The New York Times, April 12, 1984
A Bad Year if You Fear Friday the 13th
By STEPHEN KING

A TRISKAIDEKAPHOBE is one who fears the number 13, and this is not a good year for the triskies, of which I am one. Living through a year with such a reputation as George Orwell has given this one is bad enough, but consider this added fillip - for only the 27th time since the year 1800, we are living in a year with three Friday the 13ths, the maximum possible. One fell in January, one falls in April (note, that's tomorrow) and the third occurs in July.

As with all superstitions, this irrational fear of 13's in general and Friday the 13th in particular has roots that can be readily excavated and examined. According to Norse mythology, 12 of the gods were invited to a dinner party in Valhalla. No one wanted Loki, because he was a notorious troublemaker. But Loki, the tale says, discovered what was up and crashed the party. There was a fight, and Baldur, the most popular god in the pantheon, was killed. The Christian antecedent is even more germane: Jesus had 12 disciples; He himself made 13. He was betrayed by one and crucified on a Friday. Was it a Friday the 13th? Sorry, my perpetual calendar doesn't go back that far.

My rational mind just loves information of this sort - loves to know, for instance, that the mustn't-light- three-on-a-match superstition is as modern as the Crimean and Boer Wars, when snipers would watch the British trenches and gauge distance by the first cigarette lighted, windage by the second and would then pop the third smoker by the flare on his face. ''Great!'' my conscious mind cheers. See? That's all it is, you idiot! And so it is. But if I light cigarettes for three, I still shake out the first match after the first two lights and scratch a second, or cap my lighter and then light it up again.

In the same way - and I am speaking with total, if slightly shamefaced, honesty now - I always take the last two steps on my back stairs as one, making 13 into 12 (there were, after all, 13 steps on the English gallows - up until 1900 or so - and executions were traditionally carried out on Fridays). When I am reading, I will not stop on page 94, page 193, page 382, et al. - the digits of these numbers add up to 13. Such behavior is, of course, neurotic, but I sometimes think it is neurosis and not love that really makes the world go round - think of all those basketball players who cross themselves before taking foul shots, not to mention stockbrokers who carry lucky coins and carpenters who wouldn't think of completing a house without first nailing a branch to the rooftree.

It's neurotic, sure. But it's also . . . safer.

And a glance through the history books suggests that Friday the 13th really doesn't seem to be a particularly lucky day. Before you begin scoffing at me and my fellow triskies, consider the following:

* 2/13/59: John Foster Dulles enters Walter Reed Hospital for hernia surgery; the real problem, which will kill him, turns out to be cancer.

* 2/13/59: Terrible flooding drives 1,500 from their homes in Indiana as the Wabash River overflows.

* 7/13/56: A military transport plane crashes while taking off in a rainstorm from McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey. Forty-five are killed.

* 7/13/56: The United States and Britain turn down Indian and Yugoslavian pleas to stop atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons.

* 2/13/53: Judge Irving R. Kaufman prepares to set an execution date for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

Just a random sampling - all from years when the triple Friday the 13th whammy was in effect. Those years themselves seem singularly unlucky.

In 1804, the first triple-whammy year on my perpetual calendar, Aaron Burr plugged Alexander Hamilton in a duel. In 1874, the composer Arnold Schoenberg, a great triskaidekaphobe, was born - on Sept. 13. He died in 1951 - on Friday, July 13 (1874 was a triple whammy; 1951, arguably Schoenberg's really unlucky date, was not). In 1888 Jack the Ripper claimed his last victim and disappeared into the London fog forever; in 1914 Rasputin became Russia's ruler in fact if not in name; in 1942 Hitler began major attacks on the Soviet Union, Poland, the Netherlands, Austria, Greece and Yugoslavia.

More? In 1956 Bela Lugosi died and was buried in his Dracula cloak. In 1959 a stunned American public discovered that most TV quiz shows were rigged, the big money winners supplied with answers. In 1970 the Beatles disbanded and photographs of the Loch Ness monster were obtained - photographs that the Loch Ness Phenomenon Investigation Bureau contended ''defy any ordinary explanation'' - and so they do, even to this day.

''Oh, give me a break,'' I hear you saying - every year is a bad news year for someone, some town, some state, some area - ''but, please, don't load the dice so outrageously.'' O.K., O.K. The Prussian serfs were emancipated in 1807, a triple-whammy year, and our flag (which has 13 stripes) was adopted in 1818, another. Not to mention the Wright Brothers' first powered flight, which took place in the triple-whammy year of 1903.

I give you all that - I give it to you cheerfully. But veteran triskies such as myself are not convinced. We still sit in our airline seats in a cold sweat after realizing what the sum total of the digits in Flight 508 add up to; we still feel uneasy about watching Channel 13; we still inquire of the desk clerk if another room is available when told that we will be spending the night alone in - gulp! - alone in room 913 (although we quite rightly count our blessings and thank God that most hotels very sensibly do not have 13th floors). Irrational is irrational; so much we will admit. But we also insist that safe is safe.

So if you know a triskie and you find that he or she has adopted a bomb-shelter mentality this year, be kind - after all, there won't be another until 1987, and that's three phobia-free years. And spare a sympathetic thought for your faithful correspondent, who is doing the best he can under circumstances that would give even the hardiest triskie fits: not only is it a triple-whammy year, but I have been married 13 years this year, have a daughter 13 years old and have published 13 books. Even so, the year I'm really dreading is 1998. In that triple- whammy year I'll be 49. Can you add 4 and 9? As Mr. Rogers says, ''I knew you could.''

That's the year I may really spend in a bomb shelter.

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