Last night, I dreamt of a cemetery. But, I didn’t wake up drenched in fear which was surprising. In the dream, I wasn’t there to mourn, I was there to read and trace names with my eyes, count years lived in dashes, and wonder how a life becomes a sentence carved in stone. I moved from tombstone to tombstone, trying to imagine laughter and breath where there was now silence.
I think books planted the seed. I’ve read too many stories of people with strange abilities, those who stand beside graves and see the dead person’s final moments unravel like a film reel. And maybe Wednesday played its part too, whispering gothic imagery into my subconscious. But what struck me most wasn’t the setting, it was my body.
At some point, I realized I was holding my breath indeliberately. Just instinctively as if a certain kind of ancient rule had been activated without my permission.
The strange part is this morning, while scrolling through TikTok in that half-awake state, I came across a video on the history of everyday superstitions and one of the questions leapt out at me as Why do people hold their breath when passing cemeteries? And suddenly, my dream didn’t feel random anymore. It felt inherited.
Superstitions are strange like that. They sit inside us, passed down mostly through gestures instead of explanations. No one sits you down and says, This is why you shouldn’t breathe near the dead. Yet somehow, your body knows or thinks it knows.
I did a lil digging before writing this and I saw some say the belief comes from the fear that spirits linger in graveyards and that breathing might invite them into you. Others stated they believe it was once a way to avoid inhaling death or bad air back when disease and decay were poorly understood. And some said it’s simply respect as in a moment of stillness. Some pause between the living and the dead.
Whatever the origin, what fascinates me is I didn’t know the reason, but I performed the ritual anyway. Which makes me wonder how many of our lives are guided by invisible threads, superstitions we don’t remember learning, rules no one officially taught us, fears and reverences stitched into our bones. We knock on wood without knowing which gods we’re appeasing. We flinched at black cats without recalling when they became villains. We whisper around cemeteries, not because we’re told to, but because something older than logic nudges us to.
Perhaps superstitions are the language of the subconscious. A way the past speaks to the present or it’s a reminder that no matter how modern we become, we are still deeply human, haunted, curious and trying to explain the unexplainable.
I believe my dream wasn’t about death at all and I have settled that it was about how the living carry stories they don’t remember learning, how the body remembers what the mind forgets and how sometimes, even in sleep, we are practicing rituals as old as time. Literally holding our breath between what is known and what will forever remain a mystery.
I’d love to know, what superstitions have you caught yourself practicing without knowing why?