Travel Superstitions and Lucky Journey Beliefs

Leaving home can come with an unexpected number of rules. Sit down before you go. Don’t turn back once you’ve left. Watch who crosses the road in front of you. Throw water behind the person who’s travelling, avoid the unlucky row on the plane and, if you’re the pilot, apparently there’s nothing unreasonable about refusing to fly without the same battered teddy bear you’ve carried for years.

Travel is particularly good at creating superstition because even the most carefully planned journey includes things you can’t control. Cars break down, flights get cancelled, luggage disappears and weather changes. Older journeys involved much greater risks, so leaving home could genuinely mean stepping into uncertainty.

That uncertainty has produced beliefs about what you should do before leaving, what you shouldn’t do once the journey has started and which signs might tell you whether continuing is a good idea. Some survive as everyday habits. Others sit in old folklore collections and sound wonderfully strange now.

This page concentrates on journeys by road, rail and air, along with the rituals surrounding departure and return. Beliefs belonging specifically to boats, fishermen and sailors are covered separately in Superstitions at Sea.

Why does travel attract so many superstitions?

You can control when you leave home. After that, your plans increasingly depend on other people, machinery, roads, weather and chance.

That was even more obvious before modern transport. A long journey could mean difficult roads, unreliable horses, dangerous crossings, getting lost or spending days beyond easy contact with home. If something happened after you left, help might be a very long way away.

Superstition gives you a small amount of control at exactly the point where real control starts disappearing. You sit quietly for a minute, carry something lucky, wait for the right sign or undo an unlucky mistake before continuing. None of those things changes the road ahead, but they can make leaving feel a little less exposed.

Psychologists have found the same pattern in other uncertain situations. Rituals become especially attractive when the outcome matters but can’t be guaranteed, which helps explain why travel sits so comfortably beside sport, theatre, exams and other places where people develop little rules of their own.

In Russia, everyone sits down before the journey begins

You’ve packed the bags, put your coat on, found the passport and reached the point where everyone should be heading out of the door. In a Russian household, this can be exactly when everyone sits back down.

The custom is often known as prisest na dorozhku, essentially sitting down for the road or journey. Travellers and the people seeing them off pause together for a short period before departure, traditionally with the hope that the journey will go safely.

Russia Beyond includes sitting down before a journey among familiar Russian superstitions and describes everyone in the house taking a seat for about a minute before somebody leaves on a long trip.

Whatever you make of the luck, there’s a practical advantage that’s difficult to argue with. The rush stops. For a few seconds nobody is carrying bags, checking the taxi or shouting from another room. That gives you one final chance to realise your passport is still sitting beside the kettle.

It’s one of those rituals that can keep making sense after the supernatural part loses its importance. You might not genuinely believe sitting down protects the journey, but once your family has always done it, getting straight into the car without that final pause can feel strangely unfinished.

Going back for something you forgot can be the unlucky part

Russia gives you another travel rule that becomes considerably less convenient once you discover your phone is still charging upstairs.

Returning home after you’ve already started a journey can be considered a bad omen. If going back is unavoidable, one familiar way of breaking the bad luck is to look at yourself in a mirror before leaving for the second time.

Russia Beyond records both parts of the belief. Going back after departure is unlucky, but looking yourself in the eye in a mirror before setting out again is supposed to interfere with the omen.

The fear of turning back is much wider than Russia. A 1907 American study now preserved by the Library of Congress records the belief that returning for a forgotten object after beginning a journey brings bad luck. Irish folklore collected in the 1930s contains the same warning.

One County Louth record puts it very plainly. If you start a journey and turn back, it is unlucky.

That makes the belief interesting because the traveller hasn’t encountered anything threatening. Nothing has crossed the road and no ominous bird has appeared. The journey has gone wrong because the clean moment of departure has been broken.

It’s almost as though leaving has to happen once. Go out, keep going and don’t make the journey begin twice.

Serbia sends travellers away with water behind them

If someone pours water behind you as you leave in Serbia, they’re not trying to make you turn around and clean it up. Spilling water behind somebody setting off on a journey is a traditional way of wishing that things go smoothly. The custom is also used before other important departures, including exams and job interviews.

The idea is wonderfully literal. Water moves easily, so the person leaving should move through whatever lies ahead just as easily.

Study in Serbia describes spilling water behind someone as a widespread regional good-luck custom, with the water poured immediately after the person leaves so their journey or important task will run as smoothly as flowing water.

Versions of the custom are known elsewhere in the Balkans and neighbouring regions too, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey and parts of the Caucasus and Middle East. The wording and explanation can change, so it’s better not to treat every version as one identical tradition.

What remains familiar is the image of somebody leaving while water moves away behind them. Instead of watching the traveller disappear and hoping everything goes well, the people staying at home get something small to do about it.

Irish travellers once watched very carefully to see who appeared first

Older Irish folklore could make the first few minutes of a journey feel remarkably crowded with warnings.

Records gathered for the National Folklore Collection in the 1930s repeatedly mention the person or animal encountered after setting out. A man could be lucky. In some areas a fair-haired or red-haired woman was treated as an unlucky first encounter. One County Leitrim account says a dark-haired man was fortunate to meet, while a red-haired woman could be enough to make someone fear the journey would go badly.

These beliefs reflect the social attitudes preserved in older folklore and shouldn’t be turned into modern advice about judging strangers by their hair colour or sex. They tell us what particular communities recorded, not what Irish people today are expected to believe.

Animals could take over once the humans were out of the way. A 1938 National Folklore Collection record from County Leitrim says a young lamb facing the traveller was lucky while one facing away was unlucky.

Magpies were watched too. A record from County Mayo says one crossing the road before a traveller could mean bad luck, followed by the familiar counting rhyme beginning with one for sorrow and two for luck.

This makes the journey itself feel almost secondary. Before you’ve travelled any meaningful distance, the road has already started giving you signs to interpret.

Old boots could be thrown after somebody for luck

Not every Irish travel belief waited for an omen. Sometimes the people staying behind could try to improve your chances themselves.

A folklore record from County Louth says that when people were starting a journey, old boots were sometimes thrown after them to bring good luck. The same Dúchas account places the boot throwing beside several other road and journey omens.

Shoes have picked up plenty of unrelated beliefs over the centuries. They can be unlucky on tables, tied to weddings and hidden inside buildings as protective objects. Throwing footwear after a departing traveller gives them yet another job.

The custom wasn’t unique to Ireland either. Throwing an old shoe after someone leaving on a journey or beginning a new stage of life appears in British folklore too, particularly around weddings and departures.

Whether the traveller appreciated having somebody’s old boot launched in their direction is unfortunately missing from most folklore records.

Even rain could be good news at the beginning of a journey

A wet start doesn’t sound like anyone’s idea of ideal travel, but one Irish belief turns it into a good sign.

A National Folklore Collection record from County Mayo says that if the day is wet when you set out on a journey, you’ll have good luck.

That is almost the opposite of the way we normally think about travel weather. Rain delays plans, makes roads unpleasant and leaves you carrying damp luggage. Folklore doesn’t necessarily care about any of that. Once rain has been assigned a lucky meaning, the inconvenience and the omen can exist at the same time.

It also shows why weather beliefs can overlap with travel without needing an entire second weather page. The rain matters here because of when it appears. It becomes an omen because somebody sees it at the beginning of a journey and gives it a meaning about what happens next.

New England tea grounds could predict a journey before it happened

Sometimes you didn’t need to leave the house before discovering that travel was supposedly in your future. An 1897 collection of New England signs and superstitions records people reading journeys in tea grounds left inside a cup. Long lines or paths could mean a long journey, while shorter ones suggested a shorter trip.

The book, What They Say in New England, is preserved by the Library of Congress and contains an entire collection of predictions drawn from tea grounds, dreams, animals, household accidents and other ordinary events.

This is closer to divination than a protective travel ritual. The tea isn’t meant to make you take a journey. The shape left behind is interpreted as evidence that one is already waiting somewhere ahead.

That might be useful if you enjoy surprises. It is considerably less helpful if the tea grounds predict a long trip and you’ve already used all your vacation days.

Airlines sometimes remove an unlucky row entirely

Modern aviation can put extraordinarily advanced engineering beside a very old fear of certain numbers. Some aircraft have no row 13. The numbering simply jumps from 12 to 14, as though removing the label changes anything about the physical row sitting in exactly the same place.

It isn’t universal. Plenty of airlines use 13 without a problem. Others omit it because enough passengers dislike the number that there’s little benefit in forcing somebody to spend an entire flight sitting in a seat they already believe is unlucky.

Euronews found row 13 missing on aircraft operated by airlines including Lufthansa, Ryanair, Air France, Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Qatar Airways, Emirates, KLM and Iberia. Aircraft and configurations change, so this shouldn’t be treated as a permanent rule for every plane in those fleets.

Lufthansa has also omitted row 17 on some aircraft because 17 carries an unlucky reputation in Italy. The Roman numeral XVII can be rearranged into VIXI, a Latin expression usually understood as “I have lived,” which can carry the uncomfortable implication that life is over.

The missing rows are a good example of superstition affecting something completely real. The number itself has no effect on the safety of the flight, but passenger discomfort can still influence how a cabin is numbered.

The wider history of the western fear of 13 is covered in why Friday the 13th is considered unlucky.

Pilots have carried some very strange things for luck

If nervous passengers develop travel rituals, pilots have hardly been immune.

Early aviation was dangerous enough to make luck feel like useful equipment. Aircraft were less reliable, navigation was primitive and wartime pilots repeatedly climbed into machines knowing there was a genuine chance they wouldn’t return.

The Royal Air Force Museum records pilots carrying rabbit’s feet, toy bears and other personal lucky charms Its collection contains a teddy bear carried on every operational flight by Flight Sergeant Frederick Cooper during the Second World War and a tiny wedding-cake decoration carried by air gunner Jim Chapman.

There were lucky animals too, or at least objects pretending to be them. Arthur Whitten Brown carried a small black-cat mascot called Twinkletoes when he and John Alcock made the first nonstop transatlantic flight in 1919. The toy crossed from Newfoundland to Ireland with them.

A black cat is an especially good choice if you want proof that luck doesn’t follow one universal set of rules. The animal has been considered unlucky in plenty of traditions, yet here one was deliberately taken along as protection. You can follow those contradictions in why black cats are considered lucky in some places and unlucky in others.

Some wartime pilots refused to fly without their lucky object

The more dangerous flying became, the more elaborate the rituals could get.

Smithsonian research into First World War aviation describes French ace Georges Guynemer carrying the name of an earlier aircraft onto later planes in the hope that its good luck would come with him. Edwin Parsons wired a stuffed black cat to his aircraft and reportedly refused to fly after it was destroyed until he found another one.

Baron Manfred von Richthofen, better known as the Red Baron, was described as highly superstitious and flew with a lucky scarf and jacket. Eugene Bullard, the first Black American combat pilot, had a monkey named Jimmy that was regarded as a good-luck mascot.

Air & Space at the Smithsonian documents these aviation superstitions and mascots from the First World War. Later crews continued doing much the same thing.

Another Smithsonian account of Second World War and Vietnam-era pilots records lucky silver dollars, red bandanas, soft toys and aircraft believed to be either charmed or jinxed. One bomber crew even carried a real boomerang aboard an aircraft named Boomerang because a boomerang was supposed to come back.

That last one hardly needs its symbolism explained. If you’re flying somewhere dangerous, an object famous for returning to where it started is about as direct a lucky charm as you could choose.

A lucky ritual can become part of the pre-flight checklist

The objects weren’t always enough. Some aircrews developed precise actions they wanted completed before takeoff.

Research into wartime aviation has recorded pilots dressing in a certain order, touching particular parts of an aircraft and repeating routines before every mission. One bomber crew supposedly delayed an entire takeoff because a rear gunner had forgotten his usual ritual of spitting on the tailfin.

None of that improved the aircraft mechanically, but you can see why the routines became powerful. If you perform the same sequence before several flights and return safely each time, the ritual becomes connected with survival. Deliberately skipping it before the next dangerous mission can suddenly feel much harder than repeating it.

That same pattern survives in ordinary passengers. Jennifer Aniston spent years touching the outside of an aircraft with her right hand and stepping aboard with her right foot first. She later said she had stopped relying on the ritual after using hypnosis for her fear of flying. Her experience appears in the site’s collection of celebrity superstitions and lucky rituals.

Japan has charms made specifically for safe travel

Japan gives us an important distinction because not everything carried for a safe journey should automatically be reduced to superstition.

Omamori are small protective amulets associated with Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. They can be made for particular hopes or concerns, including health, exams, relationships and traffic safety. Some are specifically intended for travel and can be attached to a bag, kept with a passport or placed inside a vehicle.

The Japan National Tourism Organization explains that traffic-safety and travel omamori are among the charms available at Japanese shrines. The British Museum also holds a Japanese omamori from Chion-ji decorated with cars and traffic lights and specifically made for safe travel.

These belong within living religious and cultural traditions, so calling an omamori nothing more than a quirky Japanese superstition would miss the point. They’re included here because they show another way people have looked for protection when travelling, but they don’t belong in exactly the same category as avoiding row 13 or refusing to turn back for a forgotten wallet.

That distinction matters throughout folklore. An object can be protective without everybody using it for the same reason, and a religious practice doesn’t stop being religious just because somebody outside the culture thinks it looks superstitious.

Why is the moment of leaving so important?

Look back through these beliefs and a surprising number happen before the traveller has gone very far.

Russia sits down before departure. Serbian families pour water just after someone leaves. Irish folklore watches the first person or animal encountered on the road. Turning back can spoil the journey before it has properly started.

The beginning matters because it becomes a miniature version of everything that follows. A smooth departure suggests a smooth journey. An interruption, unlucky encounter or wrong turn feels as though the trip has started by warning you.

It’s the same reason New Year superstitions care so much about the first visitor, first meal and first action of the year. Beginnings are unusually easy to turn into predictions.

There’s more on that idea in New Year Superstitions and Lucky Traditions Around the World, where the first few minutes of January manage to acquire an impressive amount of responsibility.

Roads make perfect places for omens

A road gives an omen something folklore loves. Direction.

An animal doesn’t only appear, it crosses in front of you. A person doesn’t simply exist nearby. They’re the first person you meet after leaving. Something faces towards you or away from you, approaches from the left or right, blocks the path or moves across it.

That lets an ordinary encounter become a little piece of narrative. You were going somewhere, something interrupted the path and now you have to decide whether that interruption means anything.

This is why animals such as black cats and magpies appear so often in journey folklore. The traveller is already moving towards an uncertain outcome, so anything unusual that crosses the route arrives at exactly the right moment to feel significant.

The animal hasn’t changed the journey. The timing changes the way you look at the animal.

Why do dangerous forms of travel create stronger rituals?

The aviation examples make the connection between uncertainty and superstition particularly obvious.

A First World War pilot could do everything correctly and still be killed because another aircraft appeared at the wrong moment or one mechanical part failed. Carrying a stuffed cat, lucky scarf or silver dollar couldn’t alter those odds, but it gave the pilot one thing that felt personally controllable.

The same pattern explains why occupations such as fishing, mining and theatre have accumulated unusually dense collections of superstition. The risks are real, the result isn’t completely under your control and people around you repeat the same rituals until they become part of the culture of the job.

Once a charm becomes associated with coming home safely, abandoning it can feel like creating a risk that wasn’t there before. That’s how an ordinary teddy bear can end up travelling on every wartime mission and why losing it can feel much more serious than losing a toy.

Modern travel hasn’t got rid of superstition

We have GPS, weather radar, aircraft maintenance schedules and phones capable of telling us exactly where our luggage last appeared. None of that has completely removed the little rituals surrounding travel.

People still carry objects they consider lucky, avoid particular dates, touch the plane before boarding or feel uncomfortable when a journey begins badly. Airlines can skip an entire row number because enough passengers would rather not sit there.

Travel can actually make a personal superstition stronger because important trips are so memorable. If you wore one bracelet on the best vacation of your life, it’s easy to want it with you next time. If the flight where you forgot it was awful, the bracelet suddenly has another piece of evidence in its favour.

All the completely ordinary journeys when the bracelet was present and nothing interesting happened are much easier to forget.

Does a travel superstition make a journey safer?

There’s no evidence that sitting down before leaving prevents an accident, that a red-haired stranger can damage a journey or that row 14 becomes safer because the airline decided not to call the row before it 13.

What rituals can change is how prepared or settled you feel. Russia’s pause before departure gives everyone a chance to remember something important. A familiar object can calm a nervous flyer. A routine followed before a stressful journey can make the moment feel less chaotic.

The useful part doesn’t prove the supernatural explanation. You can benefit from sitting quietly for a minute without believing the universe will punish you for skipping it.

Travel superstitions survive because leaving always involves a small act of trust. You close the front door knowing you can plan where you’re going but not every single thing that will happen before you come back.

If sitting down, carrying the lucky object or taking row 14 instead of row 13 makes that uncertainty easier, plenty of people would rather do it than spend the journey wondering whether they should have.

For more everyday warnings, lucky objects and beliefs people still follow just in case, visit Weird Superstitions From Around the World and the wider Superstitions and Omens collection.