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Superstition #1247

“I have noticed at funerals of the aged, that when elderly people passed by the casket they would touch the forehead of the dead person. I was confident that there was some superstition connected with the act, because the same look was apparent on every face; but on being asked why this was done, they pretended it was bidding an old comrade good-bye. At last one told me that it was that they might not dream of the dead or see them.”

Westport, Mass.

Source: Current Superstitions (1896), entry 1247.

Fanny D. Bergen, editor.

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Massachusetts

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