Johannesburg - If you avoided walking under ladders and kept a lookout for black cats on Friday, you’re not out of the spooky woods yet. Bad luck, it seems, does indeed come in threes.
Friday was only one of three dreaded Black Fridays this year. But, breathe easy.
Two have already passed. There was also a Friday the 13th last month.
The next day of ill omens will only hit those suffering from paraskevidekatriaphobia, or the irrational fear of Friday the 13th, in November.
But beware: in 2026, the trio of unhappy days will strike again, and then again in 2037.
But this is not a portent of doom, experts assure – rather a mere “quirk” in the calendar.
Try telling that to the sufferers of paraskevidekatriaphobia, a phobia believed to afflict millions of people who will rather forgo their daily routines than risk a bad omen.
Across the world, some hotels reportedly omit the 13th floor and instead head straight to 14 when numbering hotels because of the superstitions surrounding the number 13.
In South Africa, no SAA aircraft, for example, feature a row 13. “We are mindful that number 13 could bring some level of discomfort to some passengers and for that reason all our passenger aeroplanes do not have row 13,” says Tlali Tlali, spokesman for SAA.
But Tlali believes the airline’s customers don’t pay much heed to the superstition. “If anything, our bookings (generated on this day) are up and our passenger volumes travelling on this day remain steady in comparison with the same date last month and generally on this day of the week.”
But where does the fear around Friday the 13th originate? It’s believed the superstition arose from Jesus’s Last Supper and Crucifixion, where 13 individuals were present the night before his crucifixion on Good Friday.
Myths around the unlucky nature of the number 13 persist as the number 12 is a “complete number”. There are 12 signs in the Zodiac and 12 ribs in the human body, for example. The number 13, it seems, has the bad luck of coming next.
Others believe the superstition gained infamy with the emergence of pop culture in the 20th century, buoyed by psychotic killer Jason Voorhees in the Friday the 13th movies.
For some, the fear is so extreme that they refuse to go to work, get out of bed or get behind the wheel.
They are the people who will quote a ghastly British Medical Journal study in 1993 that sought to examine the relationship between road accidents in the UK on two separate Fridays, the 6th and the 13th.
The study concluded that the risk of hospital admission from a transport accident could climb 52 percent, declaring that the day was unlucky for some. “Staying at home is recommended,” it advised.
Saturday Star