An Origin to a saying...

Have you ever got the heebie-jeebies? The shivers down your spine? I am sure you have. But, have you ever heard someone say "Oh, a ghost walked over your grave" when this happened to you.

Well this is something that I have heard so many times over the years. And, something I have said so many times over the years. I recently said it to one of my co-workers and he looked at me like I was completely looney tunes. Which, yes, I am a little looney tunes, but not about this. (honestly, never about anything that could go on Hank's Lore.)

So, I was like well guess we are gonna find out where this saying came from..and boy did I learn a little somethin' somethin'.

One of the first origin stories is that when a person was sentenced to death by hanging - the executioner would bring the prisoner out and walk them to the gallows. And, in walking to the place that the would be hanged for their crimes they would walk over their grave. Essentially they became a walking ghost..

Another origin story comes from the 18th century ...it is said that when you get these chills down your spine you have stumbled across the spot that your grave will eventually be. There was a large belief that those if the afterlife could spread warning and awareness to the living and this was one way for them to do this. This theory is really interesting to me. However, this feeling of shivers happens in multiple places. So, unless you are being cut up and burried in multiple places I don't know how this would be an indicator of your future grave.

This was a saying that was published in written form in 1738 by an author named Jonathon Swift.

"A Wisconsin listener says that when her body gets an involuntary, inexplicable shudder, she says “A goose walked over my grave.” An early version of the saying, “There’s somebody walking over my grave!” appears in a 1738 book by Jonathan Swift, A Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation, in Three Dialogues. The phrase is generally used to describe an eerie premonition, though “A goose walked over our grave” may be used at that moment when a conversation falls silent."

2 others ways that this saying goes:

"someone walked over my grave"

and my personal favorite & the one that I literally said WTF

"a cat walked over my grave"

Have you heard this saying? What's another 'weird' saying you have heard? Tell me everything.

XOXO

Sam