Can a ghost hurt you?

I was hoping to get some novel behaviours; not the usual, not walking under ladders. It struck me that human nature being what it is, we always want to feel there is something we can do which would bring a little luck and keep away the bad vibes. And people do strange things indeed. There are people who will argue that we make our own luck or that there is no such thing. Others will say reliance on luck and superstition shows a lack of faith and trust in God. Even those who believe this may still engage in actions which signal they are superstitious too.

I spoke to a few of my colleagues and was surprised to find that even the Internet savvy young ladies (they are on Facebook) would say when they went home late after a party they entered walking backwards. One of them said in her family they believed in “dreams and seeing things”.

What was even more surprising was the alacrity these three 20-something women in this age of computers, cable, cloning of animals and regular scientific updates, should rattle off several other superstitious beliefs.

They told me: when you walk in the dark and feel something following you, light a match to scare it away; if you hear someone calling your name don’t answer (I heard this one from my mother too), when you sweep the house at night, sweep the dust into a corner so you don’t “sweep out the angels”, if a baby is on the ground don’t step over them or they will remain dwarfed, do not check money while sitting on your bed because you could remain a pauper, put garlic in your purse and you will always have money, only brush your hair at night because if you do it in the day, you will become a dunce, when you return from a funeral throw water over your head to ward off evil spirits, make up your bed when you leave home because this will keep the evil off. How do people come up with these “remedies”? Because they had no television?

I take these sayings with a pinch of salt but how to explain being in my bedroom and hearing a voice sounding like my mother calling my name but when I asked, she told me she did not.

A relative said she once felt someone walk up behind her but there was no one else in the house at the time, how do you explain that? Mind over matter?

Another colleague said: “A lot of these things could have a common sense reason for it. I try and work out a logical explanation for it.”

According to him, the superstition of entering your home walking backwards could be simply to see that no one is following you home and not spirits. “If you’re walking backwards, you can see maybe if a bandit is following you. The only thing hurting you on earth is man. I never hear about any ghost killing anybody. My colleague said sweeping dust into the corner could simply be done not to raise the dust and affect other persons sleeping in the home. (The person or persons who came up with this saying could have been living in a one-room dwelling for all we know and the story about spirits was probably added later, to “spice up things”. As we know the ole talk changes as it goes from person to person.)

Trying to put some logic to the belief that putting garlic in your purse, he said “money is one of the dirtiest things around. Garlic could be used to kill germs. It has microbial properties.”

He said salt also has germ killing strength and this was why salt was always mentioned in getting rid of bad things. Commenting on the belief that people should not walk under ladders, he said the original use of a ladder was for the victim to reach the hangman’s noose. And for this, walking under ladders could be associated with bad luck. He said not walking under the ladder could be because someone was painting and the pedestrian could be injured or get paint on their clothes.

“When I walked under a ladder I used to say a prayer. Now I look up to see no one is doing any work.” Logic prevails here.

I consider myself a sceptic in many things involving superstition. But there are things which defy rational explanation. On more than one occasion while washing wares in the kitchen at night there was a strong odour of someone with a strong perspiration. I looked outside to see if there was anyone around or if someone’s sweaty clothing was hanging on the line (although I doubted both since none of my relatives would get by smelling so loud). It happened not long after a relative died but since that relative had no aversion to a bath, and never smelled so while living, there must be another reason. I can’t think of any logical explanation to this as yet.