Legend 2022

Why would you stand in front of a mirror and repeat something like bloody mary or record a video in the mirror hoping that someone else in the bathroom other than yourself would suddenly manifest?

Or even worse,  recite the name Candyman five times? Granted, such exercises are steeped in urban legend, and we have yet to come across a story in the headlines where someone is found murdered and pulled halfway into their bathroom mirror. Yet, knowing full well that there is nothing to be garnered through such folly, why is it that the very thought of the act is held with such macabre reverence? It could lie in the twisted fascination and hope that it is all actually real. But, instead, it's an old abandoned house near the Kapahulu end of Charles Street. The structure has been there for so long that no one really knows the property's history.

Suffice it to say that squatters for a time have made it their temporary home until they were found out and summarily removed by the authorities. The story goes that Angel Dobre and her friends from work chose urban legends as their team-building activity for the weekend. Angel scoured the neighborhood until she came across the abandoned home purely by accident. She was starving for malasada's, and so immediately after purchasing the pink box, she pulled over to eat one of the delectable Portuguese-styled doughnuts very quickly before heading back to work. Little did Angel know that she had pulled up in front of the old abandoned house. When she saw it, it was like the second coming. It was perfect for what she needed. The weekend could not have come soon enough; before you knew it, it was midnight, and Angel and her team were strategically placed in front of the four mirrors in the old beaten-up home. There were three in front of the bathroom mirror, three in front of the mirror in the first bedroom, and three in front of the mirror in the second bedroom. Angel had to act quickly, less than thirty seconds before the midnight hour became a minute past midnight. "Alright," her voice could be heard clearly throughout the dilapidated structure, "on my mark, and, now!"

The terrified murmurs repeated the bloody mary curse first. Then, rather than repeat the candyman curse, they opted for the name of a former workmate who committed suicide while on the job. Cody Suzuki, Cody Suzuki, Cody Suzuki. When the exercise was completed, all nine of the participants gathered in the living room and huddled back to back on the floor, waiting for the results of their collective experiment. It didn't take long. They heard the sound of a mirror crashing to the floor; they rushed to the spot, which took them to a rear washroom where an old washing machine sat. Above it hung the top part of a mirror, with a thick piece of cotton twine behind it, hooked on to a nail on the wall. The bottom half of it was shattered all over the appliance. The nine of them stood there in horrified silence. They missed one. 

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The news said the nine Dobre Finance and Realty employees went missing over the weekend while attending a weekend team-building exercise. No trace of the nine people was ever found and in a way, their disappearance became an urban legend in the Kaimuki/Kapahulu area. The old abandoned house at the end of Charles Street is still there, except now preparations have been made to have it taken down and demolished. The project is taking longer than it should, in fact, it's way behind schedule. The workers are having problems with removing the mirrors, they claimed to have seen other people in the mirror screaming for help. Behind them is a woman wearing a bloody white gown, gloating, and posturing.