Folk beliefs

mountain-laurel-hemlock:

So earlier I made a post talking about my Papaw and storms which got me thinking about superstitions and folk beliefs I’ve picked up from my family’s Appalachian roots. Here’s a few that I thought of that I’m pretty sure are Appalachian in origin, but then again who knows.

• light a candle/lantern in the window in bad weather to act as a guide
  (I don’t know if this is a widespread one or just my Papaw)

• open the window when someone dies so their soul can leave the house
• cover mirrors and pictures of the deceased so they don’t see themself and then stay in the house
• stop the clocks or else the spirit will stay
• ask a daddy long legs where something/someone is and it’ll point the way with one of its legs
• windchimes raise the dead
• bells ward off spirits and harm
• when momma was little, Papaw would always have her wear bells if she wanted to go play in the woods to make sure the spirits wouldn’t steal her away
• he did the same thing for me and my siblings
• it also serves a practical purpose of scaring off animals and making kids easier to find
• don’t talk in a graveyard after dark or you’ll get haunted
• it’s fine to sit in the graveyard after dark, the lights you see are the spirits (unless they’re fireflies in which case they’re fireflies)
• groups of these lights are the children dancing!
• just make sure you don’t speak 
• go in the river to wash away sickness
• or use dirty dishwater to get rid of sickness
  (that one’s fun because in one method you get to curse at it a lot)
• method one: rub a rag that’s been dipped in dirty dishwater and wrung out onto the sickness, then take it outside and beat it against a large rock to beat away the sickness. repeat a couple times.
• method two: start the same as method one, but instead of hitting a rock with it, tie it to a tree. as the rag dries and loses the dirty water smell (usually around a week), the sickness will fade too.
• mamaw always insisted ghost water lets you talk to the dead
• ghost water is water gathered inside a graveyard
• it’s bad luck to kill a cricket!
• stump water gets rid of freckles and warts
• stump water is rainwater that collected in a hollow stump, as you can probably deduce from the name
• never take something from the river without leaving something in exchange