Fear of Friday the 13th
Paraskevidekatriaphobia
Friday and the number thirteen were each considered unlucky long before anybody put them together. There is no record of the two being treated as especially unlucky in conjunction before the nineteenth century, which makes the combination roughly two hundred years old rather than ancient.
The arrest of the Knights Templar on Friday, 13 October 1307, by officers of Philip IV of France is regularly cited as the origin, and the material states that the origins remain murky.
Where the Friday the thirteenth superstition first shows up
The trail in the nineteenth century is short and specific. A character in the 1834 French play Les Finesses des Gribouilles says he was born on Friday, 13 December 1813, from which come all his misfortunes.
The early English reference is a biography of Rossini by H. S. Edwards, noting that if it were true that Rossini, like many Italians, regarded Fridays as unlucky and thirteen as an unlucky number, it was remarkable that he died on Friday 13 November 1868.
T. W. Lawson's popular 1907 novel Friday, the Thirteenth may have done the work of spreading it. Its plot is an unscrupulous broker exploiting the superstition to create a Wall Street panic on the day, which is a novel about the profitability of the belief published while the belief was still forming.
Who produces the Friday the thirteenth statistics
The Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute in Asheville, North Carolina, estimates that between seventeen and twenty-one million people in the United States are affected, making it the most feared day and date in history, and that between eight hundred million and nine hundred million dollars of business is lost.
That is the origin of nearly every statistic attached to this superstition, and it is one organisation.
Against it sit two flat contradictions from parties with the data. Representatives of Delta Air Lines and of Continental Airlines have both stated that their airlines see no noticeable drop in travel on those Fridays. If seventeen million Americans avoided flights, two major carriers would notice.
Whether accidents rise on Friday the thirteenth
Scanlon, Luben, Scanlon and Singleton published a study in 1993 concluding that the risk of hospital admission from a transport accident may be increased by as much as fifty-two per cent on the thirteenth. It attracted attention in popular science writing.
The same authors say in the same paper that they did not have enough admissions to analyse meaningfully. Both sentences are theirs, and only one of them travelled.
Subsequent studies have disproved any correlation. The Dutch Centre for Insurance Statistics reported on 12 June 2008 that fewer accidents, fires and thefts occur when the thirteenth falls on a Friday, because people are more careful or stay at home. Dutch insurers received an average of 7,800 traffic accident reports each Friday, and 7,500 when the thirteenth fell on one.
Driving is slightly safer on Friday the thirteenth, at least in the Netherlands, which is the opposite of the claim and the more interesting finding.
How often Friday the thirteenth comes round
Every calendar year contains at least one Friday the thirteenth, and no year can contain more than three. Three arrive in only two configurations:
- February, March and November of a common year starting on Thursday
- January, April and July of a leap year starting on Sunday
A month contains one whenever it begins on a Sunday. The gap between them can be as short as one month or as long as fourteen. On average one arrives every 212.35 days, at a rate of 1.7218 a year, giving about three thousand four hundred and seventy-seven since the year 1 CE.
Each four-hundred-year Gregorian cycle contains 146,097 days, exactly 20,871 weeks, so the pattern repeats precisely. The thirteenth is very slightly more likely to fall on a Friday than on any other day.
Which countries fear Tuesday the thirteenth instead
In Hispanic countries the unlucky day is Tuesday the thirteenth, martes trece. Greeks also regard Tuesday, and particularly the thirteenth, as unlucky, on the grounds that the day is dominated by Ares. Constantinople fell to the Fourth Crusade on Tuesday 13 April 1204 and to the Ottomans on Tuesday 29 May 1453, and the Greek name for the day, Triti, means the third, which fits the belief that bad luck comes in threes.
Italy uses Friday the seventeenth, and the reason is orthographic. Seventeen in Roman numerals is XVII, and rearranging the characters gives VIXI, Latin for I have lived, which implies being dead now. Thirteen in Italy is generally lucky. A parody film from 2000 whose English title referenced Friday the thirteenth was retitled for Italian release around the seventeenth instead.
How Finland and tattoo parlours use Friday the thirteenth
Finland has run a National Accident Day since 1995, always falling on a Friday the thirteenth, coordinated by the Finnish Red Cross and led by a consortium including the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, to raise awareness of road safety. A superstition converted into a public health calendar is an unusually practical use of one.
Tattoo parlours have adopted the date, many opening for twenty-four hours and offering flash designs featuring the number thirteen. Oliver Peck gives the logic as a sequence:
- bad luck would come a person's way
- it would see the number thirteen
- it would see that bad luck is already there
- it would pass by
Told apart
Often confused with Fear of Friday the 13th
- Fear of the Number 13Triskaidekaphobia is the fear of the number alone, and it is considerably older. There is no record of the number and the day being feared in combination before the nineteenth century.
- Fear of the Number 666Both attach dread to a specific figure with a Christian association, and both have a number in circulation that the underlying evidence does not support.
Common questions
Questions about Paraskevidekatriaphobia
- How old is the superstition?
- About two hundred years as a combination. Friday and the number thirteen were each considered unlucky long before, and there is no record of the two being treated as especially unlucky together before the nineteenth century. The Knights Templar arrests of Friday 13 October 1307 are cited as the origin, and the sources describe the origins as murky.
- Where does the 17 to 21 million figure come from?
- From the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute in Asheville, North Carolina, which also produces the estimate of eight to nine hundred million dollars in lost business. One organisation is the source of nearly every statistic attached to this superstition, and representatives of Delta Air Lines and Continental Airlines have both said they see no noticeable drop in travel.
- Are there more accidents on the day?
- Fewer, on the best available figures. The Dutch Centre for Insurance Statistics reported in 2008 that Dutch insurers received an average of 7,800 traffic accident reports on an ordinary Friday and 7,500 when the thirteenth fell on one, attributing the difference to people being more careful or staying at home.
- What about the study that found a 52% increase?
- Its authors also said the data could not support the conclusion. Scanlon, Luben, Scanlon and Singleton published in 1993 that the risk of hospital admission from a transport accident might be increased by as much as fifty-two per cent on the thirteenth, and stated clearly that the numbers of admissions were too small to allow meaningful analysis. Only the first sentence travelled.
- Which countries use a different day?
- Hispanic countries use Tuesday the thirteenth, martes trece, and Greeks regard Tuesday as dominated by Ares, with Constantinople falling on a Tuesday in both 1204 and 1453.
- How often does it happen?
- At least once a year and never more than three times. A month contains one whenever it begins on a Sunday, the gap between them runs from one month to fourteen, and on average one arrives every 212.35 days, giving about three thousand four hundred and seventy-seven since the year 1 CE.
Added 2026-08-23 · Revised 2026-08-26
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Related entries
- Fear of the Number 13Isador Coriat had the word in print by 1910. No manual carries it and no survey counts it, so the evidence is a habit of numbering: floors, decks, plates.
- Fear of the Number 666Papyrus 115, the oldest surviving text of Revelation 13, gives the number as 616. Two spellings of Nero's name produce the two numbers, which explains both.
- Fear of the Number 17Rearrange XVII, the Roman numeral for seventeen, and it spells VIXI, I have lived, which is to say I am dead. The Romans may have noticed first.
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- Fear of NumbersTrouble holding certain jobs, trouble paying bills, trouble managing a budget. This is a fear whose damage arrives as administration, not drama.