It sure would be nice to have a little advance notice when things are going to go thoroughly ass up. That way, you could do your very best to avoid whatever might be planning to befall you, or at the very least, have enough of a heads up to stock up on your favorite snacks to help you cope with whatever happens via some good, old-fashioned stress eating.
Speaking of old-fashioned, throughout history, humans have had plenty of things that they’ve considered harbingers of something foul afoot. Here are eight of them…
A Black Cat
Maybe the most classic bad rap ever doled out is that of the black cat. They’re pretty much a touchstone for the idea of an unlucky animal sighting, especially when crossing your path. Where did it come from? Well, in an unsurprising turn, it comes from the Church’s demonization of other religions. Cats were strong pagan symbols, and so were considered evil by the good Christian faith. Pope Gregory IX took it a step further in 1233 C.E. when he declared black cats to be literal incarnations of the devil. It’s a little further than most would go these days, but the stink has stayed around.
A Black Dog
Though black cats may claim the bulk of the bad luck legends, there are plenty of tales regarding black dogs. Especially shaggy black dogs, and doubly especially ones with glowing red eyes, though that seems like a trait you’re much less likely to stumble upon. They’ve got a number of legends to their name, including the Grim, the Barguest and all manner of hellhound. The main offender for these tales in Britain, though, is a legendary ghost dog known as Black Shuck. A huge black dog with, depending on the tale, either one or two glowing red eyes that predicted death was near if you were unlucky enough to encounter it at night.
A White Horse
In Western traditions, it’s usually dark colors that represent ill fortune, but not always. Case in point: Superstitions about pure white horses abound, including things as strange as advising pregnant women not to look at them unless they wanted a difficult birth. One easy explanation would be that a pale horse is famously the steed of Death when it comes to the lore of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Whatever the root, it was pervasive, even causing Oscar Wilde to apparently refuse to ride in any cab drawn by a white horse out of superstition.
Owls
In common modern culture, the event commonly associated with owls is probably graduating from college. If we look to Native American folklore, however, it’s something much less deserving of celebration. Specific outlooks vary from tribe to tribe, but what holds true in most of them is that the owl, through its connection to night, is also connected to death. The Navajo look at them with a mix of worry and reverence, considering them both a messenger of death as well as a powerful, wise and mystical creature.
Eclipses
Considering how awe-inspiring solar eclipses are to this day, even with a full understanding of what exactly is going on up there, you can bet that our ancestors came up with some wild explanations. After all, if you don’t know about the solar system, and the sun suddenly goes black, it generally doesn’t feel like something awesome is about to happen. In Babylon, an eclipse, especially a lunar eclipse, was all but a direct threat to the health and safety of the king.
Ringing Ears
We’ll mix in one positive one, and probably the one you’re most likely to experience and notice day-to-day: ringing in your ears. The modern superstitious explanation, one you might have heard from your own parents, is that someone’s talking about you somewhere. With our modern knowledge of medicine, specifically tinnitus, this is usually said more for fun than as an actual warning. Go back a couple hundred years to the Middle Ages, though, and they didn’t have as much to go off of. So, they naturally assumed that it meant angels were talking about you in Heaven. I tell you, all roads lead to angels with these guys.
Bananas Onboard
Now, this superstition involves an item that seems a whole lot less mysterious: bananas. If you have a friend or family member who’s an avid sailor (READ: rich), see how they feel about you bringing a banana on board. It’s not a myth people really respect nowadays, given the fact that bananas are shipped around the world, but back in the 1700s, having bananas onboard a boat was considered very bad luck.
Explanations are varied and strange, including the fact that when ships sunk, any bananas being transported would float to the water while other cargo sunk, which is pretty eerie if you don’t know how density works. Another even more straightforward explanation is that bananas would harbor venomous little critters that would escape and nibble crewmembers with deathly result. A third, one based in, gasp, actual scientific fact (if only retroactively), is that ripening bananas release ethylene gas, which causes other food to spoil. To be fair, that’s about as close to a cursed object as you can get.
Tripping in the Doorway on the Way Out of the House
I’m probably not following many of the above omens in my own life, but this last one? This I can truly respect. It revolves around the idea that if you trip while exiting your home, you are about to have a terrible day, which pretty closely echoes what I’d mutter if it happened to me tomorrow.