Most people know that Friday the 13th is considered an unlucky day. I had some fun researching the roots of this belief back in September, when the Library of Congress received a call from NPR requesting to interview me about Friday the 13th. Not surprisingly, I found facts and speculation, as well as intriguing new evidence. I also encountered what I often call metafolklore: folk stories about folk beliefs. In this post, we’ll look into what I found. From the Norse gods to the Knights Templar, from mathematics to religion, and from French plays to American horror movies, let’s look at everyone’s favorite day for bad luck.
A bit about the NPR interview: they were already interviewing my friend Moira Marsh, a folklorist and librarian at Indiana university, and wanted another voice and perspective. We did the interview but—unluckily for me—the story was cut in length, and they didn’t use my voice. It was not all misfortune for me, however. They did quote me on the NPR website, in an article you can read at this link.
As both Moira and I pointed out, dating the exact start of a Friday the 13th belief is tricky, because beliefs in Friday as an unlucky day and in 13 as an unlucky number long predate a specific, well-articulated belief in the unluckiness of Friday the 13th itself. Moreover, both these beliefs are so old it’s hard to determine when or why they started.
The idea of Friday as unlucky may have derived from the biblical tradition that Jesus was crucified on a Friday. This in turn led to Fridays being observed as fasting days throughout the Christian world. Being expected to abstain from your favorite foods and activities could certainly make the day seem unlucky, and in support of this theory, Friday is not unlucky in Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, or most other religions, or in most countries where the majority religion is not Christianity.
Many people cite the Bible for the idea that 13 is unlucky too, claiming that Judas, who betrayed Jesus, was the 13th guest at the Last Supper. In fact neither the order of the guests’ arrival nor their seating arrangement is mentioned in the Bible, so there’s no obvious sense in which Judas was “13th.” However, the presence of 13 people at the Last Supper could be behind the idea of unlucky 13.
In the NPR article, Moira complicates this story by stating that 13 may have been lucky among some Catholics because of its association with Jesus and the 12 disciples. She concludes that this could have been seen as superstitious by Protestants, and that this was the reason the lucky number became unlucky in Protestant countries. That’s an interesting idea, but from an outside perspective “unlucky 13,” just like “lucky 13,” seems to be a belief unsupported by scripture, and therefore unlikely to be specifically adopted by Christians due to the Reformation. There is, morevoer, some good evidence that 13 was associated with misfortune and death in many Catholic countries before the reformation. In the specialized playing card deck we know as Tarot Cards, for example, the death card was numbered 13. The earliest decks were unnumbered but included magnificent depictions of Death. No Death card survives from the earliest numbered decks in the 15th century, but we’re sure the Death card was numbered 13 by 1565, when its number is mentioned in Francesco Piscina’s Discorso Sopre l’Ordine delle Figure de Tarocchi (Discourse on the Order of the Tarot Trumps). Death has continued to be numbered 13 to this day.
One idea about the unluckiness of 13 is mathematical. Twelve is a number with many divisors, making it both a “superior highly composite number” and a “colossally abundant number.” Because it is divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6, it is useful for many applications, and we see this in the division of the year into 12 months, the clock face into 12 hours, the day into two periods of 12 hours, the foot into 12 inches, and more. Possibly because of this, twelve tends to signify completion and perfection, and is therefore an important number in many world religions. (See Weinreich’s article “Zwölfgötter” for a broad survey of the subject.)
Skeptical researcher Joe Nickell and others suggest that because of the symbolism of 12 as perfect completion, 13 might represent “the first departure from divine completeness or the initial step towards evil.” Although I suggested a version of this “12+1” explanation in the NPR article, I also have to admit there’s no concrete evidence for it. It’s a plausible explanation, but not a proven one. It is, however, a story some people tell about folk beliefs, and as such an example of metafolklore.
In fact, it’s not the only example of metafolklore associated with unlucky 13. One claim you’ll often see is that the Code of Hammurabi, an ancient Mesopotamian law text, omitted law #13, going straight from 12 to 14. This seems to foreshadow the modern practice of skipping the number 13 when numbering the floors of buildings, and suggests that the belief in unlucky 13 is almost 4000 years old. In truth, however, the laws in the code are unnumbered on the original stone on which they were carved. Any omission of the number 13 in any edition of the code occurred after the code was rediscovered in the 20th century. The story of the code’s connection to a belief in unlucky 13, therefore, is certainly modern folklore.
Another metafolkloric explanation for unlucky 13 involves Norse mythology. Many websites will tell you that there’s a story of twelve gods who were having a dinner party when Loki—the 13th—arrived uninvited and engineered Baldr’s death. The problem with this tale is that neither the poetic nor the prose Edda—the primary sources for the story of the killing of Baldr—feature a dinner party as the context for Baldr’s death, nor do they specify the number of gods present when he was killed. National Geographic paraphrased the “Loki at the dinner party” story from an interview with Donald Dossey back in 2011; where Dossey got it is anyone’s guess (he died in 2016). It seems likely that someone combined the story of Baldr’s death with the idea that unlucky 13 derives from a betrayal committed the “13th guest” at a dinner party (taken in turn from the Last Supper story), thereby creating a new origin tale for unlucky 13. Perhaps this was an attempt to make the tradition seem older than it is. If so, this is creative metafolklore at its best!
It’s hard to determine when the ideas of unlucky 13 and unlucky Friday were combined into a belief that Friday the 13th is unlucky. However, metafolklore has an answer there too. Search the web, and you’ll find lots of sites relating the origin of a belief in unlucky Friday the 13th to the destruction of the Knights Templar, which occurred on Friday, October 13, 1307. This theory was popularized by Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code, but historians have never been convinced. Although the date of the initial attack on the Templars is accurate, no one seems to have connected this historical event to the belief in Friday the 13th until the 20th century. During the Middle Ages, few people would have known the exact date of the decree outlawing the Templars, so the belief would have to date to a time when it became widely known–more likely modern than medieval. To paraphrase my earlier blog on “Ring Around the Rosie” and the plague, today’s scholars want to know: how did the first person who claimed a connection between the events of 1307 and the belief in unlucky Friday the 13th find out about that connection, and why can’t we find whatever evidence they had? Until we see some evidence of a connection dating back to the Middle Ages, this assertion seems more like a modern guess.
This lack of evidence led National Geographic to title an article “Busting the Myth of Friday the 13th and the Knights Templar.” Oddly, though, in that piece Becky Little suggests that “Friday the 13th…wasn’t associated with bad luck until 1907, when a novel titled Friday, the Thirteenth was published.” However, the novel in question, by Thomas W. Lawson, depicts characters who already believe Friday the 13th is unlucky, referring to it as “the Wall Street hoodoo-day, Friday, the thirteenth of the month.” It describes this belief as a “tradition” and features characters describing others who hold the belief: “Why, Barry would not eat to-day for fear the food would get stuck in his windpipe.” It shows Wall Street traders using the belief to manipulate the market on the supposedly unlucky day. Pretty clearly, Lawson, who was himself known as a stock manipulator, wasn’t inventing this belief, but describing it as he had encountered it on the stock market–otherwise the novel wouldn’t have a credible plot. Therefore, the novel is not a plausible origin for the belief.
If you look at the NPR article, you may also note that Moira says we get the belief in Friday the 13th from England, where we have no record of the belief before 1913. Given that Lawson’s novel shows the belief alive and well in America in 1907, though, this can’t be right. As you also may notice in the article, they quote me speaking largely about French literature. That’s because my research convinces me this belief came to America from France rather than Britain, and did so in the mid to late 19th century.
The earliest clear references I’ve found to unlucky Friday the 13th come from French works, the first two from 1834. In an article in the Revue de Paris, the Marquis de Salvo, writing about a Sicilian count who killed his daughter on a Friday the 13th, wrote, “Ce sont toujours ces vendredis et ces nombres, treize qui portent malheur!” (“It is always Fridays and the number 13 that bring bad luck!”) Similarly, an 1834 play called Les Finesses des Gribouilles has a character state, “Je suis né un vendredi, treize décèmbre, 1813, d’où viennent tous mes malheurs!” (“I was born on a Friday, December 13, 1813, from which come all my misfortunes.”) The first of these two references could be to a belief in Friday and 13 individually as unlucky, and the second could refer only to Friday, December 13, but later examples show that by the middle of the 19th century, the idea that any Friday the 13th was unlucky was common in France. To give just one example, the 1858 play Bloqué! Vaudeville en un acte, by Henri Chivot and Alfred Duru, has a character exclaim, “je n’ai jamais eu de chance de ma vie! Je suis né un vendredi treize!” (“I have never had any luck in my life! I was born on a Friday the 13th!”)
In the 1870s we find a particularly interesting example of Friday the 13th in French drama; the play is Lélia by Octave Gastineau. In the first speech of the play, the countess Lélia complains:
Oh! non, bien certainement, je ne resterai pas plus longtemps à ce bal maudit! Pourquoi, aussi, Valentine fait-elle danser un vendredi ! un jour d’abstinence ! et un treize! Oh! ces Parisiennes! elles ne respectent rien! pas même les superstitions!”
(“Oh, no, I surely won’t stay much longer at this cursed ball! Also, why is Valentine dancing on a Friday! A fasting day! And the 13th! Oh, these Parisian women respect nothing, not even superstitions!”)
At the end of the play, she and the handsome nobleman Maurice have become acquainted, and are considering traveling together, but she has qualms:
Lélia: Ah!
Maurice: Quoi donc?
Lélia: C’est aujourd’hui vendredi 13
Maurice: C’est-à-dire samedi 14
Lélia, avec joie: Ah ! c’est vrai !Lélia: Ah!
Maurice: What is it?
Lélia: Today is Friday the 13th
Maurice: You mean Saturday the 14th
Lélia, with joy: Ah! That’s right!
These two passages indicate that Lélia fears the consequences of dancing or embarking on a new relationship on Friday the 13th, so she is joyful to discover that they have talked past midnight and it is already Saturday the 14th.
I called Gastineau’s play a particularly interesting example because in those days of rampant piracy a good play could be republished frequently, and two different English translations came out in 1878 and 1879–one was clearly based on the other, so they differ only slightly. In both, the scene was changed from Paris to London, Countess Valentine became Emily Fielding, and Maurice became an Englishman named Hugh. In the 1878 translation, the first passage about Friday the 13th was rendered as follows:
I won’t stay any longer at this horrid ball! I can’t imagine why Emily will dance on a Friday–a fast-day–the 13th of the month, too! These gay people never respect anything–not even a superstition!
The second, in which the two young people contemplate the possibilities of a new relationship and a trip to Rome, runs:
Lelia: Will it please you?
Hugh: Can you doubt it?
Lelia: Oh! dear!
Hugh: What’s the matter?
Lelia: To-day is Friday the 13th.
Hugh: No, it’s Saturday the 14th.
Lelia [joyfully]: Oh! that’s true!
In the 1879 version, the first passage remained the same, but the second had some additions:
Lelia: Will it please you?
Hugh: Can you doubt it? Have not the pair of us been masquerading to some purpose? Will not the two be soon joined as one?
Lelia: To be sure-and let us hope that our little masquerading frolic will be but the prelude to a happy wedded life! O-h!
Hugh: What’s the matter?
Lelia: To-day is Friday, the 13th. How unlucky!
Hugh: (L.C. ) No, it’s Saturday, the fourteenth!
Lelia: (R.C., joyfully. ) Oh, that’s true!
Clearly, the play has been altered to add wedding plans, suggesting that the publisher was concerned American audiences might prove prudish at the suggestion of unmarried people traveling together! More importantly from our perspective, they have added the phrase “how unlucky” after “Friday the 13th,” which suggests concern some American audiences wouldn’t understand why she was mentioning the date. This in turn suggests that they saw a belief in the bad luck of Friday the 13th as exotic, European, and obscure.
Lélia offers an example of the Friday the 13th belief making the transition from France to America through being translated to English and explained for American audiences. Another text offers an example of the belief’s reception. In the Current Notes section of the Chicago Daily Tribune of May 28, 1886 (pg. 4), I found the following item:
Champoireau in despair resolved to commit suicide. He is about to take his last plunge into the Seine when all at once he reflects: “Today, Friday, the 13th? Never!” said he, recoiling. “It might bring me bad luck!”–French Joke.
This “French Joke” also appeared in other newspapers, and you can see a version of the joke here, in the third column near the top. Of course, it’s a “French Joke” in the sense of a joke making fun of stereotypes about the French. It therefore provides evidence that in the 1880s, the belief in unlucky Friday the 13th was still seen by some Americans as both foolish and typically French.
In the late 1880s and early 1890s, references to a belief in Friday the 13th begin to show up regularly in American newspapers. Although it is often labeled a “superstition,” and sometimes explained as though people might not be familiar with it, it’s rarely anymore labeled French or European. Here are just a few examples:
“Superstitious people looked upon the Syracuse Stars as unlucky. They have thirteen players on the team, thirteen directors to govern its affairs, and the club started on its preliminary trip on Friday, the 13th day of the month. But when Joe Battin spits on the ball, and Bill Higgins gets limbered up, that team will make the fur fly.” (Waterbury Evening Democrat, 1888)
“Although yesterday was a double hoodoo—Friday, the 13th—no casualties occurred in San Antonio which only goes to show that San Antonio is not so unlucky after all.” (San Antonio Daily Light, August 14, 1897)”
“Very Unfortunate
Daisy: My rich old uncle was born on Friday, the 13th of the month, in 1813.
Mazie: Gracious! How unlucky.
Daisy: I should say so. He gets heartier every day!” (Topeka State Journal, March 29, 1898)“FRIDAY AND THE 13TH
Unlucky Combination Keeps Young People From Applying for Marriage Licenses
A week ago yesterday eight marriage licenses were granted, notwithstanding it was Friday, superstitiously regarded as an unlucky day. It was then said by one of the deputies at the recorder’s office that it was the busiest Friday in marriage licenses on record. Yesterday was Friday, too. But it was also the thirteenth of the month. Only two applied for marriage licenses.” (Kansas City Journal, October 14, 1899)
As we can see, many examples of the belief are discussed as humor, and the words “hoodoo” and “superstition” often come up. This is consistent with a general tendency to take the belief less than seriously. A joke that became common in the 1890s was to note that a baseball game would occur on Friday the 13th and quip that the date surely meant bad news for one of the two teams. You can see an early example leading off the page here. Of course, the joke really pokes fun at the belief itself, since one of the teams was bound to lose anyway. There were even clubs formed to disprove the belief in Friday the 13th and other similar beliefs. The best known was the Thirteen Club of New York, which first met on Friday, January 13, 1882.
This all brings up the point that the Friday the 13th belief in the United States mostly exists as a belief about what others believe. Initially Americans believed that Europeans, especially French people, believed in the unluckiness of Friday the 13th. Then, this was generalized to “superstitious people,” as in the article from 1888 above. Often, articles debunk the belief, and clubs form to disprove it, showing that the writers of the articles and members of the clubs don’t believe it–but they believe others do. Rarely do references to the belief indicate a significant number of self-professed believers.
What we find, then, is that the belief in Friday the 13th is not ancient or medieval, although it does have roots in earlier European beliefs about Friday and the number 13. These beliefs seem to have been combined in France into a specific belief about Friday the 13th in the first half of the 19th century. The idea of the unluckiness of Friday the 13th then migrated to America in the second half of the 19th century in plays like Lélia and other works of art and literature. In the twentieth century, Friday the 13th became part of various pop culture phenomena, starting with Lawson’s popular 1907 novel. It was immortalized in the 1980s in a series of horror movies featuring a deranged killer in a hockey mask. Those films continued until the 2000s; so far there have been 12 horror films in the franchise, but I wouldn’t bet against a 13th! To round things out, the franchise also included books, comics, and other tie-ins, plus a more cerebral and supernatural TV series about cursed objects sold by a sorcerer.
In the late 20th and early 21st century, metafolklore emerged in the stories about the Code of Hammurabi, the Norse gods at the death of Baldr, and the Knights Templar. This last story was given quite a boost by Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code, making it probably the most popular current explanation for Friday the 13th. But I’m sure there will be others. In fact, I’d wager the belief in bad luck on Friday the 13th will always be with us. Or at least, I’d wager that there will always be some people who believe that other people believe in bad luck on Friday the 13th!
Do you believe? Feel free to leave a comment below!