[QUOTE=KneadToKnow]
[li]break a mirror (seven years, to be specific)[/list][/li][/QUOTE]
I’ve heard there’s an antidote to this one: don’t clean up the broken mirror for 24 hours and you avoid the 7 year penalty. I don’t know how/why this should be, but it was even on tv, so it must be true!!
Well it was certainly bad luck for the General Belgrano seeing as the Royal Navy sank it with heavy loss of life during the Falklands war.
As to another poster asking what specific bad luck some things can bring,shoes on the table mean that there will soon be a death in the family.
My own contribution is it is very,very bad luck for a character in a war movie with only a short time left in the front line to tell his best mate how he’s going to go home and marry his girl and get his old job back and never ever go to war again.
Its slightly less bad luck if he’s a classical violinist who lives for his art and will be returning to his job with the London Philarmonic Orchestra as in that case he will survive(unlike the previous bloke)but will get his hands blown off or become permamently deaf.
Its also quite unlucky to mention to your boss that you slept with his wife before he married her.
I could be wrong (i.e. I have no cites), but I seem to recall reading that good mirrors used to very expensive, so breaking a window wouldn’t be as big a deal as breaking a mirror.
I heard that it’s bad luck to take a laxative and a sleeping pill before retiring for the evening.
In gods name why?
I do it every night while smoking a cigar in bed and masturbating with the lights on and the curtains wide open…
Makes sense if you don’t want to shit all over the curtains.
I’m impressed though, smoking and masturbating WHILE you sleep? 
Japan has a lot, but I don’t know all the details. I found out one while a friend was designing his house. It’s bad luck to have the toilet/bathroom visible from the front door. Apparently the good spirits see the toilet and go into it or out the bathroom window instead of hanging around the living area spreading good luck as they linger.
Oooh, oooh, here’s a good one: it’s bad luck to just say “moshi” or “moshi moshi moshi” when answering the phone. If you say “moshi” an odd number of times, a fox demon can take you over through the phone line. It can’t stand even numbers, so the Japanese say “moshi moshi.” I guess the fox demons must have taken over American FM radio because they’re all odd frequencies. That could explain a few things.
Amongst motorcycle riders (American) it’s bad luck to wear a dead biker’s boots. His jacket or gloves, no problemo, but never the boots.
Yes.
Here’s the reasoning behind the hat on a chair/coat on a bed:
Control of head and body lice. If a person had head lice, they’d be in their hat; so don’t let people put their hats on anything else upholstered (such as a chair or bed). If they had body lice, their coat would be full of them.
My kids’ Granny tells a story about a little girl she knew (Granny was born in 1927) who had body lice so bad that the parents had to burn all the girl’s clothes. IIRC they also coated her hair with turpentine or something to kill the head lice. She said the bugs looked like little seeds and were all clumped up in the seams of the clothing.
My parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary two weeks ago today. That night, my extended family watched their wedding video (originally filmed with an old-fashioned film movie camera). The video shows my parents dressing for the wedding and then getting into a car together to be driven to the ceremony. Many people watching immediately reacted by pointing out that it’s bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding, especially in her wedding dress. Since my parents were celebrating 50 years of a very happy marriage, it was kind of a moot point.
Ever since I first saw that video many years ago, I’ve often thought that I might intentionally let my groom see me in my dress before the wedding – in my family, it’s good luck.
Am I the only one thinking that just encountering a ghost means your luck is pretty much shot for the day?
Never wear another person’s shoes, you’ll walk into their problems.
Same with a dead person’s clothes - although their jewellery is fine (my most superstitious Aunt has just distributed the heirlooms from my late great aunt, the clothes and bedding were sent for rags. The shoes thrown away).
Never light three smokes on the same match, you’ll burn your fingers!
I always heard that 3 on a match was bad luck because by that time a sniper/enemy soldier would have time to take aim at the fire.
Giving a knife as a gift would sever the friendship (so my mom would always insist on the giftee giving her a penny or a nickel so it was not a “gift”)
If you and another person are walking down the sidewalk, and you go on opposite sides of a post/pole, you are to say, “Bread and butter” or you will not be friends anymore.
Don’t walk around with only one shoe on. So says my greatgrandmother. I suppose that’s why as soon as I get home I take off both shoes and never look back.
I’ve heard this one, and it’s a coin per blade; so if you give a set of six steak knives, you should get six coins back. If you give somebody a Swiss Army knife with three blades, he should give you three coins in return. (Really!) Denominations of coins not important.
Would a flathead screwdriver in the pocket knife count as a blade? How about the mini scissors? Are they two blades?
What if the swiss army knife includes a USB drive? 
It’s bad luck to bring white lilacs into the house.
It’s bad luck to rock an empty rocking chair with your hand.
It’s bad luck to mend clothes while you’re wearing them. (More specifically, my grandmother said, “If you mend clothes while you’re wearing them, you’ll have to pull out every stitch with your nose.” WTF?!??)
Similar to the knife thing, you shouldn’t cut the ribbon on a package. It will sever the tie with the person who gave you the gift.
My mom once stopped me from going into the tomato patch because she thought I was having my period. She told me it would kill the plants.
None taken. Its habit now. I work in theatre and some of my co-workers are really paranoid about that one. I found out the hard way it’s best to just avoid saying it around them anywhere. 
There is an episode of Babylon 5 where a character quotes that play, but substitutes the character name with “Marcus” (the name of one of the characters in the conversation). The guest star on that episode, Michael York, made some stagehand go through all sorts of rituals including running around the set backwards when she made a verbal reference to the play and he took it very seriously.
It is, very, very, very, bad luck, indeed, to appear in one of the old ‘Star Trek’ episodes wearing a red shirt.
Also, boatmen and boatresses on the Colorado River believe that saying the word ‘wind’ will cause an upstream blow.
Mother said that one friend says “bread and butter” and the other answers “come to supper”.