Tag: dead

Victorian Death Superstitions

  • If the deceased has lived a good life, flowers would bloom on his grave; but if he has been evil, only weeds would grow.
  • If several deaths occur in the same family, tie a black ribbon to
    everything left alive that enters the house, even dogs and chickens.
    This will protect against deaths spreading further.
  • Never wear anything new to a funeral, especially shoes.
  • You should always cover your mouth while yawning so your spirit doesn’t leave you and the devil never enters your body.
  • It is bad luck to meet a funeral procession head on. If you see one
    approaching, turn around.  If this is unavoidable, hold on to a button
    until the funeral cortege passes.
  • Large drops of rain warn that there has just been a death.
  • Stop the clock in a death room or you will have bad luck.
  • To lock the door of your home after a funeral procession has left the house is bad luck.
  • If rain falls on a funeral procession, the deceased will go to heaven.
  • If you hear a clap of thunder following a burial it indicates that the soul of the departed has reached heaven.
  • If you hear 3 knocks and no one is there, it usually means someone
    close to you has died. The superstitious call this the 3 knocks of
    death.
  • If you leave something that belongs to you to the deceased, that means the person will come back to get you.
  • If a firefly/lightning bug gets into your house someone will soon die.
  • If you smell roses when none are around someone is going to die.
  • If you don’t hold your breath while going by a graveyard you will not be buried.
  • If you see yourself in a dream, your death will follow.
  • If you see an owl in the daytime, there will be a death.
  • If you dream about a birth, someone you know will die.
  • If it rains in an open grave then someone in the family will die within the year.
  • If a bird pecks on your window or crashes into one that there has been a death.
  • If a sparrow lands on a piano, someone in the home will die.
  • If a picture falls off the wall, there will be a death of someone you know.
  • If you spill salt, throw a pinch of the split salt over your shoulder to prevent death.
  • Never speak ill of the dead because they will come back to haunt you or you will suffer misfortune.
  • Two deaths in the family means that a third is sure to follow.
  • The cry of a curlew or the hoot of an owl foretells a death.
  • A single snowdrop growing in the garden foretells a death.
  • Having only red and white flowers together in a vase (especially in hospital) means a death will soon follow.
  • Dropping an umbrella on the floor or opening one in the house means that there will be a murder in the house.
  • A diamond-shaped fold in clean linen portends death.
  • A dog howling at night when someone in the house is sick is a bad
    omen. It can be reversed by reaching under the bed and turning over a
    shoe.

Types of “restless” dead, relatively active ghosts likely to manifest themselves (and convenient for magical exploitation):

1. Aoroi (from αωροσ, untimely): “those dead before their time.” Those cheated of their full stint of life bitterly stayed back to haunt the land of the living of which they had been deprived. In theory anyone who died of anything other than of natural causes in old age could generate a ghost restless qua aoros, although as a class aoroi tended to be conceptualized primarily as the ghosts of children or babies.

2. Bi(ai)othanatoi (from βιαιος and θανατος, violent and death): “those dead by violence.” The battle-dead and executed criminals, although murder victims and suicides provide the bitterest ghosts in this class.

3. Agamoi (from αγαμος, unmarried): “those dead before marriage.” Both male and female ghosts could be assigned this category, although the female ones were regarded as particularly bitter, insofar as marriage and the motherhood consequent upon it were a woman’s defining rights in antiquity.

4. Ataphoi (from αταφος, unburied): “those deprived of burial.” Whatever the circumstances of death, a ghost could not achieve rest without the due funeral rights. These were importantly distinct from the mere insertion of the corpse into a hole in the ground, and indeed the concealment of a dead body in precisely this way is often presented as the chief obstacle to the peace of its soul.

— Daniel Ogden, Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds