Friday the 13th Unlucky For Knights at Least

Cue the spooky music: It’s Friday the 13th in Temecula but where did that superstition about its being an unlucky day begin?

Today is the final of three days this year when the 13th will fall on a Friday (It also happened in January and April). In any given year, it can happen as often as three times or as little as once.

While we are certainly having freaky weather with a July rainstorm to wash in this Friday the 13th, is the day truly an unlucky one?

Supposedly a day of bad luck, leeriness of Friday the 13th transcends cultures and eras.

According to historians the date got its nefarious name because it was a Friday the 13th when King Philip IV of France -- deeply in debt to the early order of bankers -- rounded up all the Knights Templar he could find, tortured and burned them for alleged crimes against the church and nature.

The date was Oct. 13, 1307 and according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the king was intent on seizing the order's great wealth.

A statement by the Association for Psychological Science indicates that fear of this day is real enough to have its own phobia classification: friggatriskaidekaphobia (not sure what the phobia is for fear of hard-to-pronounce words).

The association cites the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute finding that 17 to 21 million people suffer from a fear of Friday the 13th.

Some psychologists speculate that the fear is caused or enhanced when people have a bad experience on a Friday the 13th and forever associate the day with a sense of foreboding.

Whatever the cause, the fear has real effects. According to the association, the stock market tends to fall on Friday the 13th and film producers in Bollywood avoid releasing new films on this day.

What do you think? Is it just another day or should we all be on alert for black cats and bad juju?