Are you scared of, or worried about, Friday the 13th? If you suffer from paraskevidekatriaphobia, the official name for this fear, then you won’t be too happy to know that it occurs on three occasions this year. However – no need to be too dismal about it –that’s only 25% rate of the 13th that coincides with a Friday. I happen to be one of those who don’t really bother about it. I have never been superstitious – in fact, I make a point of walking under ladders, waiting for a tin of paint or something to come hurtling down on top of my head, but I get the feeling that the wait is going to be a long one. Of course, I suffer from other phobias, some of which I’m not aware of yet, so I can sympathize with those who are so affected by Black Friday that they wouldn’t even dream of going to work on that day. Others refuse to travel, go out for a meal, and of course, a wedding is definitely out of the question! It is actually serious in economic terms, as the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute in Asheville, North Carolina point out that probably over $800 million is lost in business on the day, as people refuse to fly or get down to business that they would normally carry out. They also estimate that 8% of Americans are affected by the condition.
How did this idea start in the first place, that Friday the 13th was a day of bad luck, or even evil? Well, it seems that the number 13 has been the subject of superstition for quite a while, thousands of years in fact. The “Code of Hammurabi”, which was probably written around the 18th century BC, was a set of Babylonian laws, which had the twelfth and fourteenth laws included, but there was no sign of a thirteenth. Nowadays, the practice of omitting the number 13 is widespread, with airport departure gates, offices, hotels, streets etc all getting in on the act. If you are very superstitious, of course, or simply have a bit of common sense, you will realise that anything numbered “14” is actually the one meant to be “13”! Some folk reckon as well that if you have 13 letters in your name, such as Charles Manson and Jack the Ripper, then evil will be always around you. There’s 12 letters in mine, so at least my friends, and enemies I suppose, can rest easy at nights. Of course, other civilizations, such as the Chinese and the Egyptians in the time of the Pharaohs, regarded it as being a lucky number! The Egyptians were of the opinion that life was a quest for spiritual ascension that unfolded in stages — twelve in this life and a thirteenth beyond, thought to be the eternal afterlife. The number 13 therefore for them symbolized death, not in terms of dust and decay but as a glorious transformation. The symbolism conferred on the number 13 by its priesthood probably survived, but was then corrupted by subsequent cultures that came to associate 13 with a fear of death instead of a reverence for the afterlife.
What about Friday’s part in this superstition? I suppose some people try to justify the combination of the number and the day as being unlucky by looking back into history to find facts that seem to justify their fears. It is said that on Friday, October 13, 1307, King Philip IV of France arrested several thousand Templars, and later tortured them until they confessed to various heretical beliefs. Certainly, in fairly recent times, tragic events have occurred on Friday the 13th. On July 13, 1951, floodwaters crested in many parts of Kansas, during the “Great Flood” that ravaged more than 2 million acres of land and caused more than $750 million in damage. A March 13, 1992 earthquake in Turkey killed 2,000 and left 50,000 homeless.
There are probably hundreds of other examples of misfortune, accidents, ill luck, call it what you will, happening on Friday the 13th, but is it really an unlucky day, when people are more likely to have bad things happen to them? A study in 2008 by the Dutch Centre for Insurance Statistics found that when the 13th of the month falls on a Friday, that day is actually safer than other Fridays! Fewer accidents and reports of fire and theft occur when the 13th of the month falls on a Friday than on other Fridays. Of course, we could argue that if they had carried out the study in 2004, say, the results could have been completely different. Statistics, after all, can be used to just about justify anything.
Anyway, although I don’t believe that anything out of the ordinary can happen to me on the thirteenth, I’m writing this on Thursday the twelfth, just in case my computer develops a virtual phobia tomorrow!
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