A cricket in the house
A cricket chirping in the house brings good luck, and killing one brings bad luck.
Animals superstition
Cricket superstitions
Cricket superstitions: good luck in the house, disaster if killed. First recorded: Chinese sources from antiquity; European versions from the 1600s. That makes it more than 1,500 years old — joint 2nd oldest of the 45 superstitions we have dated.
- Earliest record
- Antiquity Chinese sources from antiquity
- Written down in
- 1867 Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire
Record: John Harland and T. T. Wilkinson, Lancashire Folk-Lore (London: Frederick Warne, 1867).
When it actually starts
How old is this one
First recorded
Chinese sources from antiquity; European versions from the 1600s
That makes it
more than 1,500 years old
Rank by age
Joint 2nd oldest of 45 dated here
Category
Animals
A cricket on the hearth meant warmth and food, since crickets settle in heated kitchens. Killing one broke that association and was held to bring misfortune.
Why it stuck. The cricket only appears where conditions are already good, so it accompanies prosperity without causing it — a textbook case of correlation read as cause.
1 of the dated superstitions here were written down earlier and 32 later, while 11 share its date.
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Primary source
As it was written down in 1867
“That crickets are lucky about a house, and will do no harm to those who use them well; but that they eat holes in the worsted stockings of such members of the family as kill them.”
John Harland and T. T. Wilkinson, Lancashire Folk-Lore (London: Frederick Warne, 1867) — read the original text.
Crickets on the hearth meant good luck; killing one, holes in your stockings.
The versions people follow
What exactly is believed
Chinese pet crickets
In China crickets were kept in cages as pets and good-luck charms, and cricket fighting was a popular pastime.
A cricket stops singing
A cricket that suddenly falls silent warns of danger or bad news.
Weather crickets
Counting chirps predicts the temperature.
How the bad luck is traditionally undone
If a cricket must leave, it is carried out alive rather than killed.
Where it lives today
The weather belief is real physics: Dolbear's law, published in 1897, relates chirp rate to temperature fairly accurately.
What people say
Good luck in the house, disaster if killed.What is going on
Crickets were kept as pets in cages in China for over a thousand years, valued for the sound rather than the luck.Where it applies. China, Japan, Europe and the American South.
Nearest in age
Cricket superstitions are joint 2nd oldest of the 45 dated superstitions here. Of those, 3 date from 1900 or later and 14 predate the common era.
First-recorded dates are the earliest documented appearance in written sources, not the earliest possible origin — an unrecorded practice can be older. How the dating works and where it is uncertain →
Sources
Statements of fact on this page were checked against these sources in October 2026. How we choose and check sources: editorial policy.
Cite this page
AstroHot. “Cricket Superstitions: Origin, Meaning and When It Began.” Accessed October 28, 2026. https://astrohot.com/superstitions/cricket-omens/
For Wikipedia
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