Shoes on A Table
One of the most common things many people around the world fear are shoes on the table, and the reason for the fear is not only because they soil it. They signify a loss of a job, a breakup in the family, or more commonly, death. For the latter, most people trace it to the days of mining, when officers often placed boots on family dining tables to notify a death, or they traced it back to lynching and hanging criminals to the gallows, because the table represents the final platform which they stood before dying. Some others see shoes on a table as bad because funeral home workers embalm and dress a corpse on the table. For me, the origin of the jinx dates back to the Victorian Era, when photography was still in its early years. The main purpose for that technological advance was to take a photo of the deceased to show what the family member looked like if he or she died (especially if it was a child or infant, due to the high death rates of the time) and make prints of it to give to family members who can’t attend the funeral. That practice is called post-mortem photography, and in most cases of it, the photographer makes a makeshift bier out of a table to lie the dressed-up (mainly with footwear) dead so it can be photographed. If you want to know why you can’t put sneakers on your dining room table, look post-mortem photography up to find my origin of this bad luck superstition.
from:
http://www.yousaytoo....-superstitions/307859
Ladders are also associated with the gallows.