I never really thought of this as a superstitious thing. The items I have that are special to me are special not because of anything intrinsic to them, but because of how I aquired them or for what they've been used. It's a sentimental thing. The object itself isn't special, but it reminds me of something special from my life.
Material things are, as often as not, receptacles for culturally orchestrated meaning. To touch the object is to touch (indirectly) its history and to connect with that history; the act of connection is distasteful in proportion to the intensity of the associated taboo (in this case, murder). What we forget is that history is, first and foremost, a story we impose on the chaos of human events in an attempt to make coherent sense of the mess. The human need to tell (and to live in) stories is what gives objects their symbolic power. How close you are to the event in time is also a factor in the response to the object. (For example, why is John Wilkes Booth's derringer considered priceless? Or: Could Son of Sam's revolver be sold on eBay? Or John Hinckley's? What draws people to buy such things
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