“Everyday” Appalachian Superstitions

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

Please welcome guest author Sarah Loudin Thomas. Thomas writes historical fiction set primarily in her home state of West Virginia. To learn more about her stories, visit www.SarahLoudinThomas.com. Her latest novel, The Right Kind of Fool, releases November 3, 2020.

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Have you ever knocked on wood? Or avoided walking under a ladder? I think we’re all at least a smidgeon superstitious. But Appalachia makes a veritable sport of it! In this spooky month of October, I’ve gathered a collection of superstitions common to the mountains I love. 

Here are some “everyday” superstitions to start you off:

• Always leave a building through the same door you entered it.
• If you see a black cat crossing the road in front of you, draw an X in the air three times to void the bad luck. Do it fast, though! You’ve got to finish before the cat reaches the other side of the road.
• When you harvest apples from a tree leave at least one to keep the devil away. (Guess he didn’t learn his lesson about apples!)
• If you spill salt, throw a pinch over your left shoulder. Again, this keeps the devil away. Apparently, the right shoulder won’t do you any good.
• If you’re drinking spirits, pour a little out on the ground to satisfy spirits past (the ghostly kind).
• For good luck in the coming year, open your front and back doors at midnight on New Year’s Eve to let the old year blow out. Goodness knows we should ALL try this when 2021 approaches!

I will confess to being skeptical that any of this will improve my luck. But hey, in a year like 2020, it can’t hurt! Just remember to hang your horseshoe with the open end pointing UP so the luck doesn’t leak out.

Of course, there are also quite a few superstitions associated with death. Often, death would have happened at home back in the hills and hollers of Appalachia—from disease, mishap, or old age. I suppose it was only natural to develop robust beliefs and superstitions about something so difficult yet inevitable. Here are a few of the more interesting ones:

• When someone died, you stopped the clocks to mark the time and prevent another death. I’m not sure how long you had to wait to start them again—instinct suggests 24 hours.
• Deaths were thought to come in threes. If two people died reasonably close together, someone would always predict a third. I grew up hearing this and always found it unnerving!
• If you hear a screech owl at dusk, someone will die. I still feel a jolt when I’m hiking in the evening and hear an owl hoot.
• It’s bad luck to walk across graves. We helped mow the church cemetery when I was growing up, so I’ve stepped on many a grave. I try not to worry about this one . . .
• Pregnant women aren’t supposed to look at a corpse lest their child be “marked.” Marking could be in the form of a physical mark or deformity or it might be a mental deficiency or illness.
• Setting an empty rocking chair in motion signifies death. This one feels like a lovely metaphor more than a superstition. Although I’ve been told by ladies of a certain age on more than one occasion to, “stop rocking that empty chair!”
• And my favorite–bees carry the news of death. I’m not sure how they tell, but I like to imagine it’s with a whisper from their wings.

As an author of Appalachian historical fiction, I enjoy sprinkling sayings and superstitions through my stories. Some I grew up with, some are silly, and some have a strange, bittersweet beauty. Kind of like Appalachia itself. 

More articles on superstitions:

Death, witches and superstitions(Opens in a new browser tab)

Some Appalachian superstitions(Opens in a new browser tab)