Is there any truth to the superstition about Friday the 13th? Some people are so scared by this date that they fear to leave the house. It even has one of those bizarre phobia titles that are unpronounceable, “paraskevidekatriaphobia.” No one is really sure where the origin of Friday the 13th began. Some think that it has obvious reference to Christianity with the number 13 for the disciples and Jesus supposedly crucified on a Friday. Other scholars point out that Scandinavia has a long tradition dating back to Norse times when both Friday (long known as the ‘witches’ sabbath) and the number 13 were considered unlucky.
Whatever it’s origins, it has been estimated that fear of Friday the 13th causes 17-21 million people to stay at home on this day costing something like $800-900 million in lost working days in the US each year. In terms of actual bad luck, the evidence is mixed. Initial studies of road traffic accidents in Finland reported that the risk of getting killed in a traffic accident was 63% higher in women drivers on Friday the 13th compared with other Fridays. However, others found no evidence of more car accidents involving women on Friday the 13th in the same population. Another study reported that while more deaths may occur on Friday the 13th, the accidents may have actually taken place earlier and it was fear of Friday the 13th that increased anxiety and thus poorer medical outcome of patients.
This last explanation sounds more plausible to me as this is known as the “Hound of the Baskervilles Effect.” In the classic Sherlock Holmes story, Charles Baskerville dies of fright at the prospect of the evil hound emerging from the depths of hell to pursue him. The same fear can be generated by numbers. In our culture it’s 13 but in the Far East it is the number “four” because the number ‘4′ in Cantonese (‘su’) and in Japanese (‘shi’) both sound like the word for death. When researchers studied 25 years of death records from 1973 to 1998 in communities of Chinese and Japanese Americans they found a significant increase in death from cardiac failure on the 4th day of each month. The effect was most pronounced in California .So fear is a tangible factor and while we may entertain the notions of good and bad luck as a bit of harmless fun, the truth is that it can have a consequence for health.
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