JACKSON. Wyo. — Tomorrow is Friday the 13th!
In western cultures, the day is seen as unlucky due to superstitions surrounding both the number 13 and Fridays. Paraskavedekatriaphobia and friggatriskaidekaphobia are two terms that describe fear of Friday the 13th, while the fear of the number 13 is known as triskaidekaphobia.
The day is a rich subject in pop culture, with the unluckiness of the unofficial holiday first popularized through the 1907 novel, Friday, the Thirteenth by Thomas William Lawson. The novel chronicles a stockbroker who plays up the superstition to create chaos on Wall Street and, in turn, to make a lot of money for himself.
Then came the best-known example: the horror film Friday the 13th, released in 1980. The slasher film spawned more than 10 sequels, which follow the hockey-masked murderer Jason Voorhees and unlucky visitors to Camp Crystal Lake.
Superstitions related to the number 13 being unlucky might date back to a Norse myth in which the 12 gods had a dinner party in Valhalla. According to historian Donald Dossey, Loki, the trickster god who was not invited, arrived as the 13th guest and arranged for the blind god Hodor to shoot an arrow through Balder, the god of joy. “It was a bad unlucky day,” Dossey told Smithsonian Magazine.
Another origin of the unluckiness of the number and day harkens back to biblical times. Thirteen guests attended the Last Supper, beginning the Christian superstition that having 13 guests at a table was a bad omen, courting death. Friday also got a negative connotation because Jesus was crucified on a Friday, and Friday was also said to be the day Eve gave Adam the apple.
In recent times, a few major events have occurred on a Friday the 13th:
- The German bombing of Buckingham Palace took place on Sept. 13, 1940
- A cyclone killed an estimated 300,000 people in Bangladesh on Nov. 13, 1970
- The death of rapper Tupac Shakur occurred on Sept. 13, 1996
- The crash of the Costa Concordia Cruise ship off of Italy killed 30 people on Jan. 13, 2012
- President Trump declared a national emergency in response to the COVID-19 pandemic on March 13, 2020.
Be careful out there!
This story runs annually.
