If you have clicked the link that lead you here, I will assume you are here to learn about the haunted poster. I know that any claims I may make in defense of my rationality and sanity will be in vein and that those who believe anyone who could say such things as I am about to must be neither rational nor sane. For the record, I consider myself an average person of average experiences and average understand of the world we live in. As such, an experience as un-average as this sounds just as absurd to me as it surely does to you, but it is true, and it is this:

A year or two ago (as of writing, 2012), my friend and fellow artist came to visit me in Toronto for the summer. Having never seen the Royal Ontario Museum, my visiting friend and another friend of mine decided to take a day trip into the city to see the museum. Near the end of the trip we visited a section of the museum full of common artifacts (cups, furnature, brushes, that sort of thing) from what appeared to be from Victorian to Post Edwardian era europe. Many of these artifacts in this area where set up like individual rooms behind glass (such as living-rooms) with these artifacts shown and placed how they would have appeared and been displayed in these homes (if anyone familiar with the ROM could tell me which room this is, it would be appreciated). Near the back of this room we found a very plain looking set of silver bathroom objects such as a hairbrush, and most notably, a small, vanity sized mirror.

This mirror, though plain and undecorated, was clearly not ordinary, though we could not pinpoint why. There was something about this mirror pulling us towards it. We stood together and looked into this mirror and we could not help but feel sick. In our reflection, we where standing together, framed much like a classic portrait. Our eyes where dark and lifeless, we could not make eye contact with ourselves, our reflections could not smile, despite the fact that our third friend was, and always is smiling. We looked dead and we could not look away, we could not smile, we could not change. It was like seeing a 19th century Post-mortem portrait (look it up). After some effort we managed to quickly walk away. We had all seen and experienced the same thing, we felt dizzy and continued to feel drawn towards the piece, despite our distance. Myself and one of my friends slowly made our way back over, careful not to catch our reflections in the mirror, to read the plaque in front of the silver pieces. The bathroom set had belonged to a Russian nobel family who where killed in their homes during a war and their belongings taken. The mirror had previously been decorated with custom family etchings, which where filed down and removed from the mirror entirely. Who the mirror was sold to or how it ended up where it did was not explained.

The draining, sickening feeling followed us home and settled in the face of a character (Dominique) on a poster hanging on my wall. It remained there for weeks, we could escape the horrible feeling of being around this poster or the room containing the poster. If we fell asleep in the same room as the poster, we would have horrible nightmares. We got little sleep and we did not know what was wrong. Some of our more spiritual friends came to visit one day and immediately noticed the presence and it's source, over the next day or two we managed to get rid of heavy presence that had haunted us since our visit to the museum. To be safe, I removed the poster from my wall and kept it safe in it's tube.

A few years later after having moved, and still having the poster, we have hung it on our wall in order to film our kickstarter video. Since then it has remained on our wall and still sets us a bit on edge to look at it. Despite the presence having been removed from the poster, the memory of the weeks this poster tormented us and neither of us will allow it to be kept in our own rooms. This poster will never be the same again.