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A super day for superstitions
Friday, October 13, 2000 By Tom Barnes and Cindi Lash, Post-Gazette Staff Writers
If you suffer from triskaidekaphobia or paraskevidekatriaphobia, today is probably not going to be your day.
And if you also get spooked by full moons, maybe you'd better just stay in bed.
That first jawbreaker means fear of the number 13. The second one is fear of Friday the 13th.
Not only is today that day, but tonight a full moon is expected.
Pittsburgh police Officer Randi Black is one of the lucky ones -- today is her day off. And, boy, is she glad.
"I'm off, thank God, and I think I'll just stay in my house," said Black, a seven-year veteran who works at the West End station.
"Honest to God, people just act really goofy when there's a full moon," she said yesterday. "It starts four days before, with the three-quarter moon, and it goes for four days after. But it's worst when the moon is full."
Black isn't the only police officer out there who has come to believe that the behavior of the public they protect and serve is somehow linked to the phases of the moon.
Many of them will tell you that, as the moon waxes full, so grows the brazenness of people who, on other days of the month, might be more inclined to behave themselves.
"I've always thought we were busier and the people acted crazier when the moon was full," said Lt. Tim O'Connor, a 23-year veteran who works at the North Side station.
"What scientific evidence there is to prove that, I don't know," he said. "But it's a gut feeling that comes from your experiences over the years -- the moon seems to have some unnatural effect on people."
Some cops joke that criminals are more likely to emerge because the full moon provides them with more light to do their dirty work.
Others will tell you -- in all seriousness -- that when the moon is full, they're likely to encounter a higher-than-usual number of people who are drunk and disorderly, belligerent or acting in ways that require police to commit them for psychiatric care.
And then there are those naked folks.
"There's a lot of nakedness out there when there's a full moon," said Black, heaving a knowing sigh.
"I don't know why it is, but there's always someone naked out on the street when there's a full moon. Listen to the [police] scanner -- there'll be someone running down the street without their clothes."
No one has to tell veteran nurse Debra Cox that odd things happen when there's a full moon.
Cox has worked for 22 years in the coronary intensive care unit at UPMC Presbyterian in Oakland, and she knows she'll have her hands full when the moon is bright.
"Whenever you work on a night with a full moon, you brace yourself for all kinds of crazy things to happen," she said.
"Patients are more combative and aggressive, or they become more disoriented and confused. They aren't aware of where they are and crawl out of bed."
And people who are brought into the unit have more serious heart problems on a night like tonight.
"It's not just a simple cardiac episode. It's something more complicated like cardiac arrest, or they're unconscious and require CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation).
"We've seen it repeatedly over the years," she said. "I don't have an explanation. It's just a fact of being there [in the coronary unit]. We always say, brace yourself, there's going to be a full moon tonight."
But Dr. Bruce MacLeod, chairman of the emergency department at Mercy Hospital, thinks the power of Friday the 13th or a full moon is perceptual rather than real.
"I think people build up a kind of anticipatory reaction, and when something [bad] happens, it validates their anticipation," he said.
"If you ask people who work in an emergency room about full-moon days, they will swear that there is more volume and that patients come in with more bizarre complaints," he said, but he doesn't think that really is the case.
He said there was an actual study done at Allegheny General Hospital in the late 1980s on the situation, and it showed that the same number of patients come in for treatment during nights with full moons as during other nights in the month.
Tonight will be the first time since March 13, 1998 when a full moon fell on a Friday the 13th. That night had even more going on -- it was also a lunar eclipse. Other Friday the 13ths with full moons occurred in February 1987, July 1984 and May 1970.
Dan Santoro, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Pittsburgh's branch in Johnstown, calls the fear of the number 13 a "cultural tradition."
"It's ingrained in us and our culture," he said. "I'm not going to say there's anything magical about the number 13. If it affects people, it's because they believe it strongly. Then that belief will have consequences. It can change the way they act and feel."
Santoro said his Aunt Minnie from New Jersey, now deceased, was superstitious about the number.
"She was apprehensive about counts ending in 13. If you had 13 of something you needed to get one more," he said.
The origins of the fear of the number 13 go back hundreds of years. Ancient Norsemen were said to have tied 13 knots in their hangman's noose.
"This trick of attributing to poor old Friday all the disasters that have ever befallen mankind is a very general one," states a 1925 book, Popular Superstitions.
"Friday is popularly, but not historically, supposed to have seen the murder of Abel, the stoning of Stephen, the Crucifixion [of Christ], the massacre of the innocents by Herod, the flight of the children of Israel through the Red Sea ... the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel and many others."
One of the more unusual explanations for Friday the 13th is given in a 1994 book called "Off the Road: A Modern-Day Walk Down the Pilgrims' Route into Spain."
It describes a despotic king of France named Philip the Beautiful, who in the year 1307 got into a fight over money with a group of noblemen called the Knights Templar. Philip needed cash and they had "a baggage train of mules laden with gold and jewels," according to folklore cited in the book.
He had the knights, somewhere between 2,000 and 5,000, arrested and jailed on Friday the 13th. "Only 20 escaped," the book says.
The events were "so foul, according to folklore, that Templar sympathizers cursed the day itself, condemning it as evil -- Friday the 13th -- whose reputation never recovered," the book says.
A more common explanation for the bad rap given to Friday the 13th is based on the Last Supper, held on a Thursday night, just before Christ's crucifixion on Friday.
There were 13 that night at supper -- Christ and his 12 disciples. Judas, who betrayed Christ, was the first to leave the gathering and for some reason got tagged as being the 13th -- and therefore cursed -- member of the group.
Perhaps because of the Last Supper, some people still consider it bad luck to invite 13 people to dinner.
"Thirteen is especially unlucky in terms of dinner parties," says a 1968 book called Magic and Superstition. "It is believed that one of the 13 diners will die within a year. But fear exists in every occurrence of the number. Throughout the western world people can still be found numbering their houses 121/2 to avoid living in the number 13."
But Goldie Brown of Pitcairn, who said she's been a witch since the 1960s, maintains that Friday the 13th has nothing to do witchcraft, magic or the supernatural.
She said the prejudice against the number 13 "has more to do with Christian superstition" than anything else.
As for the moon, she said it's well known that it exerts a pull on ocean tides, which are made of salt water. Since human bodies contain a lot of water, it's reasonable to think the moon can have an effect on people, she added.
"If you try to put yourself in tune with [the moon], you can flow with the cycles of the moon through meditation," she said.
Witches "seek to live in harmony with nature, the moon, sun, earth and sky." Witchcraft, she said, is "a pre-Christian religion" that dates back for many centuries, and to witches 13 is in fact a lucky number, not an unlucky one.
"There are 13 moons in a witch's year," she said, one full moon in each month plus one month with a blue moon, or second full moon in the same month.
Brown declared that 13 "is a witchy number. I know a lot of people who like the number 13. A lot of my friends are witches. They're iconoclastic people. It's supposed to be an unlucky number, so they latch onto it to fly in the face of convention."
Traditionally, she said, "There were supposed to be 13 people in a coven," the name for a group of witches.
She said she wasn't sure exactly how someone decided that a coven included 13 witches.
"It's about the most people you can comfortably fit into a ritual space," she said.
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