Chewing Gum After Midnight
No culture is free from superstitions and many of them are connected with our fear of death. For instance, in many cultures it is still believed that if a baby cries constantly, someone in the household will die soon. If a corpse is brought into a house, three members of that household will die. Taking your socks off and leaving them at the foot of their bed is another way to invite death into the house.
Far more gruesome is an old wives’ tale from Turkey that warns against chewing gum after midnight. In English-speaking countries, the superstition persists that chewing gum remains in your digestive system for seven years, but in Turkey children are told that gum chewed after midnight transforms into rotten, decaying flesh. In some parts of Turkey, the gum wouldn’t wait until the witching hour to turn into dead flesh—any hour after dark would do it.
6Evil Spirits Follow You
In Korea, folks who take old wives’ tales seriously go to a lot of effort to make sure no bad luck befalls them. For example, it is believed that when you move into a new home, the evil spirits and ghosts from the old home move right in with you. It is thought that they slip into the removal van and hide between your furniture to make sure they also land up at the new address.
There are certain “safe” days every month, when the evil spirits are not present or not paying attention, and Korean removal companies will often mark these days on their calendars. Residents will hastily move into their new homes on these days. To trick the spirits even further, they don’t clean up behind them before leaving for their new home. It is said that this throws the evil ghost guys off track, making them think they haven’t moved, until they’re firmly established in the new house. Only then will the spirits realize their original and unwilling landlords have moved, by which time it’ll be too late to follow them. Luckily the old wives’ tale does not include anything about the spirits haunting the newly moved-in family at the old residence.
5Seeing Your Future Husband
Now here is an old wives’ tale especially for those women too impatient to wait to find out who their future husband will be.
Wait until midnight on Halloween. Go stand in front of a mirror in the dark and then light a candle. While staring at your own face, take a bite out of an apple and slowly brush your hair at the same time. Concentrate hard. Slowly your face will morph into that of your future husband. Another option is to peel the apple in a single strip and and then throw the peel over your left shoulder. These peels will then spell out the initials of your future husband (a cynical man might change his name to something beginning with C or S). In some versions the woman’s face does not morph—instead a vision of her Prince Charming will appear behind her and stare back at her in the mirror.
This tale dates back to ancient Celtic times and the festival of Samhain(pronounced SAH-win) on November 1, which is the traditional Celtic New Year. Samhain is almost identical to the modern-day Halloween. The Celts believed that during this celebration, time ceased to have meaning and spirits crossed over from their own world. These spirits included ghosts, fairies and demons. People would light bonfires to protect themselves from them until Samhain was over. It was also believed that apples were magical fruit from the spirit realm—Avalon, where King Arthur is said to lie, means “Isle of Apples.”
4Doorbells Of Death
If you hear a knock at your front door and you get up to answer it only to find no one there, open the door wide for a couple of seconds and then close it. This will let a good spirit in. But don’t open it again if there are more knocks. Not even if they continue for the rest of the night. You might just be inviting an evil spirit into your home. And if there are three knocks the first time around, don’t open the door at all! If there is a knock at your back door, it is the devil himself looking to come in.
Superstitions surrounding door-knocking abound in many different cultures and it’s no surprise that after the invention of doorbells, they started to be included as well.
For example, in some places it is believed that if a doorbell rings continuously for no reason, something dreadful has happened or is about to happen. Whitney Houston’s mother revealed in a letter that her doorbell hadmysteriously started ringing the day her daughter died. She firmly believed that Whitney had come to visit her and was making her presence known by ringing the doorbell.
A woman in east Tennessee claims to have had a similarly chilling experience. After moving into a new house, Emily Miller was woken by the sound of her doorbell ringing at three in the morning. She got up, disgruntled, only to find there was no one at the door. For the next couple of weeks the bell rang at least every second morning at three o’clock. No logical explanation could be found, even after the installation of a motion sensor camera at the front door and calls to local police. No one was ever there. Weeks stretched into months and then years until finally Emily had had enough. She had her son rip the doorbell out of its mounting and throw it away. That night the now-missing doorbell rang again . . .
3Risks Of Falling Asleep
There are many old wives’ tales about the supposed dangers of sleep—not surprising, given a person’s vulnerability in that state. Many people used to believe that having plants in one’s bedroom was a terrible idea. It was thought that the plants sucked up all of the oxygen in the room, ultimately killing the people asleep there. There was also a belief that the soul leaves the body during a deep sleep and so if you’re woken with a start, you could immediately die. This tale is most likely where the urban legend regarding the waking of sleepwalkers originated.
Sleeping in direct moonlight was said to lead to madness and even blindness. Sleeping with a mirror facing you was also a big no-no. Negative energies are supposedly caught in mirrors and reflected back to the sleeping person during the night.
Another creepy old wives’ tale says that whoever falls asleep first on their wedding night (of the bride and groom) will be the first to die.
2Newborn Babies
Due to the high infant mortality rates in pre-modern times, a vast number of superstitions have sprung up around the months after birth. In Russia there used to be a strong belief amongst new mothers that you shouldn’t show off your newborn baby to strangers or take it out in public for at least 40 days. This will ensure that no negative energy or evil presence latches onto your little one. Only the mother and father were allowed to see the baby during this time, not even extended family. In many strands of Christianity, the period between birth and christening is a particularly risky time, as they believe unbaptized babies cannot go to heaven.
A particularly unnerving old wives’ tale from the Dominican Republic warned new mothers to keep a watchful eye on their newborn so that they do not fall prey to the bruja. The bruja is a legendary witch with the ability to turn into a large bird. In order to turn into an avian creature, she has to remove her skin. Then in bird form she can suck the blood of a newborn either through its navel or big toe.
At one point in history, also in the Dominican Republic, there were fears that if a mother rocked her baby boy’s crib when he was not inside it, it would cause the child to become insane. If, on the other hand, they leave a baseball glove hanging above the crib, the boy might grow up to be a talented baseball player. In some parts of the world it is feared that if a pregnant woman gets a fright during her pregnancy and touches her face, her baby will be born with a reddish purple birthmark on the same place the woman’s hands rested.
1Whistling At Night
The sound of whistling seems to be upsetting for many people around the world and also the focus of many old wives’ tales.
Not only is a constant whistling at night very annoying to those who have to listen to it, but it is seen as an invitation for ghosts and even snakes to enter your home. It seems that this Japanese old wives’ tale developed from the time when child trafficking was very prevalent here. According to legend, whistling after dark was a signal to the sellers that children were ready to be taken. It is thought that by creating a tale around it, children would be afraid of making a noise at night, in theory protecting them from these criminals—although it was probably just to keep them quiet so their parents could sleep.
In Korea, the belief that whistling at night would summon snakes or ghosts also existed, and so people would play the traditional Korean pipe flute instead. In Turkey, people were warned against whistling as it was thought to be a summons for the devil himself.
And whistling at night in Hawaii is not a good idea either, because you might just anger one of the much-feared night marchers in the area.
