![]() That could explain why it was considered bad luck to visit a cemetery at night. The other burials could pass into the next life, but you’d be stuck hanging around watching goths drink red wine and read Poe among the headstones. Perhaps that’s why it was considered unlucky. I did hear a ghost tale that the spirit of the first burial remains to guard the cemetery. This was the case even in Jesmond Old Cemetery, which opened in 1834. So brand new cemeteries would often bury an animal, or a vagrant, as the first burial instead. I’m going to assume they meant it was bad luck for the family. I’d consider it would be bad luck for the individual to need to be buried at all, but that’s how the superstition ran. Many considered it extremely bad luck to be the first burial in a cemetery. Avoid being buried first or last in a cemetery Compare that to 1981, when the average age had risen to 73 for men, and 80 for women. For girls, the life expectancy at birth was 43, although the average age was 48. The mortality rate was not the same as it is now. According to the Office for National Statistics, the life expectancy at birth for boys in 1841 was just 40, although the average age at death was closer to 45. But one thing is common many of them predict deaths to follow. Some of these superstitions are difficult to date. Perhaps the superstitions surrounding rain date to a particularly wet area if an epidemic followed a rainy spell, it would be easy to link the bad weather with the following deaths, and so a superstition was born. ![]() It’s also considered good luck if rain falls on the corpse during its journey from the house to the cemetery. It gets even more confusing when you consider the saying “Blessed are the dead that rain falls on”. ![]() The other believes the deceased will go to hell, and a relative will die within a year. One saying states that bad luck will befall the deceased’s family if rain falls in an open grave. Rain also plays a part and I’ve heard two cemetery superstitions around rain and open graves. Leaving the side of a grave before the gravedigger lowers the coffin means another death will follow. Having to move the tools quickly implies the need for several burials on one day, and the only reason I can think of that is during something like a cholera outbreak. Personally, I think that dates to periods of epidemics. ![]() Some believe that gravediggers should leave their gravedigging tools at the site for a day or more. It’s not the only superstition around graves themselves. It’s more likely that jewellery wasn’t buried, again to deter grave robbers!Īs with a lot of things, creating cemetery superstitions is the best way to maintain cautionary practices. If it’s the latter, then diggers should close the grave to deter grave robbers.Ĭorpses shouldn’t be buried with their jewellery, or bad luck would befall the family. If it’s the former, then I’m guessing the second death could be whoever fell into an empty hole. ![]() This one is a bit sticky for me, because it doesn’t specify an open but as-yet-unoccupied grave, or one containing a coffin. Graves shouldn’t be left open overnight or they would herald another death. It dates between the mid-fifth and mid-sixth centuries AD so the east-west orientation appears to have a Christian origin. It seems odd to see cemetery superstitions in full sway in recent times.īut an Anglo-Saxon burial ground (as opposed to a cemetery) in East Sussex has portions that run north to south, and other graves running at other orientations. Their solution was to allow local people to request burial in a section that still ran east to west. The council defended the decision based on the topography of the site. By contrast, in 2012, residents in the Welsh town of Aberystwyth lodged complaints that some of the graves in the Cefn Llan cemetery ran north to south (BBC). ![]()
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