Susheel’s Blog

“Hee haw haw ha! Be careful, its Friday the thirteenth!”

So what is the old superstition surrounding this morbid date in the calender? Well I decided to do some quick googling around to find out. It seems that Friday the 13th is among the oldest superstitions around. Or at least in the western world it is. “A Friday occurring on the 13th day of any month is considered to be a day of bad luck in English, German, Polish and Portuguese-speaking cultures around the globe. ” — Wikipedia. So much so they have a scientific name for it. It’s called, ok get ready for tongue twisters, paraskevidekatriaphobia or friggatriskaidekaphobia. Shush! Don’t say the words out loud, according to an urban legend, if you do so on this very date, something bad might happen to you.

Apart from this superstitious belief, there is no explanation either rational or irrational that anything bad happens on this date. People have given all sorts of wired explanations why 13th and in fact Friday the 13th is bad. Everything from prehistoric man only being able to count till 12 to a boy being drowned and then reincarnated to do unspeakable evil, which apparently forms the plot of the Friday the 13th movie series.

As far as I am concerned I have never observed anything, or nothing has ever happened to me that would suggest that Friday the 13th was bad. In fact I remember one incident a few years back when I was doing engineering and I had a lucky break on a difficult math exam on this date. I managed to pass the exam because of that. So in fact Friday the 13th has been lucky for me once. I am kinda weired, 13 has always been lucky for me, go figure! But then that’s just me. Remember,

“Even spooks don’t go out on Friday the thirteenth!”