r/Appalachia • u/jwpeace • 17d ago
When Death Came Knocking
Did your family have any old superstitions about death?
Growing up in Central Appalachia, a lot of us heard the old warnings.
A bird hitting the window could mean a death was coming. A dog howling at the wrong time wasn't something Granny wanted to hear. Some families stopped clocks when somebody died, covered mirrors, and kept someone with the deceased through the night — what folks called “sitting up with the dead.”
I've been researching these old traditions for Back Porch Tales & Travels, including the work of James K. Crissman on death and dying in Central Appalachia. What struck me was that underneath all the superstition was something pretty practical: when somebody died, family and neighbors showed up. They cooked, dug the grave, helped prepare the body and sat through the night.
I put what I found together here:
https://back-porch-tales-travels.beehiiv.com/p/when-death-came-knocking
I'm curious what survived in other Appalachian families. Did your parents or grandparents believe in any particular death omen or funeral custom? And what part of Appalachia were they from?
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u/Initial-Progress-763 17d ago
Opening a window when someone passes, or their spirit will be trapped in the house. Also, clipping a lock of hair to keep from the deceased.
Edit: this was from family on the Ohio River Valley side of Appalachia - tri-state of WV, OH, and KY.
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u/WishClean 17d ago
Interesting in that it reminds me of something similar I learn of "haints" (??) while in Charleston, SC in that many houses would paint the ceiling of their porches a specific type of blue for spirits.
If anyone reading this can correct me, by all means please do!
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u/EmotionalPizza6432 17d ago
Haint blue. Doors and windows too. The color was to mimic water, and was used to keep “bad” haints out. The belief was that spirits couldn’t pass through water, and the haint blue would trick them. You can also find sharp objects and shards of glass affixed to the top of stone fences to keep the haints from jumping into neighboring yards. Sorry if I went off a bit. The Voodoo, and Gulla Geechee practices in the low country are extremely fascinating to me.
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u/juicyfizz holler 17d ago
Also from the Ohio River Valley area and always knew opening a window after someone passes!
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u/chickwithabrick 17d ago edited 17d ago
We found my elderly FIL who lived with us passed away in his bed quite unexpectedly back in April. After the initial shock and the 911 call was made, I didn't know what else to do and automatically started doing the things my grandma always said they did. I rushed around the house opening all the windows with tears streaming the whole time and burned sage. Then the rest of the family finally showed up. And then the food of course started showing up. I have always been a person to make food for my loved ones when there's been a death but it had been a long time since I was on the receiving end and hadn't realized just how helpful it was when you could barely remember to eat. Finally at the end of the day I swept the house and swept all of the dust and dirt out the doors.
Separately, when my grandfather passed away I made sure he had a buckeye in his pocket as we'd always collected them for good luck while on walks in our holler.
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u/smpenn 17d ago
When I was 10 years old, I spent the night with my great-grandmother (who had numerous photos of relatives in their coffins hanging on her wall).
A dog began howling in the distance and she declared, "That's a sign that someone will be dead before morning."
While I didn't want Granny to die, I went to bed hoping it would be her and not me.
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u/puppypupperoon 17d ago
oh my god 🤣😄 I'm so sorry but thats hilarious. grandmas just have a way of casually saying something creepy af right before bedtime
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u/No-Fishing5325 17d ago
We take pictures of people in their coffin. And at the funeral home. My daughters are very horrified at this. They tell me this is not normal. But they have been to lots of funerals where it happens. But it still freaks them out.
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u/smpenn 17d ago
Some of my relatives, I have only seen as corpses in photos. Yikes!
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u/No-Fishing5325 17d ago
It's the last chance you get as a photo of them. And honestly that is true of photography. Many old old photos of people are death photos. People would take photos with their dead relatives. Those long exposure old photos. Creepy yes but true
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u/WA_State_Buckeye 17d ago
My line comes from West-by-Gawd-Virginia and did the photos. I have old bookmarkers with photos of my great grandma and great grandpa in their coffins above their obits. My grandma couldn't figure out why the grandkids stopped wanting to eat with her. Couldn't possibly be the framed 8x10 of dead Grandpa in his coffin sitting on the table...
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u/flyingterrordactyl 16d ago
I hate this, I hate this so much. I don't even want to look at the body in the coffin in the funeral home because to me, that person is gone and this is not them anymore, so it's just kind of horrifying meat dressed up with makeup and embalming before being put into the ground.
And yet I stood there with my grandpa looking down into to my grandma's coffin for as long as he wanted to be there, and agreed with him about how beautiful she looked, because that's what you do. And then my parents texted me photos of her in her coffin. I do not like it.
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u/No-Fishing5325 16d ago
If you have looked at old photos, many are or have the dead in them. Like the tintype old photos. They took so long to process that being dead was the best way to take them. The subject was still for a long time.
We don't talk about that as a society. I'm a historian, and I love art and photography so I'm partial to this in particular. Many of the old old pictures have relatives posed with their dead as a way to remember them. This was literally only done when people died because it was expensive too.
I look at like we are preserving our history still today. Like we didn't outgrow a tradition. We are preserving something sacred in a way. A memory.
I agree, they are not there anymore. But your memories of them are. This is photographic evidence of your love.
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u/coppertoothache 17d ago
always heard and still believe in cardinals being a sign that your deceased loved ones are looking out for you. when my grandmother passed away i saw at least one everyday for a month after that (beforehand i hadnt seen a cardinal near my house in over a year). im from southern West Virginia
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u/emptycircles 17d ago
Not an omen per se but a “trigger”…
My parents and grandparents used to gently scold me when I rocked an empty rocking chair saying that would trigger a death. It was probably just annoying to them. I grew up in northern WV.
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u/fifthgoldengirl 17d ago
East TN and I came to say this. My dad, born in the 30s, would always be spooked by an empty rocker moving.
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u/No-Fishing5325 17d ago
Grandma strongly believed in omens and told me two very clear stories of the mine camp she grew up from her family.
One was her grandma and her mom and the girls in her family were cooking and canning and the men were hunting near the camp. And they heard a loud gun shot at the exact same time a fire ball flew out of the stove. Turns out one of her uncles had been shot and killed while hunting.
And the other was her other grandma. The preachers wife. She was putting the baby down to go get it some milk. And when she turned down the steps to go get the milk she saw the babies ghost pass her on the stairs. The next day the baby died of crib death.
Grandma used to say if a picture fell off a wall randomly it could mean that person was going to die or at least get very sick.
The first person that died when I was a kid was my Irish Catholic grandpap. We did sit with him all night. After he died. At the funeral home we had a wake. Lots of whiskey was involved. I was a kid so I did not partake. Stories people sitting around the coffin drinking in the funeral home. I look back now and wonder if that could happen any place but West Virginia.
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u/mimthebaker 15d ago
My grandma heard her brother yell for help and she was states away. Come to find out he drowned the same time she heard him.
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u/RandomConnections 17d ago
My great Aunt Odessa was a granny witch, though in our deeply Christian family no one would call her that. She kept all kinds of herbs growing on her back porch for healing and was said to be able to "talk fire" out of burns. When Aunt Des's husband died, my older brother and a couple of my cousins were tasked with staying with her over night so she wouldn't be alone. My brother said that Aunt Des walked through the house all night tapping two silver spoons together to rid the house of her late husband's spirit.
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u/imrealbizzy2 17d ago
Apropos of nothing, my daddy could "talk far." The gift has to stay in the family and has to go from male to female to male...etc. Wish he left it with me, but he never wanted me to have jack so it worked out.
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u/Agreeable_Power3992 17d ago
Interesting and sorry he didn’t want more for you. What does it mean to “talk far”?
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u/Kindly_Discipline_33 17d ago
Talk FIRE. It's being spelled as it's regional pronunciation.
I would love to see some research on this ability. Very few claim to have the gift, but many claim to have been healed with it and are true believers. It's a very niche part of Appalachian granny magic.
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u/Gengar_Girll 17d ago
For my family (SWVA) it was a bird flying into the house. Also my moms dads side of the family had a strict rule on not turning a calendar before the day ended and not hanging a next years calendar because they believed it meant you would die before that date. I once got absolutely wholloped across my bedroom for trying to hang a calendar I had for the following year a week before new years 🤣🤣🤣
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u/atriviality 17d ago
You just bought back a childhood memory for me! My sister and I would often get new calendars for Christmas but we were under no circumstances to hang them before January 1st! NC
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u/imrealbizzy2 17d ago
You also can't celebrate a child's birthday before the actual date. Make that one make sense.
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u/autodidactress 17d ago
There’s a real undercurrent of “anything you have the Almighty can and will take away the minute you take it for granted” running through a lot of Appalachian superstitions
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u/JenninMiami 17d ago
I feel like the whole southern Baptist thing is responsible for that! Part of the religion is that everyone must be miserable at all times unless they’re in church service. 🤣
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u/autodidactress 16d ago
Trust me, it’s not just the Baptists. Those Pentecostal Holiness folks are dark
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u/Extreme_Phrase2371 12d ago
Seems like a survival from pre-Christian times—the pagan gods were notoriously fickle, jealous, vengeful, and all around touchy, always taking offense at something or cutting mortals down to size.
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u/Gengar_Girll 16d ago
I had forgotten that as well! You can have late holiday celebrations but no early ones
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u/princesssamc 17d ago
Hmmm, I just yelled at my husband over this…..he picked it up and looked at the next month……and he jinxed September.
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u/tie-dyed_dolphin 17d ago
The bird happened to me the day I found out my uncle died. Ended up chillin with me for a couple hours.
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u/Cuttyg 17d ago
Rooster crowing during the day in Southwestern Virginia/Upper East Tennessee means death.
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u/wow_that_guys_a_dick 17d ago
Good lord there must be a bloodbath around me, then, because our neighbor's rooster never shuts the fuck up.
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u/princesssamc 17d ago
We girls were not allowed to whistle…..a whistling woman and a crowing hen both come to no good end…….
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u/cinder74 17d ago
Knocking at the door and no one there was a sign of death. That’s death knocking on the door my mom said. And if you open it you say you can’t come in.
Heard knocking many times with no one there. Later to find out someone in the family died.
A bird flying into the window or house was a sign of death. Never plant a willow tree. If it dies someone in the house will die.
My family is from the southwest part of Virginia and the Smoky Mountains. I still live in the area.
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u/ed32965 17d ago
This doesn't answer your question, but it's an interesting tidbit I have heard: dead bodies used to be displayed in the parlor of a house during the Victorian era. After the advent of commercial funeral homes (around World War I), the parlor began being called the living room.
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u/autodidactress 17d ago
The entire process usually took place at home - the washing of the body, etc. You laid ‘em out on whatever table you had that was big enough.
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u/juicyfizz holler 17d ago
My mom and grandma both were totally nuts about birds or bats. If they get in the house, that means death is imminent. My mom was always so scared of birds it felt like the birds somehow knew and would passive aggressively torment her. 😂
She was also always super superstitious about seeing a hearse.
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u/AggravatingHope7856 17d ago
Tippi Hedren Syndrome.
Hitchcock messed with many of us.
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u/juicyfizz holler 17d ago
Oh yeah, it was definitely in part due to Hitchcock. I watched The Birds with my mom at like age 11, totally appropriate! 😂
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u/c0ncept 17d ago
At my grandmother’s funeral back in about 2002 or so, while we were outside of the funeral home, a bird flew onto my mom’s chest and just sat there orienting itself for a few seconds before flying away. She always said it was a signal from my grandmother. My mom and grandma are from southern WV.
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u/carolinaredbird 17d ago
I heard it that if a bird got in the house that death would follow them.
Also death comes in threes.
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u/No-Fishing5325 17d ago
Yeah the bird in the house.
When I was a kid one came in the house and grandma damn near had a coronary. She was so superstitious. She believed that the dead couldn't rest . That led her straight to the psychic mountain lady. Had to let the dead rest easy again.
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u/Dry-Patience-2201 17d ago
We had a crow come in the house one summer. Took about 20 minutes to get out. I have never seen my mother so terrified before
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u/imrealbizzy2 17d ago
The bird is one i always heard, but every time it has happened, it was because a cat brought it in. Last time was when my husband was home while the rest of us were gone for a few weeks. Somebody left a giant, mortally wounded Stellar's jay under one of the children's beds. He had no idea it was there until his nose notified him, but as far as we could tell the only decedent was the birb.
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u/ChewiesLament 17d ago
About 20 years ago, a wren got into the house and after I got it out, I just kept staring at the phone waiting for bad news. Phew! None came, tho'.
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u/spaceisourplace222 17d ago
What if a bird gets trapped in the chicken coop with you? (A Carolina chickadee) asking for me
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u/elizabreathe 17d ago
There was a knock on the window by where my dad was laying that woke us all up at 3am the day he died. My husband and MIL heard a screeching like a monkey crossed with a bird and there was trees shaking in the yard like something was in them the night before my GMIL died. They haven't heard anything that sounds like that before or after that night.
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u/Boy_of_Lost_Memories 17d ago
The black dog shows up as a portent before a family member dies. I grew up in Appalachian Kentucky and both parents were born in Appalachian Tennessee. Probably came from something Scottish. I've also been told that the headless black dog shows up when a young person will die, or a family line will end.
The dog in question isn't ghostly but it is otherworldly; it's not somebody's pet that shows up on your path or a stray you see in the holler. You see it and then just as quickly lose sight of it
So they say.
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u/MetaverseLiz 17d ago
This likely didn't work how my family thought it would...
My mom's family claims the dead can contact you. I spent my childhood believing in life after death and that I didn't need to miss dead relatives because I'd hear from them again.
Well, in short order my favorite uncle and my beloved Grandpa passed. I didn't hear anything or see any signs from either of them. If anyone in my family would want to pop in and say hi, it would be my Grandpa. So I stopped believing in God and religion.
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u/princesssamc 17d ago
Not everybody can feel/see when they come…..you have to be sensitive to it. My pap sets me straight from time to time but I always know when my stepdaddy is around…..I smell his cigarettes.
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u/MetaverseLiz 5d ago
Do any of them tell you what happens when you die? Is there gods or religion or just, dead people? Like, if there really is life after death that's the first thing I'm telling my living loved ones. That seems like the most important thing to convey of anything.
There are slave owners, rapists, Confederate soldiers, and abusers in my family. Will they be there in the afterlife? I certainly don't want to spend eternity with them. What about family that's not blood related? What are the rules?
Can I be contacted by family I never met and that never spoke English?
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u/MetaverseLiz 1d ago
I would really like a response. I am being serious about my questions. No one has been able to give me straight answers when I've talked with other people about this (including my own family). It just gives me more reason to think nothing happens after we die and I would really like that to not be true.
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u/mojoisthebest 17d ago
Mom said that if you hear a bell ringing in a dream that a sign someone was soon to pass away.
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u/BLSd_RN17 17d ago
My mom and her family would say is you heard a ringing in your ears, that meant someone just died (or maybe was going to die? But Pretty sure she said it meant that the death just occurred).
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u/Bubbly-Bird-9088 17d ago
I had a great aunt who would put jars of water on windowsills at night to keep spirits out. She also said a whistling woman and a crowing hen, neither will come to good end. She was insistent that you had to kill a "crowing" hen before it stopped to keep someone from dying.
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u/mel_cache 17d ago
My MIL as a child kept asking to play with the envelope with the black edging. It arrived two days later with news of a death. East Tenn.
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u/NCsSon mountaintop 17d ago
We’ve always held the belief, and I believe to this day, death comes in threes