Folklore: Death comes in threes

I have seen second deaths in families, especially a spouse

I know a few people who swear by the "death in threes" belief.... also the fear of a mournful howl of a distant dog....... ive also had family who did the whole body in the house for three days with someone always sitting up with them... the covering of mirrors and clocks, and bottle trees and blue porches are still a very big thing down here. i love all the old customs and beliefs......

Paulm said:

I know a few people who swear by the "death in threes" belief.... also the fear of a mournful howl of a distant dog....... ive also had family who did the whole body in the house for three days with someone always sitting up with them... the covering of mirrors and clocks, and bottle trees and blue porches are still a very big thing down here. i love all the old customs and beliefs......

All of that and more is what this forum area is all about. We've not had an area to discuss these things, and I believe all of folklore tells us the history of "magic" and how it uses natural energies.

Debi said:

All of that and more is what this forum area is all about. We've not had an area to discuss these things, and I believe all of folklore tells us the history of "magic" and how it uses natural energies.

cool, heres a little written piece along those lines of folklore,

The night had long ceased to belong to the living. It had settled into that ancient, hollow hour when the air turns brittle and the stars seem less like light and more like tiny, needle-fine punctures in the void.

In the valley below, the dark was not merely the absence of the sun; it was a weight, heavy and velvet thick. And then it came, a sound that did not travel through the air so much as it emerged from the earth itself.

It was the howl of a dog, though to call it a dog was to mistake the vessel for the message. It was distant, stripped of all domestic warmth, bereft of the simple hunger or territorial anger of a beast. It was a long, thin filament of sound, mournful, undulating, drawn out like silk pulled through a ring of frost. It rose from some unseen ridge, trembling on the threshold between a cry and a psalm.

To those who know the subtle grammar of the unseen world, the sound carried no animal impulse. It was a sound of sadness, the low vibration of a spirit sensing the shift in the ether. A dog does not howl at the moon out of loneliness; it howls because it sees the shadow before the body that casts it appears. It feels the sudden, cold draft left by the turning of the Great Loom, the loosening of a single thread from the loom of a human life.

The note hung in the frigid air, suspended, a silver needle sewing the present to what must inevitably follow. It was an announcement written in a frequency older than speech. Somewhere in the dark, a soul was untethering. The unseen herald had caught the scent of ash before the fire was even lit, the smell of formaldehyde and damp earth blowing backward through time.

The howl frayed at its edges, falling away into the quiet like water swallowed by dry sand. But the silence that returned was not the silence that had preceded it. It was heavier now, expectant, pregnant with a coming absence.

A single window in the distance flickered out. The night held its breath, and somewhere nearby, the first step of an uninvited guest was taken.

Paulm said:

cool, heres a little written piece along those lines of folklore,

The night had long ceased to belong to the living. It had settled into that ancient, hollow hour when the air turns brittle and the stars seem less like light and more like tiny, needle-fine punctures in the void.

In the valley below, the dark was not merely the absence of the sun; it was a weight, heavy and velvet thick. And then it came, a sound that did not travel through the air so much as it emerged from the earth itself.

It was the howl of a dog, though to call it a dog was to mistake the vessel for the message. It was distant, stripped of all domestic warmth, bereft of the simple hunger or territorial anger of a beast. It was a long, thin filament of sound, mournful, undulating, drawn out like silk pulled through a ring of frost. It rose from some unseen ridge, trembling on the threshold between a cry and a psalm.

To those who know the subtle grammar of the unseen world, the sound carried no animal impulse. It was a sound of sadness, the low vibration of a spirit sensing the shift in the ether. A dog does not howl at the moon out of loneliness; it howls because it sees the shadow before the body that casts it appears. It feels the sudden, cold draft left by the turning of the Great Loom, the loosening of a single thread from the loom of a human life.

The note hung in the frigid air, suspended, a silver needle sewing the present to what must inevitably follow. It was an announcement written in a frequency older than speech. Somewhere in the dark, a soul was untethering. The unseen herald had caught the scent of ash before the fire was even lit, the smell of formaldehyde and damp earth blowing backward through time.

The howl frayed at its edges, falling away into the quiet like water swallowed by dry sand. But the silence that returned was not the silence that had preceded it. It was heavier now, expectant, pregnant with a coming absence.

A single window in the distance flickered out. The night held its breath, and somewhere nearby, the first step of an uninvited guest was taken.

Wow...just wow. That certainly set the stage and brought echoes into this space.

And this was perfectly said: It was a sound of sadness, the low vibration of a spirit sensing the shift in the ether.

How often one does not only hear, but feel the vibration change.