Mirrors have featured in ghost stories throughout the history of the genre. They function as a “door” between realities, a window into the past - like in folk superstitions and tales: in literary ghost stories this motif is so widespread because transitional situations and the contact of the present and the past are essential for the genre. Later Gothic writers made use of the folk mythology of mirrors but also regarded them as narrative frames thus discovering new possibilities for the play with different levels of reality, with objective facts and their subjective interpretations. Sometimes, especially in later texts, comic versions appeared where playing with easily recognizable conventions was much more important than creating the atmosphere of supernatural horror and suspence.