It’s Friday the 13th of November. The kettle has gone on as usual, the washing still needs doing, and yet a perfectly ordinary clunk from upstairs has suddenly acquired a plot.
If you’ve ever looked at the date and thought, Well, that explains the morning I’ve had, you’re in good company. People have been blaming their rotten luck on this particular square of the calendar since at least the nineteenth century. Before Jason Voorhees got involved, there were French playwrights, nervous aviators and a group of New Yorkers who decided the best way to deal with an omen was to invite it to dinner.
A * vintage-style wooden perpetual calendar would look right at home on the kitchen shelf. On days like this, there’s always the temptation to leave it on Thursday.
First there was Friday. Then there was thirteen.
Friday had a reputation of its own in parts of Europe. In Christian tradition it was the day of Jesus’s crucifixion, and folklore in some communities treated it as a poor day to set off on a journey, start a job or get married. The number thirteen had its own awkward association. A belief that thirteen people at dinner meant one of them would die was linked to the Last Supper, where Jesus and his twelve disciples made thirteen at the table.
You can see how the two might have ended up together. Pinning down when that happened is harder. Folklore gets passed around kitchens, pubs and boats long before anybody thinks to write down who said it first. Library of Congress folklore archive
A French playwright got there before Hollywood
The Library of Congress points to early French references from 1834. By 1858, the joke was clear enough for a character in a French comedy to blame a lifetime of bad luck on being born on a Friday the 13th. There’s something very modern about that. Give him a phone and he’d be posting it over footage of his morning coffee going down the front of his coat.
Today’s date also has an oddly specific echo. The composer Gioachino Rossini died on Friday 13 November 1868. His biographer, Henry Sutherland Edwards, remarked on the coincidence the following year, adding a little “if” when he described Rossini’s supposed dread of Fridays and the number thirteen. Even in 1869, someone was doing the historical equivalent of saying, Well, that’s what I heard. Library of Congress on early references · Rossini’s biographer, via the Museum of Printing
The Knights Templar make a good story
On Friday 13 October 1307, officials acting for Philip IV of France arrested members of the Knights Templar. That much is history. The idea that their arrests started the superstition is a later explanation, helped along in popular culture by Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. There’s a gap of centuries between the arrests and the early written references to the unlucky date. That gap tends to disappear when somebody tells the story by candlelight. National Geographic’s interview with medieval historian Helen Nicholson
Dinner for thirteen, and a newspaper with a jinx
In New York, the Thirteen Club held its first dinner for thirteen people on Friday 13 January 1882. Imagine being the person who said, “Go on then, put another chair out.” By 1913, a Chicago newspaper was carrying a wedding announcement that played up the number thirteen and illustrated the occasion with a little demonic-looking “jinx”. Some people were already having a lovely time with the date.
British newspapers could give it a darker turn. In May 1910, London’s Weekly Times & Echo reported the death of French aviator Gabriel Hauvette-Michelin in a crash at a flying meeting near Lyons. The report described his aircraft striking a marker on the course, then noted that superstitious aviators had remarked on the date. One report held both explanations side by side. You can still hear that impulse today when someone tells a story and adds, And do you know what day it was? Library of Congress newspaper examples · British Newspaper Archive
From Wall Street to the horror shelf
Thomas W. Lawson’s 1907 novel Friday, the Thirteenth used the date for a stock-market panic. By 1980, Sean S. Cunningham’s Friday the 13th had found a more enduring setting for it. An abandoned summer camp, a group of teenage counsellors and a lake that looks quite inviting until the music starts.
Here’s the bit that always feels like a trick pub-quiz question. In the original film, the killer is Jason’s mother, Pamela Voorhees. Jason gets his famous hockey mask in Part III. The image most of us associate with the date took three films to turn up. By then there was already room for a send-up called Saturday the 14th. Even the calendar had a sequel.
Taylor Swift went the other way with thirteen. She turned thirteen on Friday the 13th and has talked about the number as a lucky one. Same date, completely different story to tell about it. Lawson’s novel at Project Gutenberg · BFI on the original film · How Jason got his mask · Sight and Sound on the slasher spoofs · Taylor Swift’s 2007 interview
If you fancy another trip down the horror aisle, come rummage through Cult Classics & Beautiful Nightmares.
Why it still feels a bit off
Imagine the toaster packs in, you drop your keys in a puddle and the school-run traffic is appalling. On an ordinary Friday, that’s a morning you’d rather forget. On Friday the 13th, it’s a story you’ll tell someone before lunchtime. The Fridays when you found your keys first go and made perfectly decent toast rarely get a mention.
Psychologists call that tendency confirmation bias. Once we expect something, the moments that fit the expectation stand out. And when you’ve spent years hearing the date said in the tone people usually reserve for “the boiler’s making that noise again”, it can feel ominous before anything has happened. Where you grew up matters, too. In parts of the Spanish-speaking world the ominous date is Tuesday the 13th, while Italy has a tradition around Friday the 17th. The Guardian on the psychology of the superstition · Library of Congress on unlucky dates across cultures
I quite like the idea of giving a dreary November Friday a little atmosphere. Put the big light off, find a blanket and stick an old horror film on. If something thumps upstairs halfway through, give it a minute. It’s probably the washing machine.
What was the superstition in your house growing up? Did anyone actually change their plans on Friday the 13th?