Echoes in the Dark
Exploring Bat Superstitions
Bats have always been one of my favorite creatures. Fossil records show they’ve been around since the Eocene (that’s 50–55 million years ago) They belong to the Order Chiroptera, which means “hand-wing.”
There’s so many things I could talk about, like how they were once in the Primate order or how there are micro- and megabats (not small vs large but echolocating vs Old World fruit bats). But it’s Halloween season, so I’m talking about superstitions today.
And these ideas are a treasure trove of storytelling possibilities!
Bat Folklore, Old Wives’ Tales, and Superstitions
Bats in the house mean death is coming—or that the occupants are moving away soon.
If you see a bat flying around, a ghost is nearby.
If you see a colony of bats flying about long before twilight, it’s a sign that good weather is on the way.
If a bat hits a window or a building, it means it’s going to rain.
Killing a bat shortens your life.
Bats in a church during a wedding ceremony is a bad omen.
If a bat flies into a kitchen and hangs on to the ceiling right away, it’s a lucky omen, but if it circles the room twice before perching, it’s a bad omen.
Bats flying straight up and then dropping back to earth mean that the Witches Hour has arrived.
In the West, people perceive bats as evil spirits and have associated them with death, disease, and vampires.
In Chinese culture, bats are a symbol of luck and good fortune.
And in Chinese culture, five is a cardinal number, and a grouping of five bats is called Wu Fu, or the Five Blessings, which are Virtue, Health, Long Life, Wealth, and having a Peaceful Death.
In South Sulawes, Indonesia, farmers believe if flying foxes roost near their rice fields they will have a good harvest.
In Mexican folklore bats herald the arrival of the chupacabra, a half-man, half-bat creature that attacks and drinks the blood of livestock.
Among the Ibibio people of southern Nigeria, if a bat touches someone, that person has become bewitched and will die because something will eat their heart at night.
Old folklore in Sierra Leone says that the Hammer-headed Fruit Bat (Hypsignathus monstrosus) sucked the blood of sleeping children until they died. The bats could also to turn into a stone. Side note: there has never been a blood-sucking bat in Sierra Leone.
Early Slavic societies (specifically Romania) believed that a bat flying over an unburied corpse could reanimate the recently deceased into a vampire.
That’s all I got. Now, you have some conversions starters for the season. I’m sure it will come up in conversation naturally.
Have any I missed? What was your favorite?
SIDE NOTE: I noticed this in the Substack settings today under Privacy—
“Allow AI training
Allows platforms like ChatGPT and Google Bard to train on your content. Disabling may limit your discoverability on these platforms.”
This is on by default. If you don’t want it training on you content, be sure to turn it off.
And another side note, there might be two subscribe buttons on this. I seem to either have two or none.
Okay, figured out the double subscribe buttons on the bottom of my posts. One is just automatically added, so when it prompts me to add one to my post, I need to ignore that. It's kind of annoying, but now I know.
Like you, I'm a fan of bats. They've taken a bad rap in gothic tales of vampires, but they're such efficient bug killers that they deserve medals. I loved all the bat lore you gathered for this post!