Friday the 13th: Are You Superstitious?

If you spill salt do you quickly toss some over your shoulder? What about ladders, would you cross the street to avoid walking under one?

If you are a superstitious person, you might cringe at the number 13, especially when the 13th day of the month falls on a Friday -- something that happens three times in 2012, all 13 weeks apart. 

Hotels often skip from the 12th floor to the 14th, and dinner party hosts have cut their list to 12 or bumped it to 14 to avoid associating the unlucky number with an unwitting guest. 

But is there any science to support the bad PR assigned to this number?

According to lifeslittlemysteries.com, a 1993 study published in the British Medical Journal found that "the risk of hospital admission as a result of a transport accident may be increased by as much as 52 percent" on the 13th.

Researchers analyzed the traffic flow and number of injuries from car accidents on the southern section of London's M25 motorway during the five months that the 13th fell on a Friday between 1990 and 1992, and compared those numbers to data collected on Friday the 6th of the same months. The researchers also found consistently fewer vehicles on the road on Friday the 13th, the article states.

If the number 13 scares you, you may have triskaidekaphobia -- if Friday the 13th scares you, you might suffer from paraskavedekatriaphobia, according to an article on MSNBC.com.

The website gathered 13 wacky facts about Friday the 13th, including Alfred Hitchcock's birthday: he would have turned 100 back on Friday, Aug. 13, 1999.

Here's the article's full list of Freaky Friday the 13th Facts.