David Bertolino

I am hesitantly creeping into a topic that's been with us longer than written language.

Longer than cities.

Longer than most of the stories we tell around the fire.

Superstitions.

They're everywhere, woven into our habits, our rituals, our entertainment, and even our architecture of fear.

But where did they come from? And why do they still have such a grip on us? Superstitions were early attempts to control the uncontrollable.

They were survival tools, psychological armor against a world that didn't care whether you lived or died.

Superstitions are ancient, older than organized religion, older than recorded myth.

Early humans lived in a world they couldn't explain.

Storms, disease, death, the movement of the stars.

When you don't have science, you build meaning from patterns.

And sometimes those patterns become rules.

One of the earlier examples comes from Mesopotamia, where people believed that stepping on certain cracks in the ground could allow evil spirits to rise and follow you home.

Sound familiar? That idea traveled.

Centuries later, children chant, step on a crack, break your mother's back.

A nursery rhyme with a lineage stretching thousands of years.

The Egyptians believed that mirrors held fragments of the soul.

Breaking one wasn't just bad luck, it was spiritual damage.

That belief eventually morphed into the seven years of bad luck superstition, which still makes people wince when a mirror slips from their hands.

And the number 13, its roots may lie in ancient Norse mythology.

Loki arriving as the 13th guest at a feast, bringing chaos and death.

Later on, Christianity added its own layer, Judas, the 13th guest at the Last Supper.

Two cultures, two stories, one shared fear.

That fear of 13 didn't stay in history.

It climbed into our buildings.