Tag Archives: graveyard

Walking Home Backwards After a Funeral

Nationality: American & Trinidadian
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Glendale, AZ
Language: English

“A superstitious belief in my family and some of my friends have is that after a funeral, we will enter our homes backwards.It’s mainly so the spirit doesn’t follow you home, especially if you go to the graveyard site or cremation site.”

Can you please explain to me how they enter the house backwards?

“From what I’ve seen from my parents, they fully enter backwards, so they don’t start facing our house or like the front door if that makes sense.” She goes on to explain to me that “someone’s been there to let them in, or it just matters that they enter the first door frame facing backwards.”

Context: The informant identifies as a Hindu.

Analysis: In Hindu traditions, this superstition is common after funerals. It is believed to prevent the spirit from following the family home and getting stuck there, essentially aiding in their transition to the afterlife. This tradition is also a way to purify the home from any lingering negative energies after death that might have followed the family home. Spirits and ghosts in folklore tend to be tied to a property or area, so this practice prevents this from happening to their loved ones. This superstition has also shown up in other folk superstitions, and the consistency of walking backwards out of a cemetery seems to be the common trope. This practice shows how universal superstitions might be if you look beyond the religious contexts. 

Jewish Funeral/Death/Graveyard Rituals/Traditions

Nationality: Israeli-American
Age: 17
Occupation: High School Student
Residence: Bellevue, Washington
Language: English

Text:

Jewish funerals don’t use coffins and instead the body is just buried in the ground. The purpose of this is to return the body to the ground where it came from. Gravestones are lying down on the ground over the body. The ten commandments on two stones are placed where the head of the person would be. The graves all face Jerusalem. There is a lit candle at the back of the grave that symbolizes their soul. For seven days after the death (called the shiva), the entire family sits in the house of the deceased. They don’t work and don’t cook but just share stories of the person. The door is meant to always be open so that neighbors can come in to bring food and hear stories. The full mourning period is thirty days where there are other restrictions such as not shaving.

For graveyards, you always have to exit in a different way than how you entered, otherwise the spirits will follow you out. When someone visits a grave, they find a rock to leave as a gift to the deceased.

Context:

The informant is from an Orthodox Jewish family. They heard a lot of these traditions/rituals from their parents and the community around them or from visiting the graves of their family members. The Informant said they haven’t experienced a shiva before but that they regret missing it for their recently deceased grandmother. The informant likes the concept of the shiva because it is a celebration of life and remembering a person rather than being sad. They also like the graveyard ritual of leaving a different way than how you entered because it is fun, not because they believe in ghosts. The informant said that as a kid, they would paint rocks to gift to their deceased family members as a way to commemorate the things they remembered about the person.

Analysis:

The placement of gravestones on top of the body could be interpreted as them keeping the person in the ground. As the culture also is afraid of spirits following a person out of a graveyard then it is not impossible that there could also be a fear of someone rising out of the ground. Putting the person in the ground without a coffin and pointing them towards Jerusalem likely both have religious significance. A person might not be able to rest in Jewish culture unless they have no barrier between them and the Earth. Jerusalem is the promised land to Jewish people so pointing them towards the most significant place within the religion might be to help the spirit back to there in death.

The shiva is a community building event. By creating an expectation for a family to not work or cook, it forces neighbors to come by and support them. Leaving the door open means that everyone is welcome. Community has to come together in times of mourning and it makes it impossible for someone to grieve alone or for someone to die without community remembrance. The shiva is also a time for celebration rather than just sadness. Remembering a person by talking about stories and good memories helps people to feel a sense of resolution rather than tragedy. The seven day period blocks out specific time that is meant for mourning/celebration, giving the community time to process rather than forcing people to move on without working through their emotions. The longer thirty day mourning period likely acts as a reminder of who has been lost and honoring their death through daily actions. The informant felt like they had missed out on part of the mourning process because they missed a shiva, showing its importance for the processing of emotions in family members of the deceased.

Leaving a rock on the grave of someone deceased acts as a way to leave them a gift as well as a way to keep them in your mind. The visitor is meant to find the rock as they go to visit a person’s grave so they have to think about the person and what they might want. The informant mentioned how they found this to be a fun tradition, especially as a child, as it was a way to engage with death through memory and love rather than grief.

Leaving the graveyard in a different way than how you entered is an example of apotropaic magic as well as a prohibitive action. Entering and exiting the same way could bring on something bad but by changing something when you exit, you protect yourself from harm. Death is a scary concept so many people would want to protect themselves from harm while leaving a place that is full of it.

The Basement Ghost of the Chicago Fire

Nationality: American 

Age: 54, 60

Occupation: Producer, Producer/Writer 

Residence: Silverlake, CA, Sherman Oaks, CA 

Performance Date: November 28, 2024

Primary Language: English

CONTEXT:

This story was told by two sisters who were born and raised in a nice metropolitan neighborhood in Chicago in the 1970s.

STORY:

L: Alright so we lived in a building that was built over a graveyard. After the Chicago fire, that whole area was a graveyard, and they dug up all the graves and put the buildings over that area. Why they had the graves in what was potentially some of the best area, I have no idea.

So our house was built over a graveyard; this was not known to me.

We lived in, we had the basement, and we had a bedroom down in the basement–a couple bedrooms and a bathroom. And this was after Roberta had lived down there. I lived down there. And I went to the bathroom, and it was late at night, and as I was–I think I was peeing, I don’t know–the shower, uh, handle– so you have a handle where you turn the water on and off–the shower handle, the backing for it flew off the wall on its own. And so I opened up the thing cause I thought maybe something had fallen, I wasn’t quite sure, and when I opened up the thing, water came out of the shower head. And I freaked out.

And now, you have to understand, I believed in ghosts anyway, because when you live in Chicago you have ghosty experiences.

I freaked out and I ran upstairs to my mother’s room and I said “there are ghosts in that bathroom!”

And she said “what are you talking about? Go away. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She was asleep.

And I went back downstairs and I said okay cool. I’m never gonna shower in that bathroom again, that’s fine. And I went about my business.

Days later, she said “I talked to your sister, Roberta,” who also lived down there “and she said that she agreed with you; there are ghosts down in the basement.”

Roberta, what did you experience?

R: The shower would just turn on. The shower, you’d walk in and the shower would just turn on. 

L: Like it did for me.

R: You’d walk down the hall and suddenly the shower is on, or the sink has been turned on. And there’s no one there. And yeah it’s over a graveyard. It like, they are still finding bones and other body parts when they’re excavating those houses. So… 

L: So I would go into the bathroom, and I would talk to the ghost. I never showered in there again, by the way. I think you did, I never did.

R: I showered in my shoes.

L: I would go in the bathroom, I would pee, I would wash my hands in the sink, and I would talk to the ghost sometimes. I would just chit chat. No one talked to me–I never saw a physical ghost–no one had words back for me or anything like that. But we came to an agreement that I would not use the shower and it would not, I don’t know, kill me.

ANALYSIS:

This story very evidently displays some unexplained instances that occurred in this house, and is a prime example of one element commonly found in ghost stories: improper burial. Because the house in this story is still standing to this day and has not been excavated, it is not known whether or not there were remains under this specific house. But it was made clear that the area was once a graveyard for the victims of the Chicago fire, and the neighboring houses–when excavated–had bones and other remains in their foundations and the soil beneath. So it could very well be possible that the souls of individuals who were given an improper burial still lurk within the basements and abandoned rooms of these homes.

Graveyard rules

Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: New York City
Performance Date: Apr 4, 2023
Primary Language: English

Text:
“Back when I was a child, whenever my family and I were on a trip, if we passed by a graveyard, my mom told me to hold my breath. I think she mentioned it was because the ghosts would become jealous of my breathing and would attack me. Personally, at least back then, I thought it was to be sure you didn’t inhale a ghost. Now I think it was just a way to get me to be quiet”

Context:
When I asked my informant if there were any rules that he followed that had some story or legend behind them, he talked about his graveyard rules. He is unsure of where his mom learned it, but assumes that it was just part of her family as well. He does comment that it was a good way to get him to be quiet on car rides, however.

Interpretation:
It is interesting how small rules such as holding your breath by a graveyard can have a legend behind them. This reminds me of a similar saying in Korea, where if you hold your breath through a tunnel, your wish comes true. This graveyard one is more frightening then the tunnel one however, leading me to believe the goal of both of these sayings is just to keep kids quiet.

You shouldn’t walk across a grave

Nationality: American
Age: 59
Occupation: Creative writing teacher and head librarian at a high school
Residence: Durham, NC
Performance Date: 4/29/21
Primary Language: English

Background: The informant was a boy scout and eventually became an Eagle scout. He remembers a game he used to play with his fellow scouts that involved a superstition about graves and respect for the dead.

TR: The superstition that you shouldn’t walk across a grave. It is bad luck to walk across a grave. The scout troup would meet at a Methodist church and the meetings would be at night. We would play capture the flag a lot and across the property and graveyard in the dark and it would be spooky. I was hesitant to play, because you’re just not supposed to, disturb the dead, particularly at night. It’s all tied to respect for the dead. Back then when you are just trying to scare one another, it added another element, and it’s a long standing superstition that you don’t walk across graveyards, or play capture the flag and run. That seems even worse.

Me: If this is widely held, did you know of the superstition when you were doing it?

TR: Well yeah, it was well known that you aren’t supposed to do it and you’re walking across a body, a dead body.

TR: We thought about it, and had various levels of investment in the superstition, but I was not particularly invested. Some might have been more worried about incurring the wrath of a ghost or receive bad luck, but I didn’t think much of it. The idea of displeased ghosts became more believable playing at night than it would be playing during the day.

Me: Was it more believable at night?

TR: Definitely.

Me: If it was more believable, why did you do it?

TR: The fun of the game weighed in heavily, but the hesitation came from it being disrespectful. It is widely known that it is disrespectful.

Context of the performance: This was told to me over a Zoom call.

Thoughts: The informant considers this superstition just widely known–it’s not officially codified. It takes a sentiment, being respectful of the dead, and turns it into a superstition using an object–the gravestone representing the person it’s placed for. It also reveals children’s thought processes surrounding death, where the fun of the game outweighed any feeling of disrespect. The superstition and “spooky” nature added an element of fun to the game as the informant and his friends tried to scare each other, perhaps signifying young children’s non-confrontation of the taboo; they use the superstition to make the fun scary, but don’t think about the taboo of death that is incongruous with childhood.