Taking your socks off and leaving them at the foot of their bed is another way to invite death into the house.įar more gruesome is an old wives’ tale from Turkey that warns against chewing gum after midnight. If a corpse is brought into a house, three members of that household will die. For instance, in many cultures it is still believed that if a baby cries constantly, someone in the household will die soon. BLIND MAN WHISTLE PHONE FREENo culture is free from superstitions and many of them are connected with our fear of death. People would wrap the material around the aching parts of their bodies to reduce the pain and cure the underlying disease. It was also thought that the sheets and other bedding the person was wrapped in when they died would contain some of the magic of their hands. After being touched by the dead hands, the sick person would have to lie down in a bed aligned north to south. Ideally, the dead person should be the opposite sex of the sick person. Many times, an Irish household that experienced a death in the family would be overrun by sick people trying to get to the corpse. In Britain it was believed that a dead hand was especially helpful in reducing swelling. Regardless of what type of disease a person had, it was thought that laying the hands of a dead person upon them would cure it. Folklore has it that the hands of a dead person have healing powers. Otherwise you might get closer to the deceased than you may have thought. Next time you’re at a funeral, make sure to look after your own health. When his relatives gathered at the morgue to prepare his body for the funeral, they were shocked to see it blinking several times.Īfter asking for advice from a traditional healer, the family decided to bury the man in a blanket and not a coffin. The man, who was in his eighties, had had a long, drawn-out illness before he finally passed way. In a creepy turn of events in a small village in north-east Namibia, a corpse halted his own funeral because he refused to keep his eyes closed. In earlier times it was also believed that if a person died and their eyes stayed open, it was the work of evil spirits that wouldn’t let them rest or a sign of a life left unfulfilled. This reasoning has sometimes spread to the British practice as well. In Greek mythology, a coin was placed in the deceased’s mouth to pay the ferryman to take their soul across the River Styx into Hades. To prevent this from happening, the British would close the eyes of the dead person and place two pennies on the eyelids to prevent the eyes from opening again. This was usually assumed to be someone within the family of the deceased person. It was once popularly believed that if a person died and their eyes remained open, they were looking for someone to take with them to their final destination. Today it is just a scary story that those who went to primary school in South Africa in the 1990s can relate to.ĭiscover more old wive’s tales, both chilling and hilarious, in Superstitions: 1,013 of the World’s Wackiest Myths, Fables & Old Wives Tales at ! Several books and an art exhibition have been dedicated to the story. Pinky Pinky seems to have left the building in most cases, with only one or two sightings still being reported as the years go by. It has been suggested that it was an embodiment of the fear young girls had of going to school toilets by themselves in a society where instances of rape and other sexual abuse was (and still is) very prevalent. No one really knows what prompted the Pinky Pinky tale. Naturally, no solid proof of the monster exists. Boys could not see the creature but some claimed to have been attacked by it and left scratched and bruised. It was said to resemble a bogeyman or a tokoloshe (an African mythical creature) and had one paw and one claw. The hysteria grew and sightings of the monster, dubbed Pinky Pinky, were reported at many schools around the country. Girls were warned by their friends not to wear pink to school because this would anger the creature, who would then try to attack or even rape them. With the advent of democracy in South Africa in 1994, a story started doing the rounds in primary schools about a monster that awaits girls in the school toilet. The story of Pinky Pinky is an urban legend and old wives’ tale rolled into one.
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