Fear of Mirrors
Spectrophobia
The word points two ways and the Latin explains why. Spectrum means an appearance, a form, an image of a thing, and it also means an apparition or a spectre. The 2008 encyclopedia accordingly gives spectrophobia as fear of specters or of ghosts. The modern usage gives it as a specific phobia involving an abnormal and persistent fear of mirrors and an anxiety about seeing one's own face reflected in them. Both readings are inside the root, and the fear itself keeps the two connected: it is sometimes related to the fear of ghosts or of the undead.
Catoptrophobia is the alternative name, from the Greek kátoptron for mirror, and it commits to the object rather than the apparition.
Whether the names mean the same thing
Wikipedia keeps eisoptrophobia separate, as the fear of one's own reflection specifically, which separates a fear of the object from a fear of what the object contains. The Cleveland Clinic does not: its page on eisoptrophobia states that the condition may also be called spectrophobia or catoptrophobia, treating all three as one term for an unhealthy fear of mirrors.
That is a live disagreement between two current sources rather than an old spelling variant, and there is no way to settle it from the outside. What can be said is that a reader arriving at any of the three names will be told something different about how many conditions there are.
Which forms the fear takes
The reported versions divide by what is expected to happen. Some sufferers fear breaking a mirror and the extreme bad luck attributed to that. Some fear something frightening jumping out. Some fear looking directly at a mirror and finding something disturbing inside it, standing next to their own reflection.
Others fear the mirror as a passage rather than a surface, treating it as a link to the preternatural world or a gateway into another one, with the specific dread of being pulled through it by some preternatural force.
And some fear their own reflection in darkness, where the low light lets it distort in strange ways, or where the reflection simply frightens them.
What avoiding mirrors costs
The Cleveland Clinic's page, last reviewed in March 2022, lists what the avoidance looks like, and the list runs from the trivial to the substantial. Mirrors are removed from the house. Items that contain one, a make-up kit for instance, are not bought. Public outings are avoided in case a mirror turns up.
And a driving licence is given up, because the safety mirrors on a car make the person uncomfortable. That is the entry's clearest measure of what the fear costs: a mirror mounted to let a driver see behind them is small, unavoidable and there for safety, and somebody stopped driving rather than look at one.
Why covering mirrors is also a custom
Among the causes the same page lists is a cultural one. Many cultures hold that the souls of the dead travel through mirrors or become trapped in them, which is why mirrors are covered or turned to the wall while a family is in mourning.
That practice is the same behaviour the phobia describes, performed deliberately and by everybody in the house. As with the couples in the entry on eurotophobia who avoided lit rooms, a private aversion turns out to have a public version, and where the avoidance is a rite the word phobia stops applying.
Which fears are reported alongside it
The list of phobias reported alongside this one is unusually revealing:
- imperfection and ugliness
- colours
- empty rooms
- gaining weight
- death
- vampires The Cleveland Clinic adds a parenthesis to the last, noting that in folklore vampires cast no reflection.
Half that list is about appearance and half about what might be looking back. A single object serves both, which is why no account of the fear covers all of the reported forms.
What is in print
Very little that is clinical. The 2008 encyclopedia of phobias gives eisoptrophobia two words. Wiktionary's citations are a self-help book about body image from 2010, a novel from 2013, and a crime novel from 2014 in which a detective notices a row of well-lit changing rooms with, in the author's phrase, enough mirrors to terrorise anyone suffering from it.
That last is the most accurate observation any of the sources makes. A changing room is designed to surround a person with reflections of themselves at the moment they are least prepared to see one, and it is the standard fitting in every clothes shop.
Told apart
Often confused with Fear of Mirrors
- Fear of GhostsThe sources say the mirror fear is sometimes related to fear of ghosts or the undead, and the older definition of the same word is fear of specters outright.
- Fear of ImagesBoth concern a made or captured likeness having power over what it depicts, arriving from folk belief in one case and theology in the other.
- Fear of Body DeformityAnxiety about seeing one's own face reflected overlaps with the mirror avoidance that body dysmorphic disorder produces, by a different route.
Common questions
Questions about Spectrophobia
- Why does one word mean two things?
- Because the Latin spectrum means an appearance or an image of a thing and also an apparition or a spectre. Both senses of the fear sit inside the one root, so a word for the fear of mirrors and a word for the fear of ghosts turn out to be the same word, and the 2008 encyclopedia gives the ghost sense while current usage gives the mirror one.
- How is it different from eisoptrophobia?
- Eisoptrophobia is fear of one's own reflection specifically. This is fear of the mirror, which separates fear of the object from fear of what it contains.
- What do people with it expect to happen?
- The reported forms divide by the expectation. Some fear breaking a mirror and the extreme bad luck attributed to it. Some fear something jumping out, or something disturbing appearing inside it beside their own reflection. Some treat the mirror as a passage rather than a surface and dread being pulled through. And some fear the reflection in low light, where it distorts.
- What is the gateway version?
- A fear of the mirror as a passage rather than a surface, understood as a link to the preternatural world, with the dread of being pulled through by some force.
- What does the fear actually cost?
- A driving licence, in the case the Cleveland Clinic names. Its avoidance list runs from removing mirrors at home and not buying make-up kits to giving up driving because the safety mirrors on a car are intolerable, and to staying away from public places in case one turns up.
- Why do people cover mirrors when someone dies?
- Because many cultures hold that the souls of the dead pass through mirrors or become trapped in them, so the mirrors in a house of mourning are covered or turned to the wall. It is the same avoidance the phobia describes, carried out deliberately and by everybody present, which is what makes it a custom rather than a symptom.
Added 2026-08-23 · Revised 2026-08-26
Nearby in the catalogue
Related entries
- Fear of GhostsWikipedia calls fear of ghosts very common and names no survey. What stands in for a research record: a Wari' spectre, a Papuan funeral racket, one philosopher.
- Fear of ImagesCollinson separated hating images from destroying them, and dated the extreme phase to little more than one generation after 1580.
- Fear of Body DeformityVanity aims to exceed other people; this aims to reach them. Concealed for fear of being read as vanity, and carrying some of the worst suicide figures here.
- Fear of BooksThe clergy and the beadles held the legal and religious documents, and used them on people who could not read. Bibliomania is a hundred years older.
- Fear of ButtonsOne source puts it under one per cent of the United States, another at one in 75,000: three million people against four thousand, and nobody has checked.
- Fear of ClocksThe clean form is chronometrophobia. The spelling everybody uses has an extra letter and a Latin etymology invented to justify it, which does not work.