22 replies to this topic

[Gabriel01]

Hi I have joined this forum as I saw your post - 3 of us all had the same phenomena in a mirror in France - steam glowing halos mine were spinning and face was skull like- none of us could see eah others but only our own - I took a picture and nothing shows BUT the camera was level yet the image rotated.
An author we travelled with said that mirror can access other dimensions and steam can be symbolic of a veil.....but your image looks so similar and we can find no explaination.

[sjlennon]

Mictian, on 03 February 2008 - 01:15 PM, said:

Everytime I get out of the shower, the mirror in my bathroom is always reasonably foggy (I like hot showers!)
However, lately I've noticed that when I look at my own eyes in the reflection of the fogged mirror, they almost look like they're glowing. I don't really know how to describe it, but being a design artist, thought I might try and photoshop what it looks like i'm seeing. Making a cameo appearance in my thread will be Christian Bale. I tried to make it look like the reflection in a foggy mirror aswell.

Here we go
<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v106/LeThaL_DoSaGe/eyefog.jpg" border='0' alt='linked-image'>

That's the best that I could come up with at the moment, and actually looks quite close to what I see.
What's going on here? I thought i'd post this in the "Natural World" section because I don't think it's anything paranormal, and I'm assuming there's some explanation.
Just really intrigued, it's quite strange. Anyone have any ideas?

did you have your eyes checked for glaucoma?

[BeastieRunner]

I have the same thing happen in my mirror. Looks creepy but I started to notice it when we moved & when I changed all my bulbs to CFLs. I'm interested in this phenomenon, too!

Light blue eyes and lots of steam here, too.

Edited by BeastieRunner, 27 July 2011 - 10:12 PM.

[UFO_Monster]

I've done this before (I think). Nothing like the image the OP created, but my eyes have shone in the bathroom after taking a hot shower. It didn't freak me out so much as temporarily "blind" me. I'm guessing it had something to do with the six light bulbs and the thick steam that was lingering.

[Sweetpea369]

I just had this same thing happen.  Except I was staying in a hotel with my daughter, a girlfriend and her daughter.  My girlfriends daughter went in and took a long hot shower.  When she was finished she came out and said "what is up with that mirror in the bathroom, my eyes look like headlights".  We all walked in and each looked at ourselves and all experienced the same thing.  When I looked it actually scared me so bad I automatically jumped straight back and out of the bathroom. My eyes are dark brown and my girlfriends are blue so I don't think that has anything to do with it.  We all moved around and it didn't matter where we stood the reflection was the same.  I was so freaked out by this that I came home and got on line trying to fine something that would explain what we had experienced.  That is how I found this site.  Total freaky!!!

[giant781]

Hi there, this thread might be dead, but its still the top google result when searching for this phenomena. I am a university student taking an Atmospheric Radiation class where we are learning about interference and scattering of light. Two days ago I experienced the eye-halo phenomenon while in a bathroom in Vegas over the weekend. I have never seen it in my own bathroom mirror. My professor who is supposed to be an expert on this hasn't heard of it before, but we talked about it.

There are definitely still a few mysteries about this, but allow me to explain what I do understand. This is a "glory" type effect. Light coming straight at a foggy mirror is scattered in all directions by droplets floating in the air (steam), longer wavelengths scatter farther (red has a long wavelength). Then this scattered light is reflected back by the mirror. So its actually happening all over the mirror, but scattered light of all colors all reflected back looks like plain white light, the normal case. However, your eye is small so if you are sort of in the line of sight of the light source (doesn't have to be right behind you, but if the mirror can see like a light right above your shower opposite the mirror that's good, if you only have lights above the mirror it should not be as good, but still possible), you'll see the way its light is being scattered preferentially based on wavelength. It is an observer effect, has nothing to do with eye color, so a person with one totally identical but glass fake eye would only see the eye-glory in their working eye. Two people in there should only see glories in their own eyes, not each others.

Light is scattered in this way (Mie scattering) when the scatterers are close to the size of the wavelength. Since visible light has very tiny wavelengths, abnormally tiny steam droplets floating in the air may be what causes this. It's possible it also has to do with the size of the droplets on the mirror, but I'm not sure. A mirror with a thin film of soap left on it will not fog so much and will have big droplets. A dirty mirror also will have big drops. A very clean mirror should make the smallest drops, perhaps why many of us saw this in hotels and not at home where the mirror might not be cleaned as often. But this may have more to do with floating steam droplets than the ones on the mirror. A way to make floating droplets very small is to have small particles for them to condense on already in the air, this is known in the atmospheric science community as the "aerosol effect". Aerosol particles like smoke would help, so I wonder if those who have seen this are smokers or used an aerosol spray before taking the shower? A good experiment would be to smoke in the shower room right before taking the shower, which is what I did in Vegas that I don't normally do at home.

[Todd5683]

Two days ago I had the experience, I got out of the shower, as I was drying off I went to the mirror which was foggy and all I could see was two glowing perfectly round eyes very similar to the picture on top of the page, but where my iris is the glow was more intense. I stepped away from the mirror obviously I was looking at my eye's, so I went and got my friend and told her to look into the mirror while I was and asked her what she saw and she said "well I can kind of see your outline" I said you don't see anything else and she said NO. I squinted and they were still there the same size as my eyeball would be, I rubbed off half of the condensation on the mirror and had one eye normal and one eye glowing. I had no light on in the bathroom and only ambient light from a cloudy day coming in the window. So it is not reflections off a light. If it was my friend would have seen it too. One thing of note, lately I have been sun gazing, which is looking at the sun but not directly kind of the outer rim of the sun. I am wondering if our eye's do not store light? Anyways, very strange and not at all fearful just strange.

[Sparrow_Design]

I am also getting this, but they are black halos - not white. I got my wife to stand next to me and asked her if she could see the halos. She said she couldn't see any halos around hers or my eyes. There is a window next to the mirror that throws light into the bathroom, so I think that has something to do with it. I am going to try it in a differed bathroom and see if it still happens.
Thanks for the info Giant781. I'm sure it's just an illusion though feels a little spooky.