Triskaidekaphobia

Triskaidekaphobia is a fear of the number 13. It is usually considered to be a superstition. A specific fear of Friday the 13th is called paraskavedekatriaphobia or friggatriskaidekaphobia.

Origins

Thirteen may be considered a "bad" number simply because it is one more than 12, which is a popularly used number in many cultures (due to it being a highly composite number). When a group of 13 objects is divided into two, three, four or six equal groups, there is always one leftover object.

The number 13 also retains biblical meanings. At the Last Supper, Judas, the disciple who betrayed Jesus, was the 13th to sit at the table (also spilling the salt).

It has also been linked to that fact that a lunisolar calendar must have 13 months in some years, while the solar Gregorian calendar and lunar Islamic calendar always have 12 months in a year.

Triskaidekaphobia may have also affected the Vikings — it is believed that Loki in the Norse pantheon was the 13th god. This was later Christianised into saying that Satan was the 13th angel.

The Mesopotamian Code of Hammurabi (ca. 1686 BC) omits 13 in its numbered list. This seems to indicate a superstition existed long before the Christian era.

Examples

Some buildings number their floors so as to skip the thirteenth floor entirely, jumping from floor 12 to floor 14 in order to avoid distressing triskaidekaphobics, or using 12 and 12b instead. An example is One Canada Square in Canary Wharf, the tallest building in the UK, which lacks a 13th floor. This is sometimes applied to house or room numbers as well. The same is also true of rows in airplanes.

The composer Arnold Schoenberg suffered from triskaidekaphobia. It is said that the reason his late opera is called Moses and Aron, rather than Moses and Aaron (the correct spelling with two As) is because the latter spelling has thirteen letters in it. He was born (and, it turned out, died) on the thirteenth of the month, and thought of this as a portent. He once refused to rent a house because it had the number 13, and feared turning 76, because its digits add up to thirteen. In an interesting story, it is believed that he feared Friday, July 13 1951, as it was the first Friday the 13th of his 76th year. He reportedly stayed in bed that day preparing for what he thought as his death day. After begging her husband to wake up and "quit his nonsense," his skeptical wife was shocked when her husband simply uttered the word "harmony" and died. His time of death was 11:47 p.m., 13 minutes until midnight. Also, note that the digits of the time of his death add to 13 (1+1+4+7).

The Nazi fighter plane developed from the He-112 was designated He-100 in order to avoid the designation Heinkel He 113, which was considered unlucky. Adolf Hitler was triskaidekaphobic. In the United States, there has never been a F-13 fighter aircraft due to many pilots being superstitious. The Grumman F-14 Tomcat directly followed the Lockheed YF-12 Blackbird (a fighter prototype which was a close relative of the famed SR-71 Blackbird).

American singer-songwriter John Mayer had 14 tracks on his album Room for Squares, although the 13th is 0.2 seconds of silence and is not listed on the album cover. Likewise, Hot Hot Heat's album Elevator does not list a 13th track on its cover. On the CD the 13th track is four seconds of random noise. The reasoning behind it is that since some buildings do not have 13th floors, an elevator would not have a button for it.

Some refer to the near-fatal Apollo 13 mission to the moon as proof of 13 being unlucky. Apollo 13 was launched at 14:13 EST on April 11 1970 (11/4/70, digits summing to 13) from complex 39 (three times thirteen). Widespread rumors that it launched at 13:13 local time (EST) are incorrect Apollo 13 Mission Details, although it is true that this corresponds to 13:13 CST - the local time in Houston, Texas, the location of mission control. Apparently, Apollo 13 was also going to go through LOI Lunar Orbit Injection on April 13. Others have noted that while that for a supposedly unlucky mission, the fact that the crippling accident occurred when the crew was best equipped to cope with it is a lucky occurrence in itself.

The Spanish motor racer Ángel Nieto is famous for saying that he achieved 12 + 1 World Motorcycling Championships. A bio-pic about him is thus titled 12 + 1.

The characters Stan and Hilda Ogden, in the English TV series Coronation Street, lived at 12a Coronation Street to avoid their address being number 13.

In Formula 1, there is no car with the number 13. The number has been removed after 2 drivers were killed in crashes — both driving cars numbered 13. Of course cars with numbers other than 13 have crashed too, but nobody finds this surprising.

The arrest and murder of the Knights Templar occurred on Friday 13th October 1307

Memphis International Airport in Memphis, TN does not have Gate A13, B13, or C13. Also, the Birmingham International Airport in Birmingham, AL does not contain a gate C13.

In the Disney film The Rescuers, one of the main characters, the mouse Bernard is highly triskaidekaphobic, refusing to step on the thirteenth step of a ladder or stairway and is shocked to find out his flight on Orville the albatross is Flight Thirteen.

Similar phobias

Tetraphobia, fear of the number 4 — in China, Japan, and Korea, it is not uncommon for buildings (incl. offices, apartments, hotels, hospitals, etc.) to have no 4th floor, and sometimes no floor having 4 (14, 41, etc.) at all. Similarly-numbered rooms are also often omitted in any given floors in buildings. It is likewise common to find no block number ending in 4 in residential complexes. The Chinese pronunciation, for the words "die" and "four" are similar ("si" or "shi"), and in extension the Japanese and Korean pronunciation of the same words derived from Chinese. Interestingly, "13" is often considered a lucky number in these cultures since the word "three" (pronounced "san") is similar to the pronunciation of the word "live" or "survive" in Chinese and Korean. Thus sometimes the block number "13A" would be in place where the block "14" should be in some residential complexes. Chinese cellphone numbers containing a 4 are sold at a far lower price, which is funny because more than half of the telephone numbers contain a 4 (or any other digit for that matter) somewhere.

In Italian culture, the number 17 is considered unlucky. When viewed as the Roman numeral, XVII, it can be re-arranged as VIXI, which in Latin means "I have lived", the perfect tense, implying "My life is over." (c.f. "Vixerunt", Cicero's famous announcement of an execution.) In Italy, it is not uncommon to notice that buildings do not have 17th floor, hotels do not have a room 17. The Italian airline carrier Alitalia does not have a row 17 on its aircraft, and neither does German carrier Germanwings, which flies to many Italian destinations. Renault sold its "R17" model in Italy as "R177."

Bibliography

Lachenmeyer, Nathaniel (2004). 13: The Story of the World's Most Popular Superstition. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows. ISBN 1568583060.

Footnotes

Phobias

Gourt Home::Gourt :: Triskaidekaphobia

Origins

Examples

Similar phobias

Bibliography

Footnotes