I can't tell if my childhood fears are being intentionally used against me or if she is actually just that out of touch
So as a kid, I had a severe fear of ghosts. Still manifests as some paranoia at night when alone.
The worst version of that fear involves mirrors. That one persisted much more strongly into adulthood. I cannot be around mirrors at night in the dark. If a mirror is in the same room I am sleeping in, I have to cover it. If I have to use the bathroom, my head is facing down at the floor until the light comes on.
A little under a year ago, my girlfriend and I thrifted an old standing mirror. I was immediately unnerved by it, and we both kind of half-joked about it being haunted. I had nightmares about it, and I started covering it at night. This is also how she learned about these fears.
Some months ago, she started to claim she had psychic powers. Got involved in a lot of spiritual reading groups. Didn't really think much of it and I try to keep an open mind about things like that, even if I don't buy into it despite my own phobias.
About a month ago or so, I started EMDR. I would talk about it with her. The general themes were that I was learning it was okay to say, "no," that I am allowed to stand up for myself, and for my needs to matter. This is around when I started asking for space to myself again.
I came home one day and found out that her self-proclaimed powers now include the ability to channel ghosts, and apparently she channeled one over some kind of group spiritual therapy call.
Later, she decides to drop that she confirmed there is one in that mirror and that she had asked if it was friendly. Apparently, it said, "No." She said she would talk to some friends about figuring out how to protect my house and keep the mirror safe.
So I'm not exactly in the most stable state. My logical mind is refusing to believe it but my body is getting these slow burning chills all over it as my hairs are standing up.
Shortly after an exchange about malicious mirror ghosts, we were cuddling at night. She expresses appreciation for me a lot, but this time it felt weirdly overbearing and almost artificial. Maybe I'm being paranoid. It just came off as really hamming up how glad she was we had each other.
She eventually put some runes on the mirror and a salt circle around it and then we were supposedly safe.
I did something manipulative myself at this point and set up a test. I leaned into how scared I was genuinely feeling to make it believable while making up complete nonsense. I said I had seen the ghost while my eyes were closed, and I wanted to describe it but I had a horrible feeling that would end badly. Then I said something about how I thought maybe a soulless medium would be safe, because then it would have no entry point. She then praised my intuition and told me I was psychic and didn't know it yet. She validated a bunch of random nonsense I made up on the spot.
As for the soulless medium: I showed her an AI generated image of a ghost. She confirmed that was also what she saw, before suddenly backpedaling and saying something like, "Well, it didn't have the teeth and the gums, but I got the same shadowy figure vibes too." Generic and vague enough that it doesn't really prove much but it still set off some alarm bells.
Needless to say, I am suspicious by now. But then, suddenly, evidently the crisis is resolved. The ghost got sent away by some dude in one of her spiritual groups or something. So I think, "Huh, maybe I was just being paranoid."
I finally successfully take a day to myself after a month, and I'm talking to her on the phone on the way back home at night. I get in my house around 10 PM, still on the phone, cover the mirror, sit down, and she then asks, "Have you stood by the mirror and checked if you feel any presence?"
I told her I already covered it and didn't feel anything.
She then said, "Okay, great. I'll talk to some of my friends to see what else we can do to make sure nothing else can come out of it."
Well, dang, now the hairs are slowly standing up all over my body again and I'm turning all the lights on. Wonderful.
I write this and every single part of me is screaming, "Yeah, the timing is way, way too coincidental, and the subject is way, way too targeted." But then I think, "Well, she does have very spiritual views, and maybe she actually believes this and thinks she is helping. Maybe she'll just integrate anything that loosely fits her beliefs, which is why she was so eager to validate what I said."