Friday the 13th: The Thirteen Club That Dared Bad Luck | Thursday Thrills

0:00 Imagine arriving at a dinner where the host has put a ladder across your way. You're expected to walk beneath it. Beyond it, there's a table set for 13. You know the warning. If 13 people sit down to eat, one of them will die before the year is over. Your hosts know it too. That's why. They've invited you. This is the Thirteen Club, and its idea of a good evening includes serving lobster salad shaped like a coffin. I'd be looking for the person who planned dessert, but first, there's a chair waiting. Twelve other places are taken. If you sit down, the table is complete, and the countdown can begin. Thursday Thrills This is Thursday Thrills, a quick weekly ride into the creepy stories, haunted places, weird obsessions, and eerie little corners of the world worth talking about.

1:21 I'm Enrique Couto, and tomorrow is Friday the 13th. So tonight we're meeting the New Yorkers who decided to invite bad luck over for dinner. They gave it a table, a date, and every encouragement to show up. The man arranging all of this was Captain William Fowler, a Civil War veteran with a very different relationship to the number 13. He liked it. He'd attended... public school number 13, and he collected connections to the number the way other people collect excuses to avoid it. Eventually, he made room for it at his own restaurant, the Knickerbocker Cottage in Manhattan.

2:14 On Friday, January 13, 1882, Fowler and 12 other men sat down in room 13. Now that's commitment. Most people trying to have a nice evening would have stopped at the restaurant reservation. The club wanted to take the fear out of superstition, and the table was a good place to start, because this particular warning could turn a perfectly pleasant invitation into a problem. You didn't need to see a ghost, you only needed to count the guests. Twelve was fine. But if someone brought an extra friend along, suddenly thirteen people were looking at each other very differently.

3:07 The old belief said one of them would be dead within a year. It didn't offer a useful name or way to identify the unlucky guest. So there you are, passing the bread with a terrible little possibility attached to everyone sitting at the table with you. Now put yourself in the extra person's chair. You arrived hoping somebody would be glad to see you. Instead, you're the reason everyone has started doing a very macabre arithmetic. Fowler's answer was to make 13 the whole point of the invitation. Nobody needed to apologize for being the Extra guest. They needed you in order to finish the count. And once you accepted, the club knew how to make an entrance uncomfortable. Walking under a ladder was one of its customs. An ordinary object brought inside made into a little test before you could get your meal. I think I'd manage that part fine.

4:21 I'd probably check that nobody had left a paint bucket up there, but I'd manage. The harder part would be doing it while everyone watched. You can tell people you don't believe in bad luck, but now they're giving you a chance to prove it. Members came dressed in black suits and top hats. At an April dinner in the first year, 13 candles decorated the table, and a black cat... appeared on the cake. So, you've come to a gathering devoted to making you less afraid, and they've dressed the evening up like a funeral, with refreshments. I do have to respect the effort. I might ask whether the cake comes in a less accusatory shape. The club's dinners also included spilled salt. Usually, the familiar response is to toss some over your shoulder the 13 club forbade that little rescue operation you had to leave the bad luck sitting there that's the bit that would slowly get under my skin a ladder is behind you once you've passed it salt stays in view you can look down between bites and remember the tiny thing you're specifically not supposed to do I'd be trying very hard to keep both hands

5:51 where everyone could see them. The food joined in. At one early dinner, lobster salad arrived in the aforementioned mold in the shape of a coffin. Think of being offered seconds. There's something very cheerful about taking an image of your own funeral and deciding it needs a garnish. A banner carried a Latin salute that translates as Those of us who are about to die salute you. That's quite a thing to hang above a dinner. You'd almost want them to bring the menu back so you could check exactly what you ordered. I'd be happy to laugh at the banner while everyone else was still there. Somebody passes you a plate, another guest reaches for the salt and You can settle back into a nice supper. Leaving would be the difficult part. You could eat every course, walk under the ladder twice, leave the salt exactly where it fell.

7:00 Then the meal would end, and you'd still have the warning's deadline ahead of you. A year. The next morning, breakfast would have fewer guests and much less ceremony. But if you'd let the story into your head, it could come along anyway. Every ordinary misfortune would have a dinner invitation to point back to. That's where I'd want Fowler's confidence the most, after I'd gone home with nobody around to laugh about it. The club had challenged the warning in public. Now its members had to do the one thing that could spoil the predictions. keep showing up alive.

7:51 If you're enjoying your dinner with the 13 Club, make sure you follow or subscribe to Weekly Spooky and share this episode with the friend you'd trust to take that last chair at the table. Now, let's get back to dinner. There's good news about the guest list, by the way. At the end of its first year, The club reported that not one member had died. The people who'd taken the dare could come back for another dinner. I'd call that a successful evening. I'd also be hoping somebody had found a different shape for the salad. More clubs followed, and in London, a man who agreed to chair one of these dinners was about to discover how much longer funeral equipment could fit into an evening. That man was cartoonist Harry Furness. In January of 1894, he was preparing to preside over a London 13 Club dinner. He thought it would be a small, private gathering. Then he started seeing the publicity. Coffin-shaped salt dishes, skull-shaped lamps, thirteen tables with thirteen guests at each. This was becoming a much larger evening than he expected. Furness later recalled walking under

9:26 the ladder and wearing a little coffin badge with a skeleton dangling from it. He wasn't thrilled about all the funeral decor, but he'd agreed to preside and There he was. Some of the guests hadn't been so determined. At one table, two places were empty because the invited diners had been too afraid to come. The secretary filled those seats with waiters. Gotta love that determination. We're going to challenge this superstition even if we have to borrow two people from the dining staff. Think about getting that assignment. You've arrived expecting to serve dinner. Now somebody needs you to sit down because the person who was supposed to be there was too afraid of dying. I think I'd have wanted a very clear explanation before taking my place. Then, during dinner, someone brought Furnace a business card. Black edging. An undertaker and funeral furnisher. There was a man waiting to see him.

10:43 Now you've spent the evening wearing a miniature coffin and daring bad luck to do its worst. That's an unfortunate moment for somebody to arrive professionally prepared for the outcome. Furness initially thought the undertaker had supplied the coffin-shaped salt dishes and wanted payment. Instead, the visitor produced a telegram from Cambridge saying, directing him to the dinner for funeral arrangements. Someone had played a practical joke. Furness brought him into the hall. In his account, the undertaker approached in black gloves, carrying his hat, a measuring ruler stuck out of his coat pocket. There's the detail I would have trouble ignoring.

11:36 You can laugh at a coffin-shaped salt dish, A man standing beside dinner with a ruler, though. That's another can of beans. Furnace stood up, read the telegram to the room, and invited the undertaker to go around the tables, taking orders. The guests laughed. The undertaker left. Later, he asked for one of the little coffin salt dishes as a souvenir. Furnace sent him one. The dinner kept going. Mirrors had been placed beside the guests, and they were invited to smash them. Furnace remembered the glass breaking across the tables.

12:23 You know, I would prefer just some complimentary bread, but I guess that works too. Furnace came away hoping he would never have to chair another banquet like it. The Ladder hadn't finished him off. Neither had the Undertaker. But there had also been an awful lot of speeches. And suppose you'd had enough of dinner. The glass is broken, the Undertaker's gone, and you'd quite like to get your coat. There's one more version of the 13 at table warning you probably wouldn't want anybody to mention right then. The first person to leave is the unlucky one. Oh, that is unfair. You count the guests, decide you're not comfortable with 13, and get up to excuse yourself. According to that version, you've just made the worst possible choice. Now you have to sit back down without making a thing of it. I could find myself very interested in another cup of coffee at that point, perhaps even some cake.

13:40 Perhaps somebody has a wonderfully long story they haven't told yet, or at least not today. I'd even listen to another speech. But eventually, a chair has to move. You can feel perfectly sensible while everybody stays seated, It's that first person reaching for the back of their chair that I'd find myself watching. Would I let a friend go first? Would I stand up with them? I'm already trying to negotiate with a rule I don't even believe in. Meanwhile, the door is right there. The same door you came through with the ladder, waiting on the way out. You'd only meant to stay for dinner. Tomorrow is Friday the 13th, and I think Fowler would have been delighted to find people still willing to make an evening of it. I'd happily hear their stories over a meal. I could cope with the coffin salad. I'd want to finish eating before anybody started smashing mirrors, though. There are limits to my enthusiasm in such cases, but I keep coming back to the entrance. You're expected. There's a place set for you.

15:06 Beyond the ladder, twelve people are waiting to begin. All you have to do is walk underneath it and take your seat. I'm Enrique Couto, and this has been Thursday Thrills. Enjoy your Friday the 13th, and if you're inviting me to dinner, let me know the headcount before I leave the house. Come back tomorrow for more fear. Until then, lock your doors, as if that will help.