself, Mr. Summerfield refused to give a follow-up statement. He told us that there was “nothing more to say on the matter,” and we left it at that.

- I’m not sure, but I believe we may have the mirror described in this statement down in artifact storage. I’ll have to speak to Alyssa and see if she has any records for anything like it.