Numerical Superstitions

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The Number 13

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Superstitions can be found in cultures all over the world. They can be about numbers, animals, objects or certain days. Superstitions can also be found in combination of each other, such as the wondrous combination of Friday and the number 13. It was suggested by Leopold Wagnor that this fear, paraskavedekatriaphobia, came about from two historic customs: first in Great Britain, hangings were typically held on Fridays creating a bad omen about the day. Secondly it deals with Jesus Christ and his twelve disciples at the Last Supper (Wagnor 1894). Including Jesus in the number of people that attended the meal, there were thirteen all together, and when the thirteenth member, Judas left the supper something terrible happened to him. It has now become customary to invite either twelve or fourteen people to dinner for fear that something could happen to the thirteenth member after they leave. This superstition has even crossed into the realm of architecture and that in The Carlton Hotel in London may have eighteen floors but it does not have an assigned thirteenth floor (Scanlon, 1993).

-Rachel Snyder

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The Number 4

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One of the fears associated with death in East Asian cultures is tetraphobia, or the fear of the number four. The number four sounds like the word death in Cantonese, Mandarin Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and a few other southeaster Asian languages. This fear is prevalent that it has effected the way in which floors in buildings have been numbered, often skipping the fourth floor, with some buildings in Hong Kong for example skipping all floors with the number four in them (Yau Hau Tse 2015). To attract Chinese buyers, developers in Vancouver have also “been building four-free apartment blocks for a decade… the city will not change street names, but is relaxed about house numbers: 224 can become 223B.” (The Economist 2015). This fear has extended to more than just building floors, including traffic management bureau of Beijing halting the issuance of license plates with the number as well. The pronunciation of numbers combined with the number four also alters the perception of those in East Asia. For example, the numbers 14 and 24 are even unluckier because 14 sounds like “will certainly die” and 24 sounds like “easy to die.”i The number 44 is also not liked because it sounds like “death, death” (Yau Hau Tse).

-Jessica Wetzel