How many of these superstitions have you done? I can pick out at least four which I have done. One I knew was iffy but I reasoned it away as being okay.

Do you know others which did not make this list?

• Never county the number of cars in a funeral procession.
• Never point at a funeral procession, its bad luck.
• Never take flowers from a grave.
• If you spill salt, immediately throw some over your left shoulder to keep the Devil at bay.
• An owl hooting outside of your window for three nights in a row foretells a death – yours of someone close to you.
• Here are some other death superstitions you may have heard.

Death superstitions involving nature:

• Flowers will grow on the grave of someone who lived a good line. Only weeds grow on the grave of someone who was evil.
• If a bird flies into your window, there has been a death.
• If you see an owl during the day, there will be a death close to you.
• An owl hooting outside of your window for three nights in a row foretells a death, yours of someone close to you.
• If lightening strikes near the house when someone is dying, the devil has come for their soul.
• If it rains in an open grave, it’s bad luck for the family.
• If there is a thunderstorm during a funeral, the deceased has gone to hell.
• If there is thunder following a burial then the deceased has reached heaven.

Physical death superstitions:

• Hold your breath when passing a graveyard so evil can’t enter.
• Another version is: If you don’t hold your breath when passing a cemetery, you will not be buried.
• If you have an involuntary shiver, someone has just walked over your grave.
• If you cast a headless shadow then you will die in the next year.
• If you lie down in a coffin you are taunting death to come and take you.
• Never whistle in a graveyard, you are summoning the Devil.
• Never wear anything new to a funeral. (Shoes seem to have particular significance.)
• Coins should be placed on the eyes of the deceased to pay the ferryman, Charon, to row the departed across the underworld river Styx.

Death superstitions in your home:

• Howling dogs in the night signify that someone ill in the house will die soon.
• If a picture suddenly falls off of the wall, someone you know has died.
• You should stop all clocks in the house where someone dies or it will bring bad luck.
• Open a window in the room when someone dies so that they can move on.
• Cover all mirrors after a death – so that the soul doesn’t get trapped in them.
• A casket must be carried out with the deceased’s feet first.

Death and the number 3:

• If you hear three knocks and no one is there, someone close to you has died.
• If only 3 candles are lit in a room, the person closest to the shortest candle will be the first to die.
• Death comes in threes.

Death superstitions about the graveyard:

• A metal cross on a grave will hold the spirit there.
• A body should be placed in the grave with its head to the west and feet to the east so that when it rises up it will face the sun. Never remove anything from a gravesite.
• It is bad luck to walk on graves.
• It is bad luck to trip when you’re in a cemetery.
• Being buried on the north side of the church is considered unlucky because of the lack of sun. That area is usually reserved for criminals and suicides.
• It is bad luck to go into a cemetery at night, or to be there at the stroke of midnight.

This list is from Joy Neighbors - A Grave Interest

As land becomes more valuable and there are more people needing burial plots, old cemeteries will be dug up for new bodies to replace the old. Think this is not possible? It is already happening (or soon will be) in Cape Town, South Africa.

Graves have been "moved" all over North America. Old family farms with their family plots, gone. Old local churches with their small cemetery plots, gone. Replaced with roads, assorted buildings. Moving or replacing old graves for new might be a little less heard of, but I'd be surprised if it were entirely new.

An editorial about exploring and documenting history. This comes from a forgotten (no posts since 2020) site of a Manitoba, Canada, explorer. I couldn't find a name or anything like social media to help find who they are.

Some of you are aware that Canada has never been considered one of the best countries in the world to explore abandoned sites, due to Canada's national policy for demolition projects of derelict buildings or converting derelict properties over to new owners, often into the hands of non-profit organizations. Oftentimes, a non-profit revitalizes a derelict property preserving it into a historical monument for decades to come. Alternatively, many a non-profit just doesn't have the funding to make a complete conversion and a vast number of the buildings remain derelict at the site for decades longer.

These properties are wonderful opportunities for photographers and historians to explore. Unfortunately, for many of us, we don't know they're out there to explore. No one is going to advertise these histories, locations and so on unless you travel the country roads a lot or keep up with the sporadic media reports about these landmarks. Your only other resource is spending unlimited hours in historical archives.

I'm all for preservation of historical sites, but the renovation process often renders the historical artifacts and architectural features obsolete. Once lost, these are never recovered unless someone documents them first. The preservation and renovation leans more to a symbolic historical monument then anything tangible. We need to remember that often times those derelict sites contain histories our culture doesn't want to remember. And that's why we not only call those marginalized and abandoned but also the forgotten one's.

The kinds of explorations some of us do do NOT end up in our Canadian school system's text books. History is continually erased where those would like it to be erased. However, I ask a vital question about this erasure. How does a culture, a nation, whatever this may be learn from their past mistakes in this manner? Perhaps we're all prone to wanting to hide our mistakes, shove them in a deep, dark closet or up into a musky, damp attic until the day we throw it all away or demolish it out of sight and memory.

Sometimes we can't even do that, as in the cases of nuclear tragedies such as Hiroshima, Chernobyl and Fukushima. Well, as some of us know, this is when we encounter the BS campaigns, orchestrated by governments, the international media and big corporations that have an invested interest in these outcomes. And they would just like us to know they would prefer we know as little as possible. Happy, ignorant sheep continue to be consumers, and every nation needs consumers. Some of us are still waking up' and enraged that democracy seems to have very little to do with 'protecting' the people and more to do with protecting big corporation, this includes the lies and coverups to cover up all the environmental disasters throughout history due to big corporation.

This also includes the cover ups of institutionalized 'mental asylums' where those not wanted in society were suddenly labeled with a 'mental disorder'. Imagine living in a generation where parents or your husband, just thoroughly sick of you for whatever reason, you've become an emotional or financial burden, maybe your husband didn't want to suffer the public embarrassment of divorcing you? So they could just drop you off at the nearest asylum? You have to wonder if those family members slept at night considering the 'cutting edge' therapeutic technologies that went on in asylums, like lobotomies, ice baths, electric shock therapy and brutal restraints to name a few.

This is why it's so essential for some of us to document what we can before it all fades. For me, sometimes it's a fine line between truth and deception, life and death and giving honor to those who have been forgotten, most often buried in unidentified graves. Just another number. No name. Their voices muted and then demolished out of memory. Out of history. This is my passion. Follow us this year as we travel and document Manitoba's abandoned places. Sometimes haunted places. The voices of the past still speak, of our ancestors, our history, right out of their unidentified graves, if we listen closely enough.

I have left a stone on a grave for a family member. But, for my Grandparents, we leave a fresh take out coffee (paper cup) and a cigarette, not lit. It's something they would like, if they were still here. It's not the only way we remember them. But, its how we remember the small every day things about them. Plus, its much easier to leave a coffee than so many other things. I don't want to litter, or cause extra clean up for the staff who maintain the cemetery.

I did wonder about the tradition of leaving a stone on a grave. I found a post about it, from Joy Neighbors, on her old site.

For thousands of years, people were buried in tombs or directly in the earth where they had fallen. Stones were then rolled in front of a tomb as a way of sealing it from scavengers and keeping evil spirits from escaping out into the world.

For those buried in the ground, rocks and stones were placed on top of the usually shallow grave to keep animals from digging up the body. These stacks of stones were known as cairns. Cairns can be found all over the world and vary in size from a few rocks to man-made hills.

Cairns were built not only as funeral monuments but also for ceremonies and defense. Today they are still constructed to mark trails, as seamarks, as sculpture, and as memorials.

Another reason rocks were left on the grave was based on an Eastern European folklore belief that the dead could haunt their burial place, or return to their family and cause trouble. Stones and rocks were used to prevent the deceased from rising up and escaping the body as a spirit, to torment others.

It is also a Jewish custom to place a stone or pebble on a headstone to indicate that you have visited the grave and to indicate respect for the deceased. Adding a stone was also seen as taking part in the Mitzvah of Matzevah or the ‘setting of stone.’

Today, leaving a stone of remembrance is viewed more as a way of continuing this tradition of commemoration. The more stones found at a grave, the more the deceased has been visited and remembered by others. An example would be the scene in Schindler’s List when the people that Oskar Schindler saved visit his grave and honor him by placing stones upon it.

Symbolically, the stones can indicate many things; that love and remembrance are as strong and as lasting as a rock. That as a stone lasts forever so to does love. Even a belief that the deceased is with God, since the Old Testament refers to God as a rock, as in Psalm 18:2 -- "The Lord is my rock…”

Regardless of how the custom came about, it is still an incredible way to remember and respect those who have passed on. Leaving a stone or pebble is a gesture of appreciation for the strong and lasting impression they have made on your life. Stones left by others show a long-term influence in their lives as well. What a wonderful way to leave a lasting tribute of love and honor at the grave site.

Source: A Grave Interest: Leaving Stones on Graves Joy Neighbors.

Description from the site:

I am a Tombstone Tourist: someone who loves to wander cemeteries. I find it akin to visiting a museum: an opportunity to enjoy rarely seen sculpture, intricate carvings, and amazing architecture, all in a tranquil outdoor setting. This blog is about cemetery culture, art, history, issues of death, and genealogy - subjects of current relevance. I usually find something that intrigues me and makes me want to dig deeper. Care to join me? Read on...