Irrational Fear?

I'm sure we all had them when we were younger, mosters in the closet, the boogie man under the bed... but mine was a bit more disturbing and a little less far fetched.

It all started one day in 1st grade, I was on my way to the buses to go home at the end of the day, when I heard two girls I knew talking about some story they had heard from another friend earlier. At first I was only mildly interested, only eaves dropping slightly to hear if it was anything interesting.

After Listening for a few minutes on how this was supposed to be some sort of scary story I joined in and asked what it was about... This was my first mistake. I was very soon informed that it was about someone called "Bloody Mary". Apparently, according to the rumor, if you stood in a dark room, in front of a mirror, with a flashlight/candle, and spun around 3 times while saying her name, Bloody Mary would appear in the mirror standing in what looked to be your living room sitting on your couch or in one of the chairs. She would be horribly scary, drenched in blood, and say all sorts of scary things to you, and if you didn't do something particular to appease her then she would come into your house through the mirror and kill you.

Now for a 5 year old this was a very scary thing to hear, but I played it cool in front of my friends and said I wasn't scared. When they asked if I wanted to come over to one of their houses and try it to see if it actually worked, I strongly protested stating, "Theres no way that's real, so I'm not gonna do it!" They brushed me off as boring and went on their way. Little did they know the seeds of fear they had planted in the mind of the poor young me.

As soon as night fell at my house and it was time to go to sleep I realized that the bathroom attached to my room had a rather large mirror in it that I could see from my bed. This immediately triggered a strong amount of panic in my small mind. I very quickly connected the mirror to the possability of Bloody Mary. From then on it became a battle of not looking at the mirror and whenever I did (day or night, it didn't matter) I would become frantic and attempt to get away from it as quick as I could, but at night when I went to sleep there was no possibly way to avoid this. So I would often just sit in my room in the place farthest from the mirror and hope that some angry, blood covered woman trying to kill me didn't come screaming out of it.

To this very day I still feel a sting of disturbance if I stare at a mirror in a dark room for too long. This is made very difficult by the fact that my current room has a rather large mirror in it, if anything I try to avoid staring at it for too long. Thankfully I usually bury my head in my pillow and fall asleep before this happens, but this is how I obtained my fear of mirrors.