Ghost in the Mirror

What you are looking at

A gentleman from another century is climbing out of a mirror. His upper body has already broken through the glass, which ripples outward around his waist like disturbed water. He wears a high-collared shirt, cravat and buttoned waistcoat; his hair is swept back in untidy waves; his face is gaunt and set in a stern, distracted frown. In his raised right hand he holds a three-branched candelabrum, and his left hand reaches out past the frame, fingers spread, as if feeling for the room he has entered. The whole figure is cast in pale, milky, semi-translucent resin, so the light passes through him. Around him is a dark, elaborately carved frame in the style of a Victorian looking glass.

This is Ghost in the Mirror by Michael Locascio, a sculptor based in New Jersey who runs the studio and shop Dellamorte & Co. It is a small wall piece, made in multiple casts, and it exists in two versions: the male phantom shown here and a female ghost. Press reports describe a glow-in-the-dark edition as well.

Looking closely

The sculpture works by playing with what a mirror is supposed to do. A mirror shows the room in front of it; here the room behind it, the world of the dead, pushes through. Locascio makes the breach physical: the glass is modeled as a liquid surface, rings spreading where the body emerges. The clear resin turns the figure into something half-present, solid in form but insubstantial in color, the way ghosts are described in nineteenth-century fiction.

Details carry the period mood: the candelabrum, a classic prop of the gothic novel and the haunted house; the clothing of the 1830s to 1860s; the frame with its scrolling ornament. The ghost's expression is not menacing but preoccupied, as if he had been interrupted on some errand of his own.

The artist and the tradition

Locascio has said his work is inspired by Victorian horror literature, the world of Sheridan Le Fanu, Wilkie Collins and the ghost stories that filled Christmas magazines. Reports of his training mention work with live models, skeletons and anatomical dissection while studying sculpture, which shows in the sure anatomy of the hand and face. Through Dellamorte & Co. he sells sculptures drawing on catacombs, mythology and the macabre.

In 2019 and 2020, photographs of the piece spread rapidly on social media and design sites, where it was praised as an ideal object for gothic and "dark academia" interiors. It belongs to a long tradition of haunted mirrors in folklore and fiction, from the covering of mirrors in houses of mourning to the stories of reflections that look back. For older images of death and the supernatural, see our Dark Academia collection, Danse Macabre, and works such as Paul Rumsey's Danse Macabre series and Abildgaard's Nightmare.

Where to find it

Ghost in the Mirror is not a unique museum object but an edition of casts, made and sold by Locascio's studio. Availability, size and finishes may vary; the artist's own shop is the best source for current information.