Ghosts of the Bluegrass

9. Death Omens and Superstitions

“See a pin; pick it up; all the day you’ll have good luck.” “Don’t step on a crack or you’ll break your mother’s back.” “If you find a penny with its head up, you will have good luck.” Superstitions? Probably. Real predictions of things to come? Surely not! Yet even those who scoff at such sayings may find themselves picking up pins and avoiding cracks in the sidewalk. Most of us feel uncomfortable walking under ladders. People still regard Friday the thirteenth as—potentially—a bad luck day. Some athletes will wear the same socks or other item of clothing as good luck, and the lucky articles will not be washed as long as the athlete is winning . One could go on and on recounting superstitious beliefs, which are numerous and varied. Death omens are common to all cultures. For example, the clicking sound of the deathwatch beetle foreshadows death in a family according to many people in England, the United States, and parts of Europe.1 The omens of death are numerous and varied. The appearance of a bird in one’s house means a death in the family, and certain birds such as crows or owls can foretell a death. The howling of a dog, or the appearance of a ghostly coach, or the sound of its wheels trundling outside can frighten a family, particularly if one member is ill. Death omens abound in literature. Shakespeare uses omens to foretell death in many of his plays. One omen he uses in Anthony Death Omens and Superstitions Chapter 9 151 152 Ghosts of the Bluegrass and Cleopatra was an eclipse of the moon to predict the death of Mark Anthony. In The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe uses a sinister black bird that will not leave the perch above the narrator’s door as an omen of his own death to come. One could go on and on recounting superstitious beliefs and omens. This chapter contains several stories of death omens and beliefs about death collected from Central Kentuckians. We think you’ll find them interesting. (Knock on wood!) Apparition Foretells Death When I was little, my grandmother used to tell the story about when her little boy, Charlie, was at the point of death. They were quarantined in with typhoid fever, and the doctor had told them that Charlie would never make it, that he would die. So her and Grandpa had set up with him night and day, and they were tired, so when they got the little boy to sleep that night, they went out on the porch, and was setting there just resting. All at once they looked up, and they saw something come to the fence. It looked like it was a white figure with outstretched hands. So they sat there awhile, and they looked at it, and wondered what it was. Then all at once, Grandpa got up, and as he walked near the fence, it just disappeared. Grandma said that was an omen that her little boy was going to die, and, sure enough, late that same night, he died. Female, age 51, Harrison County Clock Strikes Before Death My mother told me that one night before Grandpa got killed, she was sitting in their living room late, finishing sewing a dress. They had a clock in the bedroom that hadn’t run for years, but at twelve o’clock that night, the clock struck. She said it wasn’t long after that someone knocked on their door and told them that Grandpa had got killed at Lair Station on the Death Omens and Superstitions 153 railroad at twelve o’clock, the same time Mama had heard the clock strike. After that night, the clock never struck again. Female, age 69, Harrison County Muted Noise Precedes Death My half-Indian grandmother told me this one time. I was staying with my grandparents in their house when I was about nine years old, but I was too young to understand what was happening at the time. My grandmother claimed to have heard some sort of muted noise prior to my grandfather’s death. This noise would come and go. All of a sudden it ceased about the time my grandfather passed away. She and I were the only ones present when he died. She didn’t know that he was that close to death. Male, age 50, Harrison...