家里有人去世，黑猫不能靠近灵堂

My hometown has a rule: when someone dies in the family and the altar is set up, the cats in the house must be locked up, especially black cats.

The elders say cats are animals heavy with yin energy; their eyes glow in the dark and they can see things others can't. If a cat jumps over the coffin, the deceased's body will "rise," meaning they will come back to life as a corpse.

So those keeping vigil must have someone watching at night to keep cats and dogs away. In some places, cats are tied up outside the courtyard; in others, they are locked in a box, or even sent to someone else's house, only to be brought back after the funeral.

This belief is not unique to China. In Greek vampire legends, there is an almost identical rule: after death, if a cat jumps over the corpse, that person will become a vampire. Similar customs exist in Eastern Europe and Britain.

No one really claims to have seen it; everyone says they heard it from someone else. Some explain that actually, when a body has been laid out for a long time, changes in muscles and gases can sometimes make the corpse move slightly, and combined with a cat jumping around, it scares people, and the story gets passed around until it becomes "corpse rising."

So locking up cats at the altar is half fear of ghosts, half fear of chaos: someone who has kept vigil all night has tired eyes and is afraid of everything they see.

#Folklore #网络转载