I – The Knock

People have been telling stories about mysterious knocks for centuries. They have announced deaths, warned of disaster, accompanied hauntings and, occasionally, simply happened in houses where nobody could explain who – or what – was doing the knocking.

Welcome to October.

Your first card is The Knock

There are superstitions invented for horror films, superstitions polished beyond recognition by the internet, and superstitions that turn out to have surprisingly deep roots. The three knocks belong firmly in the last category.

In 1787, Francis Grose published A Provincial Glossary, with a Collection of Local Proverbs, and Popular Superstitions. Tucked among the omens of death is something wonderfully familiar: three loud and distinct knocks, heard at the bedhead of a sick person, or at the bedhead or door of one of their relatives. They were understood as a warning that death was coming. So if you have ever been told that three unexplained knocks mean somebody is going to die, you’re dealing with a superstition that was already sufficiently established to be written down in eighteenth-century England.

And it survived.

By the nineteenth century, the mysterious knock had developed into something rather more interesting than a simple warning. In Primitive Culture, published in 1871, anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor discussed beliefs surrounding mysterious noises associated with death. Sometimes the sound came before somebody died. Sometimes it occurred at approximately the moment of death. In the latter version, the knock wasn’t warning you.

It was telling you.

Somebody far away had died and, somehow, the news had reached the house before any messenger could. That matters because it transforms the phenomenon from an omen into a communication. Something knocked and apparently, it knew something you didn’t.

The belief wasn’t confined to books written by Victorian scholars either. In 1908, Lincolnshire folklorist Mabel Peacock published a short paper with the gloriously unambiguous title “Death-Knock in the Wapentake of Corringham, Lincolnshire” in Folklore. By then, the death knock had a name.

Cross the Irish Sea and the tradition becomes even richer. During the 1930s, schoolchildren across Ireland were sent out to collect folklore from parents, grandparents, neighbours and other members of their communities. The resulting Schools’ Collection, now preserved by the National Folklore Collection and available through Dúchas, is an extraordinary record of beliefs that were still circulating orally at the time. And people remembered the knocks. One account collected at Mulhuddart in County Dublin describes a knock heard at the door when somebody is dying. Someone goes to answer it.

Nobody is there.

It happens again.

And again.

Three times.

The same account records a family story involving three knocks heard first at a window and later against a wall. The following morning came the news that a man named James Caffrey had died at around the time the mysterious knocking was heard.

Another account, from County Leitrim, lists three knocks at a door or window among the signs that a death is approaching the household, alongside crying dogs, crowing hens and the ticking of the so-called death clock.

Then there is the story recorded at Bunlahy, near Granard.

A young man named Moore had apparently promised to visit the Caffrey household on a Tuesday. He died suddenly on the Monday night, but the family did not yet know. On Tuesday evening their dog began barking. Footsteps were reportedly heard outside. Then came three knocks against the window.

Moore never arrived.

News of his death did.

You can see why stories like these survived.

Before telephones, instant messages and social media, death could happen miles away while relatives remained completely unaware. There might be hours or days between somebody dying and the news reaching everyone who knew them. Anything unusual happening during that gap could acquire significance afterwards. The knock becomes memorable because of what happened next. The dozens of unexplained noises heard on nights when nobody died disappear completely from the story.

And sometimes the explanation for mysterious noises in old houses was considerably smaller than a returning spirit.

It had six legs.

The deathwatch beetle has acquired one of the most unfortunate names in the insect world. Certain species living in old timber produce an audible tapping sound, traditionally associated with quiet rooms, old houses and impending death. Which is almost unfair on the beetle. It isn’t predicting anybody’s demise. It’s looking for another beetle. But picture the circumstances in which the association developed. Someone is gravely ill. The household is subdued. People sit quietly beside a bed, perhaps through the night, listening to every change in the patient’s breathing. And from somewhere inside an old wooden beam comes:

tap.

tap.

tap.

Then the patient dies. The beetle has just acquired a reputation.

Tylor himself recognised the problem. He compared supposed supernatural death noises with beliefs surrounding the deathwatch, suggesting that ordinary sounds could acquire extraordinary significance when followed by a death. But mysterious knocking wasn’t finished evolving.

In March 1848, the Fox family of Hydesville, New York, reported strange rappings in their home. Sisters Maggie and Kate Fox appeared able to communicate with whatever was producing them. Questions could be asked. Knocks could answer. The events became enormously influential in the development of Modern Spiritualism. Now the knock wasn’t merely an omen or a message announcing a death. It could apparently hold a conversation. The Fox sisters became famous, séances spread, tables tipped, mediums flourished and the dead became remarkably talkative.

Decades later, Maggie Fox publicly demonstrated how rapping sounds could be produced through movements of the joints and claimed that the original phenomena had been fraudulent. She subsequently complicated matters by retracting that confession, and believers continued to defend the sisters.

Whatever really happened in Hydesville, the humble mysterious knock had travelled a remarkable distance.

From deathbed omen…

to supernatural telegram…

to conversation with the dead.

There are plenty of perfectly ordinary reasons for hearing unexplained knocks. Timber expands and contracts. Heating systems click. Pipes knock. Animals move inside walls. Branches strike windows. Neighbours make noises whose direction is difficult to judge. Human hearing is exceptionally good at noticing patterns, particularly when we’re frightened, tired or already expecting something unusual.

And there is another important problem with death-omen stories. We tend to record the hits, not the misses. If you hear three unexplained knocks tonight and nothing happens tomorrow, eventually you forget them. If you hear three unexplained knocks tonight and learn tomorrow morning that somebody died at roughly the same time, you may tell that story for the rest of your life. Your children may tell it too. A century later, a folklorist writes it down.

That doesn’t make the experience meaningless. It tells us something fascinating about the way folklore is made.

A noise becomes an event. An event becomes a story. A story becomes a warning.

And eventually nobody remembers the first door upon which somebody heard it.

Of course, old houses knock. Pipes contract. Timber shifts. Branches strike windows. Beetles tap inside beams. There is almost always an explanation.

Almost.

Because somewhere in the folklore record, somebody always opens the door.

And there is nobody there.

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I – The Knock

The Knock is the card of warning, arrival and interruption.

Something has reached the boundary.

It may be news. It may be change. It may be something you have avoided, forgotten or refused to acknowledge. Whatever stands on the other side has not yet entered – but it has made its presence known.

The Knock does not tell you what is outside. It asks whether you intend to open the door.

Upright: warning · arrival · news · threshold · intuition · something demanding attention

In shadow: dread · anticipation · ignored warnings · fear of change · seeing meaning where none exists

The question: What have you heard that you are pretending not to hear?

Tomorrow, another card turns. 🖤

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Sources & Further Reading

Grose, Francis. A Provincial Glossary, with a Collection of Local Proverbs, and Popular Superstitions. London, 1787. – Early English record of three distinct knocks as an omen of death.

Tylor, Edward Burnett. Primitive Culture. London: John Murray, 1871. – Discussion of death omens, supernatural noises and the deathwatch tradition.

Peacock, Mabel. “Death-Knock in the Wapentake of Corringham, Lincolnshire.” Folk-Lore, Vol. 19, 1908. – Recorded Lincolnshire death-knock tradition.

National Folklore Collection of Ireland. Schools’ Collection: “Death Signs”, Mulhuddart, Co. Dublin. – Oral traditions concerning three knocks, death and the Caffrey family.

National Folklore Collection of Ireland. Schools’ Collection: “The Three Knocks”, Bunlahy, Granard. -Account connecting unexplained footsteps and three knocks with the death of a young man named Moore.

Natural History Museum. “Deathwatch Beetle (Xestobium rufovillosum) Identification Guide.” – The natural history behind the characteristic tapping sounds historically associated with death.

Smithsonian Magazine. “The Fox Sisters and the Rap on Spiritualism.” – History of the 1848 Hydesville rappings, the rise of Modern Spiritualism and the later controversy surrounding the Fox sisters.

Sources accessed September 2026.