Does Friday 13th fill you with fear or is it just another day?

Do you count magpies? Are you afraid of walking under a ladder? And what happens if you put new shoes on a table. Today is Friday the 13th and David Barnett is looking into the meaning and origin of superstition

The irrational fear of the number 13 is thought to stem from the last supper (Getty)

It’s Friday the 13th, and we all know what that means: a whole pile of bad luck. But why? Well, that’s really a two-part question, beginning with why Friday the 13th should be deemed any less lucky a day than Thursday the 12th or Saturday the 14th. In fact, we can drill down even further and look at why the number 13 is bad news. My street, for example, doesn’t have a house between numbers 11 and 15 – at least, not one that is visible to the mortal eye. Many tower blocks don’t have a 13th floor, a lot of hotels don’t have a room 13.

Triskaidekophobia is the scientific name for anyone suffering an irrational fear of the number 13, and a lot of it is thought to relate to the fact that at the Last Supper there were 13 people seated around the table, and the 13th was Judas, who went on to betray Jesus.

Jesus, of course, was crucified on Good Friday, but it seems that it wasn’t until the 19th century that Friday falling on the 13th of the month – which it does at least once a year, will do twice in 2020, and did three times in 2015 – was considered to be a bad omen.