The number 13 does not carry one fixed meaning across cultures. In much of Anglo-American and Western European folklore it is associated with bad luck, especially at the dinner table or when the thirteenth day falls on a Friday. In Italy, however, 13 can be treated as lucky, while 17 carries the stronger unlucky reputation.
The best-documented beliefs around 13 form a cluster rather than a single rule. Some concern how many people may safely dine together, some attach danger to a date, and others remove the number from floors, rooms, or seating plans. Folklore records also preserve deliberate reversals in which 13 is worn, chosen, or celebrated for luck.
Thirteen at the Dinner Table
Thirteen Diners and a Death Within the Year
A long-recorded European belief says that if exactly thirteen people sit down to a meal, one of them will die within the following year. British domestic folklore published in 1881 gives a sharper version in which the youngest diner may be considered especially at risk. Earlier printed evidence shows anxiety about a group of thirteen without yet giving this exact dinner-table formula. The belief is cultural rather than predictive.
Adding a Fourteenth Guest to Break the Count
One response to the thirteen-at-table omen is simply to make the party fourteen. Historical accounts describe hosts urgently finding an extra diner, while a French tradition even used the term quatorzième for a person brought in to occupy the fourteenth place and prevent a dinner party from remaining at thirteen.
When the Calendar Reaches Thirteen
Friday the 13th as an Unlucky Day
The combined fear of Friday and the thirteenth day is much newer than many origin stories suggest. Library of Congress folklore research identifies clear French references from 1834 and shows the belief appearing regularly in American newspapers by the late nineteenth century. The day came to be treated as a time when ordinary plans might attract bad luck.
Avoiding Marriage Plans on Friday the 13th
An American newspaper report from 1899 recorded a sharp drop in marriage-license applications when Friday fell on the thirteenth, explicitly attributing the change to the unlucky combination. This is a practical form of the superstition: the date is not merely labeled unlucky, but avoided for an event expected to begin married life on favorable terms.
Tuesday the 13th Instead of Friday the 13th
Friday is not always the weekday paired with 13. Tuesday the 13th is documented in Spanish-speaking traditions and in Greece, while a Spanish printed discussion from 1922 shows that writers were already trying to explain the reputation of an unlucky Tuesday. Those explanations should not be mistaken for proof of a medieval origin; the date of a later written explanation and the beginning of the folk belief are different questions.
Removing—or Reversing—the Number
Skipping the 13th Floor
A visible modern expression of triskaidekaphobia is the omission of 13 in building numbering. A 1927 report in The New Yorker explicitly noted that the Fifth Avenue Hotel had no numbered thirteenth floor and described 12A as a substitute used in buildings. Hotels and other multistory buildings may still label the physical level after 12 as 14. The practice removes the number, not the floor itself.
Thirteen as a Lucky Number in Italy
Italian number lore offers one of the clearest reversals of the familiar unlucky-13 pattern. Academic research on superstition in Italy describes 13 as lucky, with 17 taking the stronger unlucky role. Italian dictionaries also preserve fare tredici, originally associated with winning the top prize by correctly predicting thirteen football results and later used more broadly for an unusually fortunate success.
Wearing 13 as a Lucky Talisman
A University of Detroit Mercy folklore archive preserves a Michigan record learned from an Italian friend whose grandmother wore a gold chain bearing the number 13 for luck. It should not be generalized to all Italian families, but it documents a concrete household use of 13 as a protective or fortunate personal symbol.
Documented History of the 13 Superstition
The dates below mark surviving printed, archival, journalistic, or academic records used on this page. They are not presented as dates when a belief was invented. A custom can circulate orally before it appears in a source, and a later writer’s explanation of an older event does not prove an unbroken tradition back to that event.
Thirteen People in One Company Treated as an Omen
Joseph Addison’s The Spectator describes a gathering thrown into alarm when an older woman notices that exactly thirteen people are present. A pregnant guest is then counted as a fourteenth person to break the omen. The passage documents fear of a group of thirteen in early eighteenth-century Britain, though it does not yet give the later formula that one of thirteen dinner guests must die within a year.
Clear French References to Friday the 13th
Library of Congress folklorist Stephen Winick identifies two French works from 1834 as the earliest clear references he found connecting Friday and the thirteenth with misfortune. Later French plays from the nineteenth century make the combination more explicit, showing that the belief had entered recognizable popular language well before many modern origin stories were invented.
Record: Library of Congress review of the 1834 French sources
The Death-Within-a-Year Rule for Thirteen at Table
T. F. Thiselton-Dyer’s Domestic Folk-Lore gives the dinner-table belief in the form familiar today: people may refuse to dine when exactly thirteen are present because one of them, often said to be the youngest, is expected to die within the next twelve months. This printed source is firmer evidence for the specific dinner-and-death formula than attempts to project it directly into antiquity.
The Thirteen Club Deliberately Challenges the Taboo
New York’s Thirteen Club held its first dinner on a Friday the thirteenth and intentionally gathered thirteen people. Its later banquets exaggerated supposedly unlucky acts as a public rejection of the superstition. The club does not establish where fear of 13 began, but it shows that the belief was familiar enough in the United States by the 1880s to inspire an organized counter-movement.
Record: Thirteen Club material reviewed by the Library of Congress
A Printed Spanish Explanation of Tuesday and Thirteen
Writer Marcos Rafael Blanco Belmonte discussed the unlucky Tuesday tradition in Madrid’s Blanco y Negro and connected it with an account of a disastrous Tuesday in medieval Xàtiva. The article is useful evidence that a Spanish printed tradition was actively explaining the superstition by 1922. Its proposed medieval explanation should be treated as an origin story, not as proof that the combined Tuesday-the-13th belief began in 1276.
A Hotel Without a Numbered Thirteenth Floor
A New Yorker report on New York buildings states that the Fifth Avenue Hotel had no thirteenth floor and notes the use of “12A” for the physical level in building practice. This provides dated evidence that omission of the floor number was already an identifiable architectural response to superstition in the 1920s.
Record: The New Yorker, “Roof Terraces—Folklore—Way Down East”
Academic Evidence for Lucky 13 in Italy
A field experiment published in the Journal of Economic Psychology discusses Italian number beliefs in which 13 can carry favorable meaning while 17 is treated as unlucky. Italian lexical evidence also preserves fare tredici as the expression for winning the top thirteen-result Totocalcio prize and, by extension, achieving a stroke of good fortune.
Dating rule: the timeline dates the evidence, not an assumed ancient origin. The Last Supper, Norse stories, the Knights Templar, medieval battles, and other frequently repeated explanations are not inserted as starting dates unless a source demonstrates that the relevant superstition was actually documented there at that time.
What Recent Research Says About Friday the 13th
A 2026 study by University of Toronto researchers Jeffrey S. Rosenthal and Jennifer M. Dmetrichuk examined more than 250,000 unexpected deaths in Ontario from 2009 through 2023, including homicides, accidents, and unexpected natural deaths. The rate on Friday the 13th was not higher than on other days; in the dataset it was slightly lower than the overall rate. The researchers also found no increase associated with full moons or Halloween. The study addresses mortality in one Canadian province rather than every behavior linked to the superstition, but it provides direct evidence against the idea that Friday the 13th itself raises the risk of an unexpected death.
Friday the 13th Dates in 2026
There are three Friday the 13ths in 2026: February 13, March 13, and November 13. The final occurrence of the year is November 13, 2026. The date may still influence plans for people who take the superstition seriously, but the Ontario mortality study found no corresponding rise in unexpected deaths on Friday the 13th.
Country and Culture Variations
| Country or Culture | Documented Variation | Meaning | Scope |
|---|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | Exactly thirteen people dining together | One diner may die within a year | Nineteenth-century British domestic folklore |
| France | Adding a fourteenth diner to avoid a table of thirteen | Protection from bad luck | Historical Parisian dining custom recorded in folklore literature |
| France | Friday falling on the thirteenth | Bad luck | Clear literary references documented from 1834 onward |
| United States | Friday the 13th treated as a double unlucky date | Bad luck | Regular newspaper references appear by the late nineteenth century |
| United States | Fewer marriage-license applications on Friday the 13th | Marriage avoidance | Kansas City newspaper report, 1899 |
| Greece | Tuesday the 13th | Bad luck | Regional weekday-and-number combination noted by Library of Congress folklife staff |
| Spanish-speaking cultures | Tuesday the 13th | Bad luck | Transnational tradition; not assigned to one modern country |
| United States | Omitting a numbered 13th floor in some hotels and buildings | Avoiding an unlucky number | Modern architectural and hospitality practice; a New York example is documented in 1927 |
| Italy | 13 treated as a lucky number | Good luck | Academic research contrasts lucky 13 with unlucky 17 |
| United States | Italian-American family tradition of wearing 13 on a gold chain for luck | Good luck | Single archived folklore record from Michigan |
Origin Stories That Need Caution
Several popular explanations for unlucky 13 are repeated so often that they can look older or better documented than they are. The Library of Congress notes that the original Code of Hammurabi did not number its laws, so the claim that an ancient thirteenth law was deliberately omitted cannot prove an ancient fear of 13. The familiar story in which Loki arrives as the thirteenth guest at a Norse divine banquet is also absent from the primary Eddic accounts of Baldr’s death.
The Last Supper offers a more plausible cultural association because Jesus and the twelve apostles make a group of thirteen, and later European folklore repeatedly linked thirteen diners with death. Even here, care is needed: biblical texts do not identify Judas as the “thirteenth to arrive,” and the exact historical route from the meal to later number superstition is not documented as a single continuous chain.
Friday the 13th also has a later paper trail than medieval origin stories imply. Folklife research at the Library of Congress traces clear combined references to nineteenth-century France. The often-repeated claim that the arrest of the Knights Templar on Friday, October 13, 1307 created the superstition appears to be a modern explanation rather than a belief documented from the medieval period.
When People Tried to Defeat the Superstition
The fear of thirteen also produced organized mockery. New York’s Thirteen Club first met on Friday, January 13, 1882 and deliberately staged acts that conventional superstition treated as risky. Members gathered in groups of thirteen and made a social performance out of challenging unlucky-number customs. The club is useful evidence that the belief was culturally familiar enough in the late nineteenth-century United States to be publicly ridiculed as well as feared.
📚 Roots of Belief
- Library of Congress, Folklife Today — On the Possible Origins of Friday the Thirteenth: Metafolklore, Fear, and Fun — Folklorist Stephen Winick reviews early French references, late nineteenth-century American newspaper evidence, the Thirteen Club, and weak origin stories involving the Code of Hammurabi, Norse mythology, and the Knights Templar.
- Library of Congress, Folklife Today — Who’s Afraid of Friday the Thirteenth? — Provides comparative folklife context for Friday the 13th, Tuesday the 13th in Greece and Spanish-speaking cultures, and differing unlucky-number traditions.
- University of Detroit Mercy Libraries — James T. Callow Computerized Folklore Archive, Number 13 Records — Primary folklore records include American bad-luck beliefs, a Detroit Friday-the-13th entry, and a Michigan account of an Italian family using the number 13 as a lucky personal token.
- Project Gutenberg — Robert Means Lawrence, The Magic of the Horse-Shoe, with Other Folk-Lore Notes — Digitized historical folklore text documenting French avoidance of exactly thirteen dinner guests and the Parisian quatorzième used to make a fourteenth diner.
- Project Gutenberg — T. F. Thiselton-Dyer, Domestic Folk-Lore — Published in 1881, this British folklore collection describes the thirteen-at-table death omen, the belief that the youngest diner may be at special risk, and methods used to avoid a party of exactly thirteen.
- Journal of Economic Psychology — Overconfidence, Omens and Gender Heterogeneity: Results from a Field Experiment — Academic study discussing Italian lucky and unlucky number beliefs, including 13 as lucky and 17 as unlucky.
- Genus — Superstitions, Religiosity and Secularization: An Analysis of the Periodic Oscillations of Weddings in Italy — Peer-reviewed demographic study showing how Italian marriage timing reflects avoidance of 17 and Friday the 17th, useful for contrasting Italian number lore with Anglo-American fear of 13.
- Smithsonian Institution, Sidedoor — CSI: Southern Pacific — Smithsonian material explains triskaidekaphobia and notes the familiar practice of omitting a numbered 13th floor in hotels.
- University of Toronto — Can a Full Moon Really Bring Bad Luck? What About Friday the 13th? — Reports the Ontario analysis of more than 250,000 unexpected deaths from 2009 through 2023 and the finding that Friday the 13th, full moons, and Halloween were not associated with higher unexpected-death rates.
- CHANCE, Volume 39, Issue 2 — Friday the 13th, Full Moons, and Holiday Blues: Ontario Death Date Distributions — Publisher record for Jeffrey S. Rosenthal and Jennifer M. Dmetrichuk’s 2026 study, published online July 17, 2026, pages 28–34.
- Project Gutenberg — The Spectator, Joseph Addison and Richard Steele — Reproduces the original periodical text. Addison’s issue of March 8, 1711 describes alarm when a gathering is discovered to contain thirteen people and the attempt to break the omen by counting a pregnant woman as two.
- Blanco y Negro Archive — Madrid, 12 November 1922 — Issue associated with Marcos Rafael Blanco Belmonte’s discussion of the unlucky Tuesday tradition and a proposed historical explanation. The proposed medieval starting point is treated here as a later explanation rather than proof of the superstition’s actual origin.
- The New Yorker — Roof Terraces—Folklore—Way Down East, 22 October 1927 — Contemporary report noting the use of 12A in place of a thirteenth floor and stating that the Fifth Avenue Hotel had no numbered thirteenth floor.
- Treccani — Trédici — Italian dictionary entry recording fare tredici as the former Totocalcio expression for achieving the maximum win by correctly predicting thirteen results, later extended to mean an unusually fortunate success.