10 Reasons To Still Be (Kind Of) Scared of Friday the 13th

Culture
By Ike Lee

One could probably say that superstition just doesn’t really get to us anymore. With millions of unforwarded chain letters still sitting in our inboxes today, none of us have been knifed at exactly 1:08 am in our bedrooms. (Though if you have or know someone who was, I’m terribly sorry for your loss.)

That being said, just to be safe, here’s the top 10 reasons why you should still sort of check for some guy in a hockey mask in your rearview mirror during your evening commute:

1. Jesus Christ once held a dinner party for 13 people, including himself. We all know how that one turned out…

2. That creepy guy you saw in the bathroom this afternoon? Could have been the reincarnate of Jack the Ripper, Theodore Bundy, or Charles Manson, who all have 13 letters in their name.

3. Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen were born on Friday, June 13, 1986. Rehab facilities across the U.S. haven’t worried about their incomes since then.

4. 2012 is a particularly bad year for Friday the 13ths. We have three this year, as opposed to the normal two, and all of them are exactly 13 weeks apart as well.

 5. The 13th installment (yes, thirteenth) of the Friday the 13th horror movie series is due out on September 13, 2013. Given the box office results of the last movie in 2009, this one isn’t even in line to beat out that concert film starring the pre-pubescent-voiced Justin Bieber.

6. In Norse mythology, the mischievous god Loki infamously crashed a banquet for gods at Valhalla, thus making the number of parties present exactly 13.

7. Many hospitals and hotels neither have a 13th floor nor rooms numbered 13. Undoubtedly to many a physician’s chagrin, it looks like Dr. Gregory House’s gorgeous Thirteen wouldn’t ever find a job anywhere, Huntington’s or not.

8. Bad things happen on this day. Period. A Swedish plane disappeared in transit in 1952, a gigantic storm killed 300,000 in Bangladesh in 1970, and 2,000 perished in a 1992 Turkish earthquake. Still not a believer?

9. Because even the sharpest world leaders believe it, and had triskaidekaphobic, the abnormal fear of 13. Both FDR and Napoleon flatly refused to travel anywhere on the 13th of any month.

10. And those who do not believe shall be punished ­– the British Navy once named a ship ‘Friday the 13th,’ or the ‘HMS Friday,’ and let it set sail on a Friday the 13th. It was never heard from again.