In ancient Rome May was the time when the Romans honored their dead in the festival of Lemuria. The Romans not only honored their dead, but also took the time to pacify the wandering ghosts with many rituals. One such ritual was to leave out fava bean soup on the porch for the wandering ghosts.
Sometimes men of the household would run down the streets and toss the fava beans over their left shoulder to pacify these shadows of the dead.
What I find interesting about this is the fact that seeds like beans have the long-time connections with ghosts and the wandering dead. In many parts of the world seeds are cast out in front of doorways to confuse the restless dead. It was a fairly common folk belief that vampires cannot move beyond a spot without counting every single granule before they can move beyond, with the spot covered with rice or seeds. With this distraction the vampire would have to count until sunrise which forced it them to run back and jump into their grave. This belief seems to have been especially common in the Caribbean where the vampire is usually a witch who will leave her skin in a juniper tree and then fly across the sky looking for potential victims. One such preventive was to sprinkle salt on the witch’s skin to deactivate it’s evil. The Roman practice of tossing seeds during Lemuria and the casting of seeds on the graves of vampires may just be an interesting coincidence or maybe there is some archetypal basis in both practices. And so, it goes.