A woman runs through a house, screaming and
crying for help. She looks behind her and catches a glimpse
of a shadowy figure in the next room, and it’s coming towards her. She screams again and runs in the only direction
she can to get away from it, up the stairs. She runs into the bathroom at the top of the
stairs and locks the door behind her. She is breathing heavy as she quickly takes
stock of her situation. There’s a window but it’s much too small
for her to fit through, and even if she could, she’d probably break her neck trying to
drop to the ground below. There’s no way out. She’s trapped. But she has an idea. She takes a deep breath, giving herself a
brief moment to gather her courage before she unlocks the door and opens it. She steps onto the landing and spots what
she was looking for, a telephone on a small table. But then she also sees the shadow of the thing
chasing her coming up the stairs. She runs to the phone and picks it up before
running back into the bathroom again. She shuts the door behind her and starts dialing
nine one one but just as she’s about to dial the last number the phone is ripped out
of her hands and slams against the door. She runs to pick it up again but when she
does, she finds that the cord has been cut. There’s got to be something else she can
try. She rushes to the medicine cabinet and starts
searching for anything she can that might help her. She frantically looks for something, anything,
but is startled by a loud noise. She turns to see the door bulging on its hinges
again and again. Her pursuer is trying to kick it down. She goes back to searching the medicine cabinet,
there must be something she can use. The woman closes the medicine cabinet and
for a moment, time seems to stop. She stares at herself in the mirror, a look
of confusion on her face. She mouths the words “Help me” to herself
in the mirror. The door suddenly bursts off the frame and
slams to the floor. The woman spins around holding the only thing
she could find… a toothbrush. Her pursuer steps through the now empty doorway. He’s a large, terrifying looking man, with
wild, yet focused eyes. And he’s holding the biggest knife she’s
ever seen. The man approaches and the woman cowers in
fear. He pauses for just a moment, admiring himself
in the medicine cabinet mirror and smiling, seemingly very happy with how this entire
scene has unfolded. The man then raises the knife above him as
the woman holds up the toothbrush, as if it will somehow protect her. But it can’t, and the man brings down the
knife. Again, and again, and again. This murder may have occurred over 40 years
ago, but it’s memory is more alive than you might think. Sometimes what happened in the past doesn’t
stay there, and finds a way to repeat itself again, and again, again. Though maybe not in the way that you expect. So join me, Dr. Bob, and find out exactly
why SCP-987 is known to the SCP Foundation as… the Gruesome Gallery. SCP-987 is a collection of thirteen different
wall mounted mirrors of varying shapes and sizes, which have been designated as SCP-987-a
through m. Over half of the collection consists of medicine
cabinets, but the others range in size from small, makeup mirrors to full length mirrors
with the largest measuring one by one and a half meters. The aesthetic style and materials used indicate
that all the mirrors were produced between the 1940s and the 1990s, and there’s nothing
about their construction or immediate appearance that would give the impression that they are
anomalous at all. Photos and video of the mirrors also show
them to be perfectly normal mirrors, with the surfaces reflecting exactly as you would
expect. In all, it appears at first glance that these
are completely normal mirrors, though more in depth research into the mirrors has been
made difficult. You’ll see why later. SCP-987 mirrors will finally reveal their
strange and unnerving characteristics when a person stands directly in front of them
and looks at their surface. When they do, they won’t see their reflection
as they expected, but an image of a completely different place. It was theorized by researchers that these
locations being shown were the mirror’s previous location, and research into the origins
of the mirrors have revealed the original locations of mirrors c, k, and m, which confirmed
this theory to be true. But the mirrors don’t just show a static
location. When someone looks directly into the mirror,
they will see an entire scene play out, one that always depicts someone’s extremely
violent and or gruesome death. Each mirror depicts a different scene and
location, though most of them appear to take place in a bathroom of some kind. The scenes shown vary in length, with the
shortest being just 48 seconds and the longest running for over four minutes. After the scene finishes, it will simply start
again, like a video that has been set on repeat. But the strange qualities of SCP-987 don’t
stop there. After the video loops and repeats itself twice,
the images will start to change. The person in the mirror who is about to suffer
a horrific death, will seem to become aware that someone is watching them through the
mirror. They will often begin soundlessly pleading
with the viewer to help them, growing more emphatic as the scene evolves. If there is an aggressor present in the scene,
they too will sometimes seem to become aware that they are being watched through the mirror
and may even appear to interact with the person who is watching them by making hostile gestures
or writing on the surface of the mirror. Three of the victims portrayed on the glass
of SCP-987 mirrors have been identified, the previously mentioned SCP-987-c, k, and m mirrors. SCP-987-c depicts a well-to-do, 62 year old
male in the bathroom of his California home in 1968. The man is bound and kneeling on the floor
when a young, Asian woman dressed in lingerie enters the room and proceeds to strangle the
man to death. The scene will repeat one time, and then begin
to change. In this instance, the woman will usually stop
at the mirror after she enters the room to reapply her lipstick. She will then kiss the mirror, leaving a red
imprint on the glass before asphyxiating the man on the floor. When looking into SCP-987-k, the viewer will
see a 34 year old man in the hallway of his home which has been identified as being in
Maine during the early 2000s. The man is standing on a ladder while he installs
a new chandelier in the ceiling. After a moment, the man loses his balance
and becomes entangled in the elaborate lighting fixture. As he struggles to compose himself, he accidentally
pulls a length of electrical wire from the ceiling that becomes wrapped around the man’s
neck as he falls from the ladder, leading to him being simultaneously strangled and
electrocuted. When the scene repeats and starts to change,
the man will appear to become more and more apprehensive about his task, and his final
moments will become more and more painful looking. His wife will sometimes enter as well to find
his dead body suspended from the ceiling before the scene ends and starts to repeat. SCP-987-m shows a 20 year old woman in the
bathroom of a hotel room in New York City in 1978. The woman is seen to be reacting to an aggressor
who is outside the view offered by the mirror. The woman looks afraid and will try to run
out of the room, but a man in a denim jacket rushes the woman, stabs her in the abdomen
with a knife, and flees. The woman falls to the ground and dies almost
instantly. When it repeats for the third time, the woman
will attempt to communicate with the viewer prior to the aggressor entering the scene,
but she will appear inebriated and will struggle to communicate clearly. If SCP-987 was simply a collection of mirrors
that displayed the final moments of individuals and changed on repeat viewings in odd and
frightening ways, that would be strange enough, but there’s even more to this bizarre SCP. In addition to the mirrors, is SCP-987-1. Commonly referred to within the Foundation
as “The Curator” SCP-987-1 is an invisible entity, visible only to heat sensitive cameras,
that takes up roughly the space of a two meter tall person. The area it occupies is endothermic, meaning
it drains the heat from nearby objects, in this instance from ones that are roughly one
to two meters away. It has also demonstrated the ability to manipulate
objects up to eight meters away that weigh as much as 150 kilograms. SCP-987-1’s primary behavior is to move
along the ground, going from mirror to mirror in an apparently random pattern. It stops in front of each mirror for roughly
thirty minutes before moving on to the next. It only engages in this behavior when alone
though, and if anyone is present it will maintain at least a three meter distance from them
at all times. The only exceptions to this occurred when
staff attempted to do anything to the mirrors other than gently clean them. If the mirrors are tampered with in any way,
SCP-987-1 will react quickly and aggressively, making any physical research into the mirrors
difficult, if not impossible. Both SCP-987-1 as well as the collection of
all thirteen mirrors, have been classified as Euclid and are currently contained as Research
Site-14 in an airtight five by twelve by three meter chamber with concrete walls, that is
itself enclosed in a Faraday cage. The chamber is monitored at all times by both
standard and thermographic cameras, but despite this, there have been several instances of
SCP-987-1 seeming to breach containment and disappear for short periods of time before
reappearing in the containment cell. On at least five known occasions, SCP-987-1
dissipated from both the normal and thermal imaging cameras. In each of these instances, when it reappeared
a new mirror materialized as well, which has led to the Foundation’s original collection
of thirteen mirrors growing to eighteen in total. And it seems likely that this number may continue
to increase. While in most cases, SCP-987-1 returns with
a mirror that depicts a death that occurred long in the past, in one especially chilling
instance, the 987-1 entity disappeared a full fifteen minutes before the death took place. When it returned, it had the mirror depicting
the freak accident death of a man being killed by his own chandelier. Whether SCP-987-1 had any hand in this death,
or perhaps even all of the deaths, is currently unknown. What does seem likely, is that the presence
of the mirrors in Foundation control is the only thing that keeps SCP-987-1 in containment,
at least most of the time. But be careful the next time you’re performing
a dangerous task and notice that a mirror is in view. You never know who, or what, may be watching. Now go and watch another entry from the files
of Dr. Bob, and be sure to subscribe as we delve further and further into the SCP Foundation’s
classified archives.
