Superstitions, Folklore, & Wives Tales

[Tsquared]

I was searching for a superstitions thread, and I saw the original one was in the cemetery.. so here's an updated version.

Does anyone have any strange superstitions (like Friday 13th beliefs), local folklore, or old wives tales that they'd like to share? I wanted to start this thread, because about a year ago I started having something VERY unusual happen to me. It started with the time 11:11..

.. I've researched on this already, I mean before this, I had no idea about it. I remember the first time I woke up during a school night and my clock read 11:11, and I was like "cool", proceeding to make a wish to myself. Don't remember it, but I guess that could be considered another wives tale as well. Then I began to see the darn number everywhere, like even when I'd randomly look at the clock or radio - it'd be 11:11. I even woke up another night and it was 11:11, from that point on it was like beyond coincidental. In my mind anyways, and I continue to see the number. I recently got karma, and the time read 11:11... okay, maybe that was not so coincidental. I even laugh at my self sometimes, in my case you can see how that is. Lol.

Anyways, this past Christmas when I visited my father's family in Venezuela.. I talked to a 'witchdoctor', you could call him that. I went to get my future read, I mean I honestly didn't believe anything he said. As much as I love the supernatural in my television, I've never been the boy that actually believes the stuff is true. I've done Ouija Boards, Bloody Mary, all that good stuff. BUT, while I happened to be leaving his house I glanced over at his clock.. AND IT WAS 11:11. So, I was freaked. I finally gave in and asked him about it, he said the time was going to be very significant in my life. I blew it off, he knew I didn't believe him.. but in my mind I was like "okay?"

Since then, I've seen it subtly here and there. It's very prominent to me though, I easily spot it out everywhere.. in signs, numbers, pretty much anything that contains some form of 11:11. Then I decided to google it and came up with countless of topics on the time, some people even calling it a phenomenon. I just don't know, I guess it's a little reassurance that I'm not so paranoid. Maybe I've just put too much thought into the pesky little time..

 

[anyatara]

Wow, that's rather freaky.

I've got a lot of strange superstitions, or I used to. These days, I don't believe a whole lot of things. I believe in ghosts and all that kind of thing, but no solid superstitions. I still avoid things like walking under ladders, but I'm not sure I believe it brings bad luck. I've never ouji boards and getting my future read or anything like that. I did used to have this one weird superstition which everyone at my primary school believed, that if you stayed up past midnight and looked into the mirror the devil would steal your soul. =/ Not sure how that orginated.

 

[white avenger]

OnlineAthens.com | Living | Huckaby: Sally Soap still able to scare adults 07/16/06

Soap Sally



When I was little, my grandmother used to tell us tales about "Soap Sally," a crazy woman who cought all bad little girls and boys, made soap out of them, and fed their bones to her dog.


READERS TALES...Urban Legend - Soap Sally - WWW.GUARDIANTALES.COM (This one dates the tale to the 1950's, but my uncle, who's 90, remembers the same story from his childhood, so it's older than that.
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Edit:
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(Regarding Soap Sally, I found this poem.)


Dont Go Near the Smoke House
Don't go near the smoke house,
For Soap Sally lives in there,
She will sneak up from behind you,
And grab you without a care.

Then tie you up,
String you from the rafters,
Then slowly stir her lye,
Waiting for just the right time,

She loves to hear you cry.

Hotter and hotter her soap does get,
Boiling to just the right point,
To make the best soap yet,
Head first she will anoint.

Then stir you up and boil your innards,
Don't think this is a joke,
Search around to find your gizzards,
Your spirit she wants to evoke.

Bring back your spirit,
Cause now you are gone,
She just, will not quit,
Your life has been foregone.

So when you are walking near the smoke house,
Be leery of what goes on,
Tip toe around,
Be quiet as a mouse,
Maybe, you'll make it back home.

 

[Kean]

I am freaky superstitious. I HATE ouiji boards (as Lyri can atest) or anything that messes with the supernatural. I just feel like if you dabble in those things you will bring badness on you.

I think alot of the superstitions I have are very much Catholic and very much Irish.

If there is a new baby to come into the family you would never never bring anything into the house for the baby before they are born, no cot, no pram no nothing. It is seen as awful bad luck.

Or when an infant yawns you make the sign of the cross over their mouth with your thumb. It apparently warns off bad spirits...most likely the fairies. lol

There is a graveyard about two minutes walk from my house, it's about 300 years old. Legend says that the Puca (an Irish spirit) haunts the graveyard at night. I have lived in the same house for 21 years and I still haven't so much went past the top step leading to the entrance of the graveyard.

There's a few more but I can't remember them now...I'll be back if I do.

 

[Skanky Vamp]

I HATE ouiji boards

The new glow-in-the-dark one is cool

There are alot of things here, far too many to go into actually... but there are three places that have actually had national attention, one of which was even featured in the Ghost Hunters television program.

Because of the few indian burial grounds, the fact that many of the homes were used in the underground railroad as well as some nefarious people with Indiana roots (not counting Micheal Jackson and Axl Rose) there are quit a bit of spooky spooky stories.

Probably the most famous haunting is John Dillenger's haunting of Crown Hill Cemetery.

 

[RazzTheKid]

Ehh I didn't used to believe that ouija boards work so me and my friend messed around with one when I was 14 (we were home alone) and umm.. something happend and we were so unbelievably freaked out that we ran out of the house and when we came back in we were even more scared because of something that had happened inside the house while we were outside, and wierd things were just happening for the rest of the day, so I believe ouija boards actually work now and I'm never using one ever again.

There's a graveyard near my friends house that is supposedly haunted by 'The Red Hooded Monk', which I think just sounds ridiculous.

 

[luckystar]

ouija boards are creepy and very real so shouldnt be messed around with, the irish legend of the banshee has always scared me especially since i am convinced i heard it, there is some truth in various myths and legends i believe

 

[itsxpaperdoll]

I find it extremely difficult to believe in anything paranormal, from ghosts and oujia boards to mysterious soap ladies. That doesn't mean that I think that people who say they've had contacts with ghosts or stuff have to be wrong, it's just that I find it really difficult to believe that there is something like a spirit that stays around ofter people die, and that those spirits can actually harm real people (You know, assuming ghosts are bits of energy, not skeletons with a sheet). No, you can safely classify me as sceptical. I believe in the power of the human brain and the powerful and manipulative human pshyche. I am however open to the slight possibility that, in this case, I might be wrong because there's a lot we cannot yet explain.

Anyway, I don't really have any fun stories to tell on this subject. Where I used to live, it was extremely ghost-free.

 

[Tueuse de Vampires]

Paperdoll, there's one story.....the one with our computers 😉 You know which one I mean, when they all mysteriously restarted?


Well, I don't know what to believe. On one hand I try to be very rational and really think about things but on the other hand I know that we are probably too limited to understand everything, so there's the chance that supernatural stuff is going on all around us.
Sometimes I'm curious as to what lies beyond what we know, but as soon as it's dark I'm mostly even too scared to think about things like ghosts. Btw, the Buffy/Angel episodes that involve ghosts (Rm w/ view, I only have eyes for you etc.) are those I would classify as the scariest B/A episodes there are.

 

[InsaneMystic]

IOHEFY can be scary indeed... especially when you watch it completely tired out, drop into second-sleep and wake up at that guys rotten face. 😵

I'd never touch an ouija board or do any kind of séancing... and I get the creeps going anywhere near a graveyard between dusk and dawn. I do have Tarot cards, though (several desk, including one complete deck that I made myself back in '91) - but I don't even remember when I last used them.
I do believe that there may well be ghosts and fairies/nature spirits around, but I prefer not running into them. I hope they leave me alone as long as I return that favor. 🙂

 

[JenniferAlice]

You know Anthony, crazy crap like that is always happening to me too, nothing specific, but there's just too many coincedences, I feel like there's a theme in my life, weird, unanswerable things keep happening to me. Maybe it's just us? Maybe we're special? I think it's because we're in tune with the universe.

 

[CotA]

Onetime i got a very eerie message in my alphabites that said "ooooooo". It was a few minutes later that i realised i was eating cheerios.

 

[StuckinTraffic]

Axl Rose is from Indiana? Huh.

Anyway, I'm moderately superstitious, but I've never had anything come of it and don't expect to. I don't walk under ladders and I don't sweep people's feet with the broom. I try not to step on the cracks in the sidewalk, but with some of them, it's impossible not to. And I hold my breath when I'm passing a cemetary. That one's hard sometimes, there's a really BIG one in my home town. Takes a little while to get past it unless you're speeding!

EmptyColours, I have one like yours, except mine is 12:34. I see it ALL the time, everywhere!

 

[Nabila]

I am not Chinese but I practise FengShui for harmony in my environment, and yeah, wealth luck. To me, it's a science. To a lot of people it's Chinese superstition. For the sake of this fun thread, let's call these my superstitions.

I don't have a TV or mirrors in my bedroom, because I believe, from FS perspective that anything that reflects back at you will bounce off energy. That is particularly bad when you're asleep. Well, everything is made of energy, that would be chi in Chinese.

So for those who play those mirror games, do be careful. Or just don't. lol. Mirrors have evry strong energy. You'll never know who or what is trapped in there.

I don't have statues or ceramic figures of human form in my house. I personally believe they can be inhabited by whatever, especially if they're placed in a place of prominence.lol

And I don't display paintings or art that have no form, as in abstract, because I don't want the frustrations of the artist to flow inside my house.

And never answer if you hear your name being called in the middle of the night when you know everyone else is asleep. Now that would be me being silly.

 

[Edmund Blackadder]

I don't have statues or ceramic figures of human form in my house. I personally believe they can be inhabited by whatever, especially if they're placed in a place of prominence.lol

This suggests to me that you're embarrassed by what you do.

Why?

Personally though, I couldn't live in a house without art work around me, without something pretty adorning my walls.
I like a mirror in my room and I don't believe in all that baloney to be honest - but good for you that you do.

 

[definition of insane]

I don't really have many superstitions any more, but I do remember a few from when I was younger...

My family never followed the thow tooth fairy thing, so when I lost my baby teeth, if a tooth was from the top row it would be burried, and if it was from the bottom row it was thrown on the roof. This was to help my adult teeth grow. So teeth money for me!

My friends and I used to hold my breath going past cemeteries, so that spirits couldn't enter your body. Also if you heard a siren, you'd have to touch white so that your friends or family weren't involved in the emergency.

Also, if you wear a necklace with a pendant on it and the clasp works it way around to the front and touches the pendant, then someone is thinking romantic thoughts about you and if you kiss it before moving it back, they will continue to do so.

But I don't really worry so much anymore, it's too much hard work!

 

[itsxpaperdoll]

Also if you heard a siren, you'd have to touch white so that your friends or family weren't involved in the emergency.

I think we also have something like that over here. But it seems so funny when you think about it: surely, when you hear the siren, it doesn't really make any sense anymore to touch white, because the accident already happened, right?

But anyway, on Cangels post about the computers; we sort of jokingly assume that the house we're living in is haunted by the ghost of the landlord's father. You know, stuff dissapears with perfectly reasonable explanations but it's way more fun to think it's our ghost. But this one time something truly mysterious happened and we still don't have an explanation for it. We were sitting in the kitchen and I suddenly heared the sound of my laptop restarting. There was no powerfailure or something like that, and anyway, that wouldn't have made sense because my laptop has an accu. So I went to check and my laptop had indeed restarted. And, even more mysteriously, there seemed to be no reason for it. Sometimes when I download a new thing for my virus scanner or a general Windows update, it automatically restarts, but there didn't seemed to be a new download installed. And what really made it strange; it turned out later that all the laptops had restarted, seemingly without reason.

So, that's my only ghost story ^^

 

[InsaneMystic]

I don't have statues or ceramic figures of human form in my house. I personally believe they can be inhabited by whatever, especially if they're placed in a place of prominence.lol

I can sort of relate to that, but it's only human figures with a face for me, they totally unease me and have done so since I was a kid... I could never sleep in a room with a doll sitting on a shelf, e.g. It's only that 3D human face, though - photos of human faces, no problem, plush animals, no problem at all (love them very much), faceless wooden artist poser thingies, no problem (actually have one standing in my living room)... But dolls = scary (one reason why I think The Puppet Show was one of the ten creepiest eps of Buffy).

 

[Skanky Vamp]

boo!

we're coming to get you misty.. we're coming to get you

 

[Rebecca]

I am not very superstitious, I can always find a logical explanation for spooky things, and Friday 13th, black cats, ladders and breaking mirrors all seem a load of nonsense to me! One thing that is kinda freaky though, is that whenever I go over to my mums house recently, she always notices that picture frames on her walls have slanted..and she always blames me! When I haven't touched them haha.. I always joke with her that it's my aura moving them but it does seem quite weird. I'm sure it's just her NOTICING they've moved when I'm there but it's fun to scare her 😉

Anyone else's parents tell them about Jack Frost? Whenever it was bitter cold my mum would always sing this song to me before bed
"Look out! Look out!
Jack Frost is about!
He's after our fingers and toes;
And all through the night,
The gay little sprite
Is working where nobody knows."
Always freaked me out so much I'd make sure every part of my body was under the covers!