Triskaidekaphobia is the fear of Friday the 13th.
Friday the 13th has lore reaching back many years. The number 13 is a prime number, therefore only divisible by itself and 1. Which makes it, pun intended, an odd number.
Thomas W. Larson’s novel Friday the Thirteenth may be at the core of the modern lore about the day. It was published in 1907. This book was actually about how easy it was to manipulate and therefore collapse the stock market.
Bet you didn’t know that the modern Friday the 13th lore started with the stock market?
The number 13 is also spooky to architects and elevator people alike. Many buildings don’t have a listed 13th floor. The floor may exist as support for the rest of the building, hiding such things as HVAC and just not numbered or they just skip the numbering of the floors. The Otis elevator company reports that 80-90% of high rise buildings do not have a button for the thirteenth floor.
Other number 13 things that may contribute to the modern fear of the number.
- At the Last Supper, Judas Iscariot was the 13th guest, if you count Jesus
- Loki of North mythology once went uninvited to a banquet of 12 gods where he killed one of the other guests
- The famous Apollo saying “failure is not an option” was from the 13th lunar mission
- Lastly, the 13th tarot card is the Death card
The Death card is not a bad card in tarot. It doesn’t even represent literal death. It represents change, the letting go of previous beliefs. The tarot guide says that it is a positive card.
Then there is the superstition of the healthcare kind.
All healthcare workers are a little bit ‘stitious about the date. Although research has concluded there is no significant difference in death, readmission, or post-operative complications on Friday the 13th compared to other Fridays. This comes from a retrospective study of 19,747adults having common surgical procedures on Friday the 13th between the years 2007-2019.
As all of us in medicine know, sometimes the studies don’t tell the entire story. Those of us trained in research know that the research question might not have been strong enough to account for all the variables.
I have had my share of icky Friday the 13ths and my share of Friday the 13ths with no problems. Is it a mindset problem? If you fear the worst going into it, the smallest hiccup will prove to you that you were right.
There’s a name for that kind of bias.
Chin up on this Friday the 13th. Perhaps going in with a positive attitude will make your day not so bad.
