Friday the 13th: A guide for the superstitious

Today is Friday the 13th, and for many people that means nothing more fearful than a chance to dash out and watch the opening of the latest horror movie.

Of course, you’ve got to be mindful and avoid black cats, don’t walk under ladders, avoid stepping on cracks in the sidewalk, don’t trim fraying threads from the clothes you are wearing, and be careful where you whistle, avoiding graveyards or newsrooms.

Those are among superstitions that have attracted believers through the years. Some seem to have an obvious root: You don’t walk under ladders because something might fall and kill you.

Other superstitions have no logical root and seem to make no sense – like the newsroom fear of whistling (though the graveyard thing makes a lot of sense if you believe that ghostly spirits have the same aural acuity of dogs).

It is easy to make fun of the superstitious, but everyone believes in currying good luck and avoiding the bad kind. Stories about of the successful athlete who won’t change his socks during a hot streak or the unsuccessful lover who steals a lock of hair from an unsuspecting object of adoration.

But there is a darker side when superstitions escalate into fear, or to use the Greek lexicon, a phobia. (Spoiler alert: those who suffer from hellenologophobia, fear of Greek or complex scientific terms, should skip to the next paragraph.) One of the most famous phobias is fear of Friday the 13th, or paraskevidekatriaphobia, a specialized case of triskaidekaphobia, the fear of the number 13.

Experts disagree on how to even spell such words, so it should come as no surprise that there are many (well, no more than 13) explanations for such phobias. In the Christian tradition, there were 13 people at the table of the Last Supper and it is believed that Jesus was crucified on a Friday, hence the rationale for bad luck.

There is also a tradition pushed along by a spate of recent thrillers such as “The Da Vinci Code,” which blames the fear on the arrest, torture and crushing of the Knights Templar that began on Friday, Oct. 13, 1307.

Although its roots are disputed, the fear is real. Experts estimate that more than 9% of the U.S. population, perhaps 25 million people, change their normal actions to avoid possible dangers such as flying.

Such irrational exuberance also takes a financial toll. Economists estimate that the phobia may cost hundreds of millions of dollars in lost productivity.

Science seems split on just how dangerous Friday the 13th really is. A British medical journal in the 1990s noted that traffic-related accidents increased on Fridays the 13th.

But a recent study by the Dutch Center for Insurance Statistics showed that fewer accidents and reports of fire and theft occur when the 13th of the month falls on a Friday than on other Fridays, according to Reuters news agency.

“I find it hard to believe that it is because people are preventatively more careful or just stay home, but statistically speaking, driving is a little bit safer on Friday 13th,” statistician Alex Hoen told Verzekerd, an insurance magazine.

If you believe in bad numbers, then you are likely to believe in good ones. Which explains why this year’s Summer Olympics will begin on 8/8/08 to honor the lucky number 8 in Chinese culture.

 michael.muskal@latimes.com