Happy Friday the 13th! Superstitions Still Observed By Half Of You


Do Friday the 13th superstitions sound like a thing of the past, something Americans might have engaged in back before the advent of TV and science and Ice Road Truckers kept us all busy?

It’s definitely true that Friday the 13th superstitions have declined in sway, and fewer people are going to get freaked out by a black cat crossing their ladders or whatever used to scare people back in the day.

As for back in the day, however, it isn’t just a throwback to be superstitious — even in 2013, LiveScience notes, roughly half of us admit to being at least a little superstitious in general. The site quotes anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss say noting that Friday the 13th superstitions and other similar practices nearly appear to be a pervasive part of human makeup, adding that they’re “so frequent and so widespread that we should ask ourselves if we are not confronted with a permanent and universal form of thought.”

Whether that relates to Friday the 13th superstitions varies — people with superstitions tend to have various precipitates or habits they rely on that have no real tie to scientifically proven outcomes. Many of us have lucky hats or jackets, or still haven’t fully stopped holding our breath driving past cemeteries.

But as Friday the 13th superstitions decline in popularity, so too does another aspect of such morbid intrigue — the fun people used to have with being a little freaked out. Timemagazine, which you may recall far pre-dates the website, wrote about a 1940 party dedicated to the fears and behaviors associated with the day:

“At 6:13 p.m. on Friday, the 13th of December, 169 audacious and irreverent gentlemen sat down to dine at 13 tables in Room 13 of the Merchants & Manufacturers Club of Chicago. Each table seated 13. Upon each rested an open umbrella, a bottle of bourbon and 13 copies of a poem called The Harlot. The speaker’s table was strewn with horseshoes, old keys, old shoes, mirrors and cardboard black cats. Before it reposed an open coffin with 13 candles. The occasion was the 13th Anniversary Jinx-Jabbing Jamboree and Dinner of the Anti-Superstition Society of Chicago … [which] meets regularly on Friday the 13th.”

You can tell us — are there any Friday the 13th superstitions you still observe… just in case?

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