It’s not you, it’s Friday the 13th
Today, somebody somewhere will step in something unpleasant on the way to work, and everyone will notice. Someone will get a bad haircut, right before an interview. A cellphone will fall in the sink.
It’s Friday the 13th, after all.
While not everyone suffers from an outright phobia today (friggatriskaidekaphobia, or paraskavedekatriaphobia if you prefer), Western culture casts a wary eye on this date on the calendar nonetheless.
“Everybody should have some superstitions,” said Dr. Pratul Pathak, a professor at California University of Pennsylvania who teaches classes in Myth, Mysticism and Mythology and Horror in Literature, both of which he said are popular among students.
“It gives you a way out,” he said. “We are always looking for scapegoats.”
According to Pathak, if something bad happens to a person on Friday the 13th, it will not only reinforce the notion that the date is bad luck, but also it takes the pressure off the person to take ownership of any behavior that may have contributed to the mishap.
Similarly, Penn State communications professor Dr. Russell Frank says it’s not a date on the calendar people fear, but something more general.
“The scariest idea is that things happen randomly,” Frank said. “As a species, we crave explanations.”
People, good or bad, are sometimes clobbered by bad events in their lives, and they want to know why, he said.
Every superstition is meant to give an explanation for why unexpected bad things happen, to reassure us that there’s some kind of organization in the universe.
However, Frank pointed out, it’s not exactly satisfying to imagine that a really terrible event in one’s life can be explained away by a black cat or a Friday that occurs on the 13th day of the month.
“It’s interesting that we can hold more than one idea about it in our heads,” Frank said. “There’s a kind of ambiguity to it.”
For example, he said, if you ask someone if she or he is superstitious about ladders, that person may laugh and say no, but still swerve to avoid walking under one anyway. There’s a degree of belief at play, he said.
Frank, whose Ph.D. is in folklore and who has taught classes on the subject as well at the university’s main campus, said contemporary folklorists are careful to avoid using the word “superstition,” because it implies a negative judgment about someone’s beliefs. He said folklorists use the term “folk belief” for the culturally held fear of certain things, like umbrellas opened indoors, broken mirrors, and of course, Friday the 13th.
While people prefer a good, clear origin story surrounding common folk beliefs, Frank said there really isn’t one for Friday the 13th.
“We assume these things go back to medieval times,” but the belief really seems to be about 100 years old, Frank said. One of the first specific uses of the phrase Frank said he was aware of was Thomas W. Lawson’s 1907 novel, Friday the Thirteenth. Lawson was a stockbroker in Boston at the turn of the 20th century, and his book told of a man who chose that infamous date to bring down Wall Street.
Frank said he recalled being more conscious of Friday the 13th as a kid, adding, “It’s a bigger deal in children’s folklore than adults’.”
Historically, 13 has conjured negative connotations — the 13th guest at the Last Supper betrayed Jesus, and there are 13 witches in a coven. Also, up until popular culture absorbed Friday as the herald of the beloved weekend, it was an unlucky day. Travelers would avoid embarking on a journey on a Friday for fear of misfortune along the way; Jesus was supposed to have been crucified on a Friday.
Friday the 13th, it seems, is the culmination of all that negativity. If Friday is bad and 13 is bad, a person may be inclined to worry about unlucky events on a day when the two co-occur.
Then there’s the movie. For some people, “Friday the 13th” brings images of a machete-wielding, un-killable psychopath stalking campers at fictional Camp Crystal Lake.
The original 1980 movie, written by Victor Miller and produced and directed by Sean S. Cunningham, told the tale of camp counselors killed off one by one on Friday, June 13, 1979 — an unlucky day to go camping, indeed. The franchise’s signature anti-hero, Jason Vorhees, was also born on Friday, May 13, 1946. (A quick Google search reveals June 13 was on a Wednesday in 1979, and May 13 was a Thursday in 1946, but these films aren’t known for verisimilitude.)
There are now 12 films in the slasher franchise. Of them, five were actually released on Fridays the 13th.
Although it’s not likely that Jason will come to visit anyone tonight, seeking revenge for his mother’s death, it’s no more likely that anyone will suffer particularly bad luck simply because the date happens to be Friday the 13th.
On the other hand, if you find yourself on the outside of your locked car looking in at the keys, wondering how you managed to be in such a predicament today, you’ll know exactly why.