Hello, Everyone!

 

Seeing as we just survived a Friday the 13th (well, I hope we did but I AM writing this the day before!), I thought it would be fun to explore the origins of this widely known superstition.  In much of the world, Friday is considered unlucky, and combined with the ominous number 13, a Friday the 13th is seen by many as a double-whammy of ill fortune. Called 'paraskevidekatriaphobia', the fear of Friday the 13th is quite prevalent, with many people in North America and Europe refusing to leave their homes, fly in airplanes, or attend social gatherings on this day. According to the Macmillan English Dictionary, the term 'paraskevidekatriaphobia' was first coined in the early nineties by Dr. Donald E. Dossey, an American psychotherapist specializing in phobias and stress management, and is based on the Greek words paraskevi (Friday) and dekatria (thirteen) with -phobia as a suffix to indicate ‘fear’.

Some traditional superstitions about Fridays include: Never change your bed on Friday; it will bring bad dreams. Don't start a trip on Friday or you will have misfortune. If you cut your nails on Friday, you cut them for sorrow. Ships that set sail on a Friday will have bad luck.

 

Historically, sailors (a superstitious lot to begin with) have feared this day as one of extreme bad luck and often refused to set out to sea on a Friday. In 1791, the British Navy commissioned a ship called the H.M.S. Friday in an effort to quell the superstition. The crew was selected on a Friday, the ship was launched on a Friday and stranger still, the ship's captain bore the name James Friday. On a Friday morning, the ship set off on its maiden voyage -- and was never seen or heard from again.

 

In Norse mythology, 12 gods were at a banquet at Valhalla. The evil god, Loki, The Trickster, had not been invited but he crashed the party anyway, bringing the number in attendance to 13. Loki ended up inciting the death of the beloved god Balder, causing great grief and trauma.  

 

Hindus also believe that it is unlucky for 13 people to gather at dinner, and of course, Christians are ever-cognizant of the fact that the Last Supper had 13 people present (Jesus and his 12 apostles), with Judas, the apostle who betrayed Jesus, being the 13th member of the party to arrive.

Historically, Friday was the preferred day for public executions, and legend says that 13 steps led up to the hangman's noose. Also of note: it was on a Friday the 13th in 1306, that King Philip of France burned the Knights Templar at the stake.

While most of us recognize that a Friday the 13th is logically no more inherently 'evil' or ill-fated than any other day, I think many of us still wouldn't tempt fate on this day. And apparently, the 'big' Friday the 13th that we all would have to worry about is on Oct. 13th, 4772, which is the date the world will end according to some interpretations of the Mayan calendar. I won't worry about that just yet:>)

Carpe diem

Zsuzsana Summer

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Hello. My sister sent me this link to write to you about a trip we took in 1998 to England. I was raised in Ohio, and I had a reoccurring dream of a large house with all bedrooms, and a ghostly looking older man who I figured knew where I was, but as I tried to reach him, he would disappear in bedrooms, or around a corner (and there were many). I told the dream to all of my family, and had the same dream for a good 30 years. I even went so far as to write it down, and got tired of writing the same basic entries, so I finally knew for sure it was the same place, same dream.

 

In 1998 my sister and a few cousins went to the UK for a vacation. I was on a cane and had a hard time getting around, but did OK. We finally got to a motel in Sheffield, England, at night, and we were given room number 69. I laughed about that as I am dyslexic and couldn't remember any of our room numbers up to that point (and we had stayed at least 4 motels before that one). I knew I could remember that number and thought that was funny. My sister and I had been bunking together, so off we went, key in hand to our room. On the way there, we passed through a freezing cold pocket of air. I said it was a ghost (play the twilight zone theme there) and we all laughed quietly. As we approached our room, I stopped in my tracks. I saw a spiral staircase ahead. I saw a corridor to my left and our hallway ahead. I just stopped ... then I said, "I Know where I am." My sister asked how as we had never been here before. I said, "That spiral staircase doesn't go anywhere." She looked at me like I was demented, and she walked up to the stairway, went up a ways, and reported back, "IT DOESN'T! It's a dead end" and I said that was because it isn't supposed to be there. I then explained that I needed to go down the hallway to our left, that is where you go up some stairs and there's a dumbwaiter at the top and a room where the floor caves in, and that is where the dream gets scary because someone is after me, a man, and I try to climb into the dumbwaiter to get away, knowing if I can get through this small wooden door, I can reach the attic and hide, but I wake up every time it gets to that point. My sister said, "Let's put our bags in our room, it's right here!" We did, then off we went to check out this hallway. As we were walking, I said "This is a door to the basement." I reached, opened the unmarked door, and there were the stairs going to the basement. My sister couldn't believe what was happening, I was so sure of everything, I had dreamed it so many times, it was as if I was home. There were plenty of unmarked doors. Then all the other doors had numbers, and you might walk 3 steps ahead, have to go down 2 steps, two steps forward, then 3 steps up, it was so strangely put together, but I knew my way. We went around corners, up and down small sections of steps and finally reached THE staircase! It was located at a T type intersection, with a hallway to the left, a stairwell to the right, a room ahead to the left and the grand stairwell ahead on the right. The stairs went up along the wall, then a small landing, then the steps went back over our heads from where we were standing. The light switch on the wall was one of those early 1900's double push button style switches, but we didn't turn on the light, we began the climb. At the top of the stairwell was a DUMBWAITER , the first one we had seen during our travels (and the only one we saw). I popped the door open and inside, just as I said, was a small wooden door but we tried to open it, and it was as if a huge spring was attached and we could not pull it open. An ice cold slow rush of air crept up my hand to my shoulder, and I quit trying (it sort of gave me a scare), then we proceeded to the room. The room had been abandoned; papers scattered everywhere. The floor was there, but was soft to step on; you could see it give, so we did not enter all the way. I had to know why this room was there, I needed answers. That was the right room, that was the bad room in my dream.

 

I went to the lobby and questioned the night manager, an older man in a gray suit (sound familiar? Yep, that guy in my dream I never could catch up to) and he said the residents wouldn't stay in that room, it had problems, like birds coming in and they put bars on the windows so they couldn't get in, but they were still getting in, and other strange things, strange sounds had happened in there, and they decided it was haunted. They then decided to use the room as an office, but the employees were frightened by something and no one would go back in to get the papers and equipment. They abandoned the room. The place is called the Rutland Inn in Sheffield England. I had been tracing my family tree, and I came to a dead end for awhile, until I got back to the USA, and I found my Dowell and Wilson lineage came from Sheffield England area. Isn't that weird. Now, back to Rutland Inn for a brief thing worth mentioning, The hallways all had names like Captain Halsey... My hallway had a weird name, and I didn't notice these names above the doorways until we were ready to check out, but our hallway was called YULE GREIVE.

 

I have this on video! It is still a mystery to me, I think I have a memory cell passed down from an ancestor. This gets into Quantum Physics, but our bodies have DNA that make our nose the way it is, our eyes the color they are, our features that are passed down in the family, etc., so why not a brain cell memory?

Anxious to hear from you.

 

Judy Dowell Bundschuh

a 50 year old female and very sensitive to the other side.

       

Referring to the ghost experiences, there were two I remember clearly. One was when my future father in law passed away and I stayed at the family home to babysit all the children.   My impression is of a voice more than a visual sighting and I was told to be sure and remind the family to cut the limbs off the fir trees in the front yard before they damaged the siding.  He was never very fond of me but perhaps he figured since I was there he would give me the message to pass along.    

 

The second time was in my neighbor's home where I was staying with him as a caregiver.  I had obtained a hospital bed for him downstairs as he was too feeble to climb stairs safely.  I was sleeping in his bed and felt the other side of the mattress depress as though someone has just lain down.  I said, "Mac, you aren't supposed to be climbing stairs." I got no reply and then turned on the light and there was no one there.

 

Sue 

Hello, my name is Mike and I live in Southwest Florida. Last year I went up to Debuque, Iowa to visit my dad. The guestroom was down in the basement and one night while I was sleeping, I woke up in the middle of the night and all of a sudden, I felt 2 warm hands on my neck choking me and I could not breathe, move, or speak for that matter. When it finally stopped something caught my attention and I looked straight ahead and saw this demonic shadow man (like someone else had said in the last article you guys sent out) and it reached the height of the top of the doorway. I just kept looking at it until it finally started slowly fading away. What could this mean or be? What was it? I have looked on the internet for related situations on message boards, search engines and more and couldn't find anything. So maybe you can post this on the next article so hopefully someone can read it and tell me what it was because it still happens to me every so often ever since I left Iowa. Thanks.

 

"Keep Your Stories Haunted"

 

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