Long believed to be a forerunner of bad luck and a cursed day, Friday the 13th has somehow inspired many pop culture personalities and consumers.

The so-called “unlucky day” and the superstitious associations that so long surrounded the day have encouraged advertisers, novel and fiction writers, horror film producers and artists to make Friday the 13th one of the successful media franchises in America and today’s inescapable symbol of popular culture.

Besides the story on the origins of Friday the 13th that remains blurry, the day has reached an important milestone when the novel Friday, the Thirteenth written by Thomas William Lawson was released in 1907. Similarly, it gained momentum when came the horror movie Friday the 13th – the American horror franchise that comprises slasher films, TV series or novellas, comic books, video games, tie-in merchandise like Halloween costumes and items – in 1980, featuring the fictional character “Jason Voorhees”, a hockey mask-wearing killer.

The origins of Friday the 13th.

It is still unclear why Friday the 13th is feared. This means that very little is known about the origins of this supposedly doomed day. Falling unto a day that points out Friday the 13th has apparently become like any bearer of bad luck such as walking under a ladder, crossing paths with a black cat, or breaking a mirror.

The day is considered an unlucky day in western superstition, and it is also thought by many to be the unluckiest day in the Gregorian calendar. The 13th day of the month falls on Friday at least once every year like last August, and it can occur up to three times in the same year.

According to mythology, number 13 causes bad luck. Folklore historian Donald Dossey relates that the unlucky nature of the number 13 originated with a Scandinavian myth about the dinner party of 12 gods in Valhalla which was interrupted by the apparition of the 13th guest named Loki. Loki was excluded from the party but dropped in anyways. Loki tricked and drove Hoor – the son of god Odin and the goddess Frigg – to kill his brother named Balder with a mistletoe-tipped arrow. When Balder died, the earth got dark, and since then, the number 13 turned damned.

Friday the 13th is also believed to have Christian associations. According to biblical tradition, instead of 12 individuals present in the Upper room during the Last Supper with Jesus, the night before his death on Good Friday, there were 13 guests who attended it on the 13th of Nisan Maundy Thursday. Another explanation of Friday the 13th as a bad omen is the number 12 which is associated with completeness including the 12 days of Christmas, the 12 months zodiac signs, the 12 labors of Hercules, the 12 gods of Olympus and the 12 tribes of Israel.

Although the real story of the so-called unluckiest day remains ambiguous, some tragic events have truly occurred on a Friday the 13th: the German bombing of Buckingham palace in 1940, a cyclone that struck Bangladesh in 1970, the death of Tupac Shakur in 1996, and the crash of the Costa Concordia cruise ship in 2012.

The fear of the number 13 as well as Friday the 13th has now become very common and affects millions of people. As a result, new scientific terms related to those fears have emerged, called “paraskavedekatriaphobia” and “friggatriskaidekaphobia”.

Sources: HISTORY / Time and Date