The Reaper's Image

"The Reaper's Image" is a horror short story by American writer Stephen King, first published in Startling Mystery Stories in 1969 and collected in Skeleton Crew in 1985. The story is about an antique mirror haunted by the visage of the Grim Reaper, who appears to those who gaze into it.

The story concerns a visit by an irascible antique collector, Johnson Spangler, to the Samuel Claggert Museum in his attempt to buy the legendary Delver's Mirror. The museum curator, Mr. Carlin, ushers Spangler through the building, recounting the history of this rare Elizabethan mirror, which incidents of attempted destruction have plagued. The museum curator also explains the infamous history of the mirror, recounting all the people who have looked into the mirror had mysteriously disappeared.

Carlin tells a skeptical Spangler that an image of the Grim Reaper is rumored to appear in the mirror, standing close to the viewer. Spangler scoffs, but feels unnatural horror when he looks into the mirror and claims to see some duct tape in the mirror's corner. He angrily confronts Carlin, who claimed the mirror was undamaged. However, Carlin claims that there is no duct tape, and Spangler is "seeing the reaper." When Spangler runs his hand over the "duct tape", he feels a smooth surface rather than the rough outside of the tape. When Spangler looks again, the duct tape is gone. As Carlin relates the history of a high school boy who saw the Reaper and disappeared without a trace, Spangler becomes ill and rushes out of the second floor as Mr. Carlin remains behind to wait.

King wrote "The Reaper's Image" at age 18 in summer 1966, shortly before beginning college.^[1] It was first published in issue 12 of Startling Mystery Stories in spring 1969. He was paid $35 (equivalent to $291 in 2023) for the story, which was his second to be published commercially (the first being "The Glass Floor", published in autumn 1967).^[1][2][3] In 1985, a revised version was collected in King's second book of short stories, Skeleton Crew.

Literary critic Michael R. Collings writes that although it draws on Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft, "The Reaper's Image" was "a stronger, more independent piece of atmospheric horror than King had yet produced", making use of flashbacks, self-consistent characterizations, and "allow[ing] the mystery of the Delver mirror to develop its own power rather than imposing a mystery upon the characters, as he had done in 'The Glass Floor'."^[4] Similarly, Darrell Schweitzer comments "The story is quite similar to 'The Glass Floor', but is told more skilfully".^[5] Tyson Blue describes the story as "a traditional Stephen King tale [...] one of his nods to his literary forebears", suggesting the story was influenced by the works of Edgar Allan Poe.^[6]

A short film adaptation of The Reaper's Image was released in 2013.

• Stephen King short fiction bibliography

• "The Reaper's Image" at StephenKing.com
• The Reaper's Image title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• The Reaper's Image at IMDb