I do not believe in the supernatural, magic, ghosts or anything like that. However, I can be very superstitious about tempting fate and won’t make jokes or flippant remarks that could be interpretted as such.
For example, my partner made a dark joke about how she’d rather have cancer than such and such. I begged her not to say such things, not because the thought of her having cancer upset me (although it did), but because it feels as if saying stuff like that could make it happen.
Same here. With my kids, I really struggled to get stuff ready for their birth because it gent like tempting fate. Cue scrambling to get everything ready once the baby was back home.
In smaller stuff, always knock on wood. Fake wood counts as wood.
Anecdotal, but in my experience fake wood does not count. Just on Friday I said knock on wood and used some fake vinyl bullshit. Cut to 5 hours later, the exact thing I was trying to ward off happened.