Whistling Past the Graveyard

Whistling Past the Graveyard.

Sometimes I’ll try to uncover the origins of a phrase or a word, and we’ll both be surprised by what we find. This phrase isn’t like that, though: graveyards have long been perceived as places of mystery and the macabre, often at the center of folklore involving ghosts and spirits.

Whistling past this place of grave danger (pun intended) implies keeping a stiff upper lip in the face of trepidation. It means acting as though things are normal, when they simply aren’t normal.

Our ancestors may have believed that they could make those evil spirits go away, if only they put forth a cheerful front. I think they might have been onto something.

Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, an American rock and roller who became famous during the 1950s by singing songs about voodoo and other macabre subjects, uses this phrase eloquently to hearken back to those old superstitious times:

Like Jay said, sometimes you have to suck all of the blood out of a jackal before stealing a station wagon. Who among us hasn’t drunk the entire Mississippi river, after all?

The much more common use of the term is as a metaphor, of course. We don’t often talk openly about our superstitions these days, although many of them clearly pervade our language. We say “knock on wood!” to ward off evil spirits, or “bless you” when someone sneezes (I prefer “shut up!”).

Whistling past the graveyard makes me think of those moments in history when someone has ignored imminent danger, and sometimes they’ve gotten lucky.

When It Worked

Stanislav Petrov whistled right past the nuclear graveyard.

On September 26, 1983, Petrov was the duty officer at the command center for a nuclear early-warning system when the system reported that a missile had been launched from the United States, followed by up to five more.

Petrov ultimately decided that this was a false alarm, and his decision to disobey orders against Soviet military protocol is credited with preventing an erroneous retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its NATO allies, which would have likely resulted in a large-scale nuclear war.

Instead of triggered MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction), Petrov practiced "whistling past the graveyard" during a moment where the stakes were unimaginably high.

I wrote a bit more about Petrov in the context of when things don’t go as planned:

When It Didn’t Work

On January 28th, 1986, we rushed back from recess to watch the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger. The reason why this was notable for us fifth graders is that one of the passengers on board was a teacher, just a regular person elevated to the status of astronaut.

This was a big deal to us kids! Honestly, though, any excuse to watch a rocket launch was cool with us.

We were late. When our teacher turned the TV on, all we could see was smoke in the sky, and the newscasters were busy trying to make sense of what had happened. The Challenger had blown up in the sky, right in front of the nation (and the world).

On that cold January morning, despite numerous warnings about the potential dangers, particularly concerning the O-rings in unusually low temperatures, the decision had been made to proceed with the launch.

Richard Feynman was on the committee to investigate the incident, and here is the moment of truth as he testified before congress:

This incident serves as a stark reminder of the consequences when warning signs are ignored—or in the metaphorical sense, when one keeps whistling past the graveyard, oblivious to the imminent dangers.

Back to the fantastical and supernatural elements of the saying itself: here’s Tom Waits doing a cover of Screamin’ Jay’s original Whistlin’ Past the Graveyard:

As we reflect on these poignant moments in history, we're reminded of the fine line between courage and caution—a balance we all navigate in our own lives, sometimes without even realizing it.

Our relationship with fear and danger has always been complicated.

On one hand, we need to take risks to improve the human condition, and it often pays off to be oblivious to the “haters” out there. Sometimes you need to burn the ships and not look back at the potential danger, so you can focus 100% on the task at hand.

On the other hand, whistling while there’s imminent danger you need to address. Imagine how differently the Challenger outcome might have been if the threat had been given more weight. Would the Titanic have sunk? Would Chernobyl have melted down?

We all have to decide when to whistle past the graveyard. Sometimes, the “danger” is like a ghost coming up from a grave, as Stanislav Petrov saw those “phantom” nukes. Other times, the danger is a literal iceberg, or something else that could lead to catastrophic failure.

That’s the tightrope we have to tiptoe in life. We have to decide when we need to set aside the fear and plow forward in spite of it, or to plan around it so we can avoid catastrophe.

Can you think of any examples of whistling past the graveyard, either from history or from your own life? Share them in the comments if you’re so inclined!