Roxana told me she heard this Magical Superstition from her Mother when she was quite young. She was playing with compact mirrors at the time, so Roxana estimates she was about seven when she first heard this superstition in her home in Orange County, California.
She says, ”So I was young and sitting in the living room and it was really sunny. I had a compact mirror in my hand, one of those stupid toy princess ones – and I was playing with it in the room, making reflections with the mirror on the walls. And she said, ‘Don’t do that. When I was little I did that and someone told me not to do that, because if you reflect the sun with the mirror, then your father will die a week later. And a week later my Dad died.’ So then I got freaked out because her dad Did die, you know? So I got freaked out and stopped.”
Now, Roxana says if she’s standing by a window with the sun coming through it, she’ll stand facing the sun so the mirror isn’t reflecting the sun’s light. I believe being told this superstition at such a young age makes it hard for her not to believe it now, whereas those of us who have never heard this superstition will likely find it hard to believe in. I also believe the severity of the impact upon Roxana’s family – her grandfather dying a short time after her mother was seen reflecting the sunlight and chastised for doing so – as connected to this piece of folklore makes it difficult for Roxana to simply disregard the action.