Tag Archives: Superstition

Dungeons and Dragons Superstition: Wil Wheaton Dice Curse

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Scottsdale, AZ
Performance Date: April 22nd, 2021
Primary Language: English

Main Piece: 

“Yeah, so, when Wil Wheaton was on Critical Role, kinda like he has a dice curse. Like any dice he touches, he curses- so many nat 1s, so many low rolls. It’s uncanny. And, you know, that’s just kind a fun thing, but my side of it… His dice curse is folklore on its own, but, for me, I had this set of dice that I got when the guy I was dating at the time promposed to me. It was this whole like Critical Role promposal. Super cute and he gave me these dice. And they were fine. But then, after we split up because we weren’t actually interested in each other, these dice rolled like shit. Not always nat 1s, but just kinda rolled like shit. And then I took them to a convention that summer. Wil Wheaton was a guest. And I went up, like had Wil Wheaton sign my DM screen and was like ‘Hey. I have these dice that roll really badly. I know you have your dice curse. I was thinking maybe the two will cancel each other out and… I don’t know, it’ll work, just do something. Trying to see if it’ll backfire.’ And he pulled my bag of dice out, tries but could not break the curse on these dice. He still rolled poorly. Has not rolled a nat 20, he’s below 10 every time. I had to get rid of those dice. I gave them to a friend ‘cause his dice curse is so strong. I think he cursed them even more… I think it still lingers within me, because I still roll so poorly today. My plan backfired.”

Collector: “Is there a way to avoid or counteract the Wil Wheaton dice curse?”

Informant: “Just don’t interact with Wil Wheaton. Don’t give him your dice. I was a fool.”

Background:

My informant is an active participant in online Dungeons and Dragons communities and an engaged member of the fan base for the D&D live-play show Critical Role. The Wil Wheaton dice curse is apparently established meta-lore of the show. It’s widely acknowledged and talked about in conventions surrounding the game. He has become something of a miniature celebrity for his terrible luck. Rituals are concocted in response to this curse, such as testing Wil Wheaton with fresh sets of dice, using his curse on dice that could be used against you, and so on. My informant interprets this as a legitimate curse. For an example of how the folk groups associated with this curse respond to it, see Critical Scope, “Liam and Travis’ secret plan to win the fight in E52 [Spoilers E52],” YouTube Video, 2:13, May 5, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwuU5ZPiqpY. 

Thoughts:

The wide acknowledgement of this curse as a valid and actual curse shows an above average degree of superstition within the Dungeons and Dragons community. I believe this is an example of how superstition appears more prevalently in groups that are dependent on fate or chance for their success, such as gamblers. This is a different circumstance, since even those that make their money from D&D don’t make their money from rolling well in D&D rather than just playing it in an entertaining fashion. However, that the game is based entirely on dice rolls creates a certain value for luck and fate. The specifics of this curse enforce a sense of urgency. My informant needed to get the dice physically away from her. She had it bestowed on her by the presence of a cursed person. She believes she is still cursed. It falls into the same pseudo-disease like formula as “cooties” for children. Bad luck coalesces and becomes virulent in the eyes of D&D players.

Pui Pui: Spitting the words off of your lips

Nationality: United States of America
Age: 55
Occupation: Educational Consultant
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 04/25/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Hebrew

Main Piece:

What does Pui Pui mean?

“It’s like ‘get the words off your lips,’ kind of a purification thing, but it’s also about spitting. It’s like when you don’t’ want to jinx something, like ‘I hope I start feeling better soon, pui pui pui.’ It’s so the evil eye… to get rid of the evil eye, and it’s an Ashkenazi Jewish thing. Plus there’s hand motion associated with it! You kinda flick your hands like you’re getting rid of something, though all of the old people point their hands instead. I guess it can be spelled ‘ptui ptui’ like spitting, but the real question is how is it spelled in the original Yiddish (laughs)?” 

Context: 

The informant is my mother. She is was raised Conservative Jewish and has an Ashkenazi (Easter European) Jewish background. This information was collected during a family zoom call where we were checking in with each other.

Analysis: When explaining Pui Pui to people who have never heard of it before, I often call it the Jewish “Knock on wood.” My entire family uses it as a replacement to knocking on wood whenever we don’t want to jinx something. Most Jews I’ve met have never heard of this saying, and those who have heard of it have strong ties to Eastern Europe. The combination of the spitting sound and the flicking hand motion are reflective of sympathetic magic practices, and it’s as if miming spitting the words off of your lips will actually prevent them from having been spoken. 

The Lake Arrowhead Hand

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 3/19/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: n/a

The following conversation is transcribed from a conversation between me (HS) and my friend/informant (DS).

HS: So what’s your take on The Hand?

DS: Alright so first of all we’ve gotta explain how this lake story came to be. In water skiing, there are different ways of holding the cable that are more efficient than other ways. In some cases, some ways of holding the cable are more dangerous than others. So there’s this way of holding it where you kind of wrap it around your back, but it’s really risky because there’s a risk of you losing your hand if things go wrong. So back in the 1980s, there was this girl who was water skiing in that risky position, right. And she messed up and her hand came right off. My parents talk about this story all the time and I’m pretty sure that it is a true story. The girl even lost her wedding ring because she was wearing it on the hand that she had lost.

HS: So what stories did people start to tell after she lost her hand?

DS: It kind of turned into a ghost story. People around the lake have reported seeing walking hands and all that kind of crazy stuff. They see the old, rusted wedding ring on the hand. They say the hand is still trying to find the body that it used to be a part of. It haunts all night swimmers at Lake Arrowhead and whenever you’re out on the lake at night, and you see a sparkle off in the distance, people wonder if it’s the shine of the ring on the walking hand.

Background:

My informant is a friend that I went to high school and now college with. He spends a lot of his summer in Lake Arrowhead and has a lot of folk stories and traditions that he has gotten from the area.

Context:

So I was visiting my informant up in Arrowhead last summer and I was with him and seven or eight other people. It was late at night and we were all on a boat in the middle of the lake. Besides us, there was no sound coming from anywhere- complete silence out on the water. It was also almost pitch black, with only small amounts of light coming from the surrounding docks. We were all winding down for the night, kind of relaxed sort of vibe. We all started telling ghost stories and legends that we knew in an attempt to scare one another. Amongst the stories was that of the Lake Arrowhead hand. A year later, I was in need of folklore stories and so I asked my friend to act as an informant for me.

Thoughts:

This is the second collection that I have done regarding ghost stories that involve hands, which is an interesting coincidence. I’ve gotten the chance to do a decent amount of reading on the subject of ghost hands in the process and found this example to be compelling for a few reasons. First, this folklore is unique to a small, concentrated population that lives on the crest of Lake Arrowhead. But even though it is local folklore, it still had properties of similar legends from around the world. It is almost as if we take stories from a predisposed list and then augment them to fit our local context, which is a trend that I found to be extremely interesting. I also found it interesting that these folk stories can be generated from true events. The fact that a woman lost her hand in Lake Arrowhead was true, but for some reason, we as humans find it fascinating to add all of this superstition to scary events. Why is that?

No Bananas on Board

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Newport Beach
Performance Date: 4/17/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: n/a

Main Piece:

The following conversation is transcribed from a conversation between me (HS) and my friend/informant (LW).

HS: You have a very particular superstition regarding bananas on your sailboat is that true?

LW: Yeah. Ever since I started sailing when I was young my instructors have told me to never bring a banana with me when I sail.

HS: And why is that?

LW: They would always say that it was bad luck. Like for instance one time I remember my mom packed a banana in my lunch as a snack at one of my regattas and I took it out to eat. My instructor, although somewhat jokingly, told me to make sure I didn’t take it on my sabot because it was bad luck. Just small situations like that.

Background:

My informant is a friend from high school. He has been sailing sabots and CFJs since his childhood and is a member of one of the local yacht clubs in his area. He sailed for both his high school and his local yacht club.

Context:

My informant’s little brother had his coach and team over for a team dinner. The team coach told me about the superstition and my informant elaborated upon it.

Thoughts:

My immediate question to the superstition of bananas in boats was, why does this superstition exist? I found that there are a variety of proposed explanations for the superstition surround bananas. For instance, bananas give off a certain gas that causes other fruits to ripen and thus spoil faster. Perhaps these negative traits of bananas are what caused this superstition of bad luck to become commonplace amongst sailors. There are other explanations also, such as the fact that boats had to travel a lot faster in order to get their banana-filled payloads to their destinations before they spoiled, which prevented fishermen from being able to land the catches they were waiting for. I think that this superstition goes to show how reasonable grievances towards bananas that are now outdated have evolved into the superstitions that we still carry to this day.

Gambling: Winning a 50

Nationality: English, Irish, Scottish, Dutch
Age: 76
Occupation: N/A
Residence: Arkansas
Performance Date: 28 April 2021
Primary Language: English

Main Piece: GC’s father used to go and play dominoes and gamble on that. She said that she “always liked it because [her] daddy would give the 50 dollar bills to me,” because he was superstitious that winning a 50 dollar bill and keeping it was bad luck. GC said that her father would never keep or spend a 50 dollar bill he’d won gambling himself, he would always give it away. Whenever he won a 50, he would leave the game immediately so that his bad luck didn’t start during his next game.

When GC grew up and began going to casinos and gambling, she continued the superstition under the impression that it was bad luck. She’s never even “seen a 50 dollar bill in a casino, never, even on the slot machines. They’ll accept 5s, 10s, 20s, 100s, just not 50s.” She said that when she cashes out from a session, they’ll always pay a 50 with two 20s and a 10 rather than one bill. When she asked her husband, who also goes to casinos, if he’d ever kept a 50 dollar bill when he’d won one, she said he was shocked, almost offended. 

Context: This superstition applies to gambling either in a local community setting or a casino, when the winner of a pot gets a 50 dollar bill. GC is a 76 year old woman living in Arkansas. She goes to casinos with her husband semi-frequently.

Informant’s Thoughts: GC said that she would guess the tradition started due to the relative rarity of 50 dollar bills compared to other bills like a common 20 or 10. While she doesn’t know the origins of this superstition, this could be a reason why it started.

Archivist’s Thoughts: I think that this shows the common idea of gamblers being superstitious. So much of gambling relies on luck that it’s easy to formulate superstitions that attribute one’s bad luck to a misstep they made. Keeping a 50 dollar bill, because of their rarity, could have happened to precede a loss streak, and the tradition became so prevalent that even casinos couldn’t carry 50 dollar bills because it would lose them business.