Pennies in windows

[snopes]

Comment: Recently I bought a house. I found in each window a penny? Each
penny was turned back side up? I have been told a few things about this
so far.
1) it is an Italain thing? If the sun shines through a window and you put
a penny in it it will bring you great fortune.
2) it is to ward of ghosts?

Can you tell me what the meaning is?

[Tootsie Plunkette]

Apparently, it means there's a ghost of a little girl in your attic, waiting to talk to you.

the pennies are for good luck... we would put 'em out on the window sills on new years day each year...

maybe that's what my problem is... i've been sticking tomatoes on my window sills lately...

[NeeCD]

When I moved into my house there were pennies in every windowsill, too. I'm not sure why, maybe the previous tenant's cat liked to play with them or something. (I know who lived there before me, and she doesn't strike me as the superstitious type). I don't have an attic, but the Penny Brown UL was what lead me to the the ULRP in the first place. Spooky...

[tagurit]

A quick google gets you lots of window sill penny references. Among them, as a new year's tradition for luck, and a gift from sellers of a home, to the new owners.

Sherrie Flick and Rick Schweikert, both writers, moved into their 1880 house two years ago to discover gifts from the sellers: pennies on the windowsills and a bottle of Jim Beam in the kitchen.

Personally I'd never heard of it.

[NeeCD]

Aw, I didn't get any Jim Beam with the place. Maybe that's the difference between renting and buying. Renters don't get the hard stuff. I did inherit some coffee creamer and a bottle of sweet and sour sauce (guess that's better than a kick in the pants, eh?).

I found pennies when I moved into my new place, but they were glued above the doors (including garage), and then painted over. Never heard of this one before.

[babyshoes]

No pennies on our window sills when we bought the house. Of course, there weren't actually any window sills, either. There were pennies, though, inside the walls and/or behind the molding pretty much everywhere. Very odd.

The family who built the house (and from whom we bought it) are originally from Italy.

That doesn't help answer the question, does it?

[BlushingBride]

My mother (Irish, not Italian) used to put pennies on the window and door sills. She said it was to bring fortune into the house.

In retrospect, she might have saved us all a lot of trouble by specifying what kind of fortune she meant.

[kitoboo]

I used to spend a lot of time at my high school boyfriend's house. One day I noticed a nickel on the baseboard radiator by the back door. It was glued down tight. Bf's father had a wierd sense of humor.

[Malruhn]

I remember hearing that pennies were placed head-down on window-sills to keep the devil or his minions at bay. They were greedy, and when they saw coinage, they would pick it up - but when they saw the face looking "down", they would begin to look in the same direction in an attempt to see what the face was looking at.

For some reason, I am thinking an old, OLDE Polish tradition... I have no cite nor direction to search other than that.

my boyfriend's mother is Filipino. when we moved into our house, she insisted that for good luck, we walk into the house with money in our pockets, and as we walked through each doorway, place a few coins on each ledge. it was supposed to imply that we'd always have money coming in.

we've since moved, and i completely forgot that we'd put them there until just now. so at this moment the new tenants are probably wondering about the coins, and intrigued as to if we hid fifties in the walls for good luck too.

[We'veBeenHad]

My grandmother was a French-Canadian Catholic, and she told me that you leave pennies in each room/closet for good luck for the people to come after you. I was never clear on why, but I did it, along with a note.