A superstition. Thirteen. The unlucky number. Recently I came upon a little group of worried people, gathered round a man lying on the pavement beside a busy London road. They were waiting for an ambulance, because the man had been knocked down by a passing taxi. Apparently he had stepped off the pavement and into the street, to avoid walking under a ladder.
They say this superstition goes back to the days when the gallows were built on a platform. To get up on to the platform you had to climb a ladder. To pass under the shadow of that ladder was very unlucky...
Other superstitions are not so easily explained. To see a black cat in England is lucky. But if you see a black cat in India, it is considered very unlucky. There too, if you are about to set out on a long journey, and someone sneezes, you shouldn’t go.
Break a mirror—you will have seven years’ bad luck. Find a four—leafed clover, you will have good luck. Just crazy superstitions, of course.
I have an African friend. One day he said to me: “If ever an African says to you that he is not superstitious, that man is a liar.”
Perhaps that is true of all of us.
Ghost:
This is Lethbridge’s description of a ghost near Hole House.
One of the first incidents happened near to our home in Devon. One Sunday morning my wife and I were standing on the hill and looking at Hole Mill, which belongs to Mrs. N. I sat down and admired the view. After a time I heard a motorbicycle start up and I saw the paperman riding off and, as I watched, I saw Mrs. N come out from behind the Mill. She was dressed in a blue sweater and had on dark blue tartan trousers and a scarf over her head. She looked up, saw me and waved. I waved back. At this moment a second figure appeared behind Mrs. N and perhaps a meter from her. She stood looking up at me. Mrs. N went back behind the Mill and the other woman followed. I did not know her. She looked about sixty-five to seventy years old, was taller than Mrs. N and rather thin. Her face appeared to be tanned and she had a pointed chin. She was dressed in a dark tweed coat and skirt and had something which looked like a light grey cardigan beneath her coat. Her skirt was long. She had a flat—crowned and wide—brimmed round hat on her head. The hat was black and had white flowers around it. She was, in fact, dressed as my aunts used to dress before the First World War. She didn’t look like the sort of person who was likely to be staying at Hole Mill today. Later we were leaning over a gate, admiring some calves, when we saw Mrs. N alone. ‘Oh,’ said my wife, disappointed. ‘We were expecting to see two of you.’ ‘How is that?’ asked Mrs. N. ‘I have only seen you and the paperman all morning.’
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