Love and hate, what a beautiful combination

[venta]

[Poll #1598358]

Please vote before reading on!

According to me, such shivers are caused by a goose walking over your grave. ChrisC insists that this is nonsense, and that the mother exspelunca probably made it up (this is his reaction to approximately 85% of the things I say).

The other day Claudia - who is distressingly Continental, speaking around ten languages competently, and conversing fluently in English, her third language - shivered and blamed it on a goose walking over her grave. See! Colloquial English, as taught in the best Continental schools, was there to back me up! I began planning my victory dance. Depressingly, under questioning, Claudia cracked and admitted she'd got the phrase from me and was thus inadmissible as evidence.

At dance practice last night, I posed the question in the above poll. The crossing of graves was generally mentioned, but with the exception of one other person there was a lot of "A goose? A goose? Don't you mean ghost?"

Except for our youngest new recruit, who looked puzzled and said she wasn't dead yet, thus didn't have a grave. I've always presumed it actually refers to a goose crossing the future site of my burial (as yet unknown to me - or indeed to anyone except, apparently, goosekind).

Incidentally, if anyone has any non-grave-related explanations or, even better, any explanations from non-English-speaking countries I'd love to hear them. Despite her extensive education, Claudia was unable to produce any other countries' explanations. "I don't know. I guess you'd just say you shivered."

I ask you. Don't these Continentals have any imagination?

Comments

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

Easy enough to test. Find people with relatively predictable future burial sites (e.g. with a spouse). Chuck a few geese over their probable grave. Check for shivers. Repeat with rabbits. Wait until everyone is dead, and compare two groups who did, and didn't, end up buried where expected.

Checking the ghosts is trickier, but if you phone Mythbusters and Most Haunted I'm sure they can get it done.