You endure the blustering conditions to arrive at your friend ’s dinner party . As you step over the threshold , she offers to take your hat and coating . You oblige , happy to be inside her cosy home and ready to have a warm drink in hand . But just as this gracious hostess take your outerwear out of sight , you realize it ’s bound for respite atop a bed in a spare Edgar Guest elbow room . And that ’s when panic solidifying in .
But why ? For years , mass have believed that putting a chapeau on a bed is bad fortune . Even though it does n’t make gumption , the"hat on seam " bad lucksuperstition has stuck around — ever since hats became part - and - parcel of unremarkable lifespan .
Bad Luck or Static Electricity?
Although the accurate origins of thissuperstitionare lose to history , it ’s believe to have start because multitude thought that evil spirits live in the hair’s-breadth . Most in all likelihood , these vicious spirits were really static buildup . As people went indoors and removed their hat , the static electricity in their hair popped and crackled , a chemical reaction attributed to the emotional state that lurked among their locks and in their hats . By repose a hat on the bed , those same malevolent feeling would channelize onto the very place where they ’d lay their heads at nighttime [ germ : Today ] .
While there are n’t any criminal record of anyone dying or encountering evil liquor after lay a hat upside down on a bottom , there may have been a well rationality to forfend the praxis : head louse . mass may have believed that place a lid on a bed , particularly the hat of a Edgar Guest , made them susceptible to head bird louse that migrated from the lid to the bed .
Cowboy Hats
A lid on the bed had the same intension forcowboys . For this group , putting a cowboy lid on a bed was said to invite mischievous spoilt fortune at best and at bad , foretell of an accidental injury or even destruction . This superstition began during a time where , like most others , cowboys only bathed about once a month . Like all other lid , puncher hat were an easy way to circulate the itchy pest that came with poor hygiene . [ source : American Cowboy ] .
Lice Still Bring Bad Luck
In modern times in the United States alone , an estimated 12 million insect eruption pass off annually in children age 3 to 11 . To make affair worse , bird louse can be disperse through touch with habiliment — including hats [ source : CDC ] .
Waking up to a promontory full of lice — or evil disembodied spirit — the day after a chapeau was put on your seam would give new proportion to having a " bad haircloth twenty-four hours . "
