Looking Back
The superstition of the ill-luck of looking back, or returning, is nearly as old as the world itself, having no doubt originated in Lot’s wife “having looked back from behind him,” when he was leaving the doomed city of the Plain. Whether walking or riding, the wife was behind the husband, according to a usage still prevalent in the East. In Robert’s “Oriental Illustrations” it is stated to be “considered exceedingly unfortunate in Hindostan for men or women to look back when they leave their house. Accordingly, if a man goes out and leaves something behind him which his wife knows he will want, she does not call him to turn or look back, but takes or sends it after him; and if some emergency obliges him to look back, he will not then proceed on the business he was about to transact.”