Mirrored glass enclosed in a massive mahogany frame. At the top of the frame there are two angels blowing into trumpets. At the bottom of the engraving “Louis Arpo. 1743 . This mirror takes the lives of its owners. The names of 38 of his victims are known. The list is probably not complete. And it continues to grow.
Magician and alchemist Louis Arpo
Louis Arpo was considered one of the finest mirror masters in Paris. Dozens of countesses, duchesses and baronesses admired their beauty, looking in the mirrors of the famous mirror maker.
But he also had another glory. Everyone in Paris knew that Louis Arpo was also a magician, a sorcerer, an alchemist, and he knew with evil spirits. The fathers of the Inquisition were itching to get this sorcerer into their cellars, but the times of the omnipotence of this institution of the church are in the past, Louis Arpo enjoyed the favor of the Marquise de Pompadour, the king's favorite, under her protection he felt completely safe and continued to rub shoulders with the devil.
It is not known what he put into his product, but the mirror he created in 1743 was very different from all the others - it killed. And many victims simply disappeared without a trace.
The missing banker
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The first reliably known victim of the mirror is considered to be Kirakos Gandzaseki. The Parisian banker of Armenian origin acquired it at the exhibition and was very proud of his purchase.
On September 30, 1769, he got into a carriage and went to his sister's birthday. As a gift, Kirakos carried a luxurious mirror of a famous master. The birthday girl of her brother did not wait for her holiday. The banker did not return home either.
After several days of searching, an empty carriage was found in the forest. The police had to abandon the version of "robbery" - the robbers did not covet neither the expensive carriage, nor the things in it, nor the expensive mirror. Only the passenger and the coachman were missing. The case remained unsolved.
Further, the Arpo mirror disappeared for almost a hundred years, surfaced only in 1853, and again as a gloomy birthday present.
Death of Laura
Young woman Laura Noel celebrated her 23rd birthday. In a luxurious hall, surrounded by guests, she accepted gifts. The servants brought a large mirror and the donor pulled off the fabric with a spectacular gesture. The woman stared at the mirror surface for several seconds, and then without a word fell on her side. The husband standing next to him barely had time to catch his wife.
The woman was carried to the bedroom. The visiting doctor could only record the death of Mrs. Noel from a cerebral hemorrhage.
The mirror was returned to the owner, who tried to get rid of it as soon as possible. Soon the mirror became ill-famed: death followed it into the house. The owners of the mirrors died of strokes or simply disappeared.
In 1910, when the number of strange deaths and disappearances exceeded several dozen, the police commissioner investigating another shady case ordered the mirror to be removed and sent to a scientific laboratory for study. The experts did not find anything, but the mirror remained in the warehouse of the Parisian police as material evidence. And for 40 years the world breathed calmly.
The disappeared marquise
In 1943, the Marquis de Fornaroli received guests at his villa. Among the guests were Wehrmacht and SS officers. The Marquis collaborated with the invaders and made a good fortune on this. With the help of one of the officers, the Marquis acquired an 18th-century mirror from the evidence warehouse of the Parisian police.
An orchestra was playing, footmen scurried among the guests, carrying drinks and everyone was waiting for the decoration of this holiday - the wife of the Marquis - to appear. De Fornaroli decided to go up to his wife's room himself in order to hasten her out to the guests. The bedroom door was closed, no one answered from behind the door. They broke down the door. Scattered cosmetics lay on the floor in front of the dressing table, the chair was overturned. The windows were tightly closed from the inside. There was no marquise.
One of the guests called the Gestapo. Investigators worked for several weeks, but the disappearance of the marquise remained a mystery. A month after the incident, a car drove up to the villa and a gloomy man in a black raincoat got out. He introduced himself as Franz Schubach, an employee of the "Ahnenerbe" - an organization that studied, among other things, the paranormal.
As soon as he saw the mirror in the bedroom, Shubakh ordered it to be covered with a thick cloth and announced the confiscation. As for the missing marquise, "I'm sorry marquis, but you will never see your spouse again."
The list of victims of the mirror is not closed
After the war, Arpo's mirror was returned to the warehouse of the Parisian police and lay quietly for decades until the warehouse was robbed in 1997. Among other valuable things, the criminals took away an old mirror.
19 years later, the mirror has not been found yet. The mystical artifact still roams the world. But if someone ever offers you to buy a mirror of the 18th century with the mentioned engraving, do not take, no matter what ridiculous amount they call you, otherwise you have a chance to add to the sad list of victims of the killer mirror.
Author Klim Podkova