SPIRIT TALES AND MAGIC
Our host; Dr.G had his first paranormal experience at only eight years old. With over five decades of storytelling, magic and paranormal story collection he is an award winning story teller on a mission to revive firelight and the telling of stories!
SPIRIT TALES AND MAGIC
Why do we fear 13, and what happens when a sealed door won’t stay quiet
Thunder shakes the glass, power blinks, and two figures wrapped in black drift past the window as we open a door most buildings try to hide: the story of 13. We follow the breadcrumbs from a mistranslated Hammurabi “gap” to Judas arriving last at the table and Loki crashing a feast in Valhalla. Along the way, we trace how superstition turns into policy—why so many elevators skip 13, how airports dodge Gate 13, and what happens when a corridor in Detroit carries a door with no number and a memory heavy enough to seal the springs in concrete.
We don’t stop at headlines or hotel buttons. We step inside literary shadows with M. R. James’s “Number 13,” where a room that doesn’t exist still sings through the wall, furniture fades, and a claw reaches through plaster toward a copper box under the floorboards. Then we cross to Transylvania—Romania today—where ruined castles, tourist lore, and a stubborn Room 13 test nerves and send guests packing before dawn. Through it all, we compare the West’s fixation on thirteen with East Asia’s fear of four, showing how language, ritual, and architecture bake belief into everyday life.
What emerges isn’t a lecture on bad luck but a map of how numbers collect stories—and how those stories steer decisions, wallets, and heart rates. Whether you call it triskaidekaphobia, risk management, or the world unseen, the pull is real enough to shape skylines and itineraries. Press play, walk the corridor with us, and then tell us yours: Do you avoid 13, or have you slept behind that door? If the show stirred a memory or sparked a question, follow, share with a friend who loves folklore and ghost lore, and leave a quick review so more curious minds can find the path.
Hey everybody, it's Dr. G, Spirit Tales, and Magic. I hope that this finds you safe and dry. We're somewhat safe where we are, but we're not real dry. Very severe storms rolling through. We haven't lost power yet, but there's a lot of other things that are keeping us busy. So if you heard the podcast last night, we said we were going to discuss the number 13 today. Fitting, I guess, because after all, it's the 13th. Sorry about that, Pause, but there's uh there's someone covering themselves with an all-black cloth walking back and forth in front of the window. They can't see me, but I can see them. To thrill a minute. So what's with the number 13? I did have someone email and say, Doc, the number 13 is is not paranormal. Well, maybe there's a ghost story about the number 13. And if there was, I would probably be the person that had it. So we talk about the number 13. And it's been a long time since I had to remember any phobias, but you know, you hear things like claustrophobia, right? Fear of being in an enclosed base. There's a many, many phobias, and I want to say that triscidecophobia is fear of the 13th. So there'll be a test on that tomorrow. I'm just kidding. But researchers estimate about 10% of the U.S. population has a fear of the number 13. And each year, the even more specific fear of Friday the 13th. We're gonna we're not gonna talk about Friday the 13th today because we have some things planned for an episode for that. The fear of Friday the 13th, if I remember correctly, and I may be messing this up, but it's Paris Kaba Catrophobia. No, Perus Kava Katrinophobia. Katria phobia. That's from memory. So might have botched out a little bit, but hey, Google it. The Friday the thirteenth results in financial losses excessing eight hundred million dollars annually, as people avoid marrying, traveling, or in the most severe cases, even working. But what's so unlucky about the number 13th, you ask? Or the number 13th. How did this numerical superstition, if you will, get started? So there are many myths surrounding the origin of the fear of the number 13. One of the earliest ones, um, the origin of fear involves one of the world's oldest legal documents. It's the Code of Hammurabi, which reportedly omitted a 13th law from its list of legal rules. I will tell you that in reality the omission was no more than a clerical error made by one of the documents' early translators. You see, he failed to include a line of text. In fact, the actual code doesn't numerically list its laws at all. So it's not like law one, law two, law three doesn't do that. So where do we go with 13? The fear of the unknown would seem to play into two other popular theories for this number's unlucky connotations. Now, both of these things would revolve around the appearance of a 13th guest at two ancient events, if you will. So in the Bible, Judas Iscariot, he was the thirteenth guest to arrive at the Last Supper. He's the person who betrayed Jesus according to the Bible. Meanwhile, ancient Norse lore holds that evil and turmoil were first introduced into the world by the appearance of the treacherous and mischievous god Loki at a dinner party in Valhalla. And guess what? Loki allegedly was the thirteenth guest, upsetting the twelve gods already in attendance. Seems like the letters numbers, I'm sorry, thirteen are only unlucky in the West. The ancient Egyptians actually considered the number lucky. Some other places just simply swap numbers as the base of their phobias. Four is avoided in much of Asia. According to the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute of Asheville, North Carolina, more than eighty percent of high-rise buildings in the United States do not have a thirteenth floor. And the vast majority of hotels, hospitals, and airports avoid using the number for rooms and gates as well. A while back, or as we say, a chapter or two ago, Cassandra and I were managing a property in Detroit. It was a secured storage facility. And as you go down the first corridor, it of course starts 001, 002 until you get up to where the 13th door would be. And in a lot of places it would go, you know, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15. In this particular place, it was 10, 11, 12, a door front that had no number on it, and then 14. And the majority of those places looked pretty much alike all over the world. There's a lock and a slide that you take the lock out, you slide the thing to the left, and you could open the door. This door didn't even have one of those. It had nothing. Well, you know, the one before it must be double the size. That's a logical assumption to make. So as the vice president of the company was touring us around and uh says, so this one's a double. He's no, no, no, it's mod. Anything behind this door? Yeah, that's uh excuse me. That's unit 13. So why don't you just put 13 above it? You're not superstitious, are you? He's like, no, um one of the managers drove his car into that unit one night, put the door down, jammed the sliding mechanism from the inside, started his car, and they found it three days later when the assistant manager came in. That's the start of the full tank. The car was still running. I see. So we just uh once it was all cleaned up, we sealed the door. The door doesn't go up, there's no springs, it went down once it's ram set it to the concrete. We we don't reopen that space. Interesting. I would consider that very paranormal. But if you're looking for more of a paranormal story, and I'm doing a lot of this from from memory, I do not have this book. I had it at one time, but number 13. That's a ghost story by a British writer, I believe it's M. R. James. And I believe it was ghost stories of antiquity or something of that nature. Don't quote me on that, but it's uh long time out of print. I'm sure somebody has it if you want to find it. But the the synopsis of that thing, uh, while researching church history. And of course, it would be researching church history. There's no teeth in that. Hang on for me for just one second. There's something happening that I must look at, and I'll report it to you if it turns out to be anything really, really crazy. There are now two people outside the window. They are completely covered by, I don't know, some kind of black tablecloth or something, and they're just very slowly walking back and forth between Walgreens and in here. Okay, so while researching it what um my goodness, while researching church history in Viborg, Denmark, the particular events of the Reformation and the narrator's cousin Anderson stays in room twelve of a local inn. The inn was called the Golden Lion. Once in his room, he notifies that the space seems to grow smaller and his furniture sometimes vanishes. He hears dancing in the room next door, which he notices from its door is marking as number thirteen. However, upon discussing the matter with the innkeeper, he learns that there's no such room with that number in the golden lion, as it's considered to be bad luck. Anderson asks the innkeeper to visit his room at night. While talking, the protagonist and the innkeeper hear a rather ominous singing in the room next door. They check number fourteen but learn that its occupant, Jensen, thought it was them. They then discover the door to number thirteen, which Anderson claims he had seen earlier. A clawed hand attacks them, and they attempt to break down the door, but break through the plaster wall. The occupants of twelve and fourteen spend the night in the double bedded room. The following morning, the innkeeper arranges for the floorboards of number twelve next to the party wall with number fourteen to be lifted. Beneath the floorboards they find a small copper box containing a vellum document. Neither Anderson nor Jensen is able to interpret the writing on the document. They suspect it to be Latin or perhaps Old Danish. One person speculated that it might indeed be written in Aramaic, the lost language of Jesus Christ. They donated it to the Bort Museum. Often on through my travels, I've heard that story repeated in two of the countries that I've been to, one of which is this one that we live in. In what used to be Transylvania, there was a castle, not Dracula's castle, not far from the movie castle, but another castle where the room number 13 was sealed shut from the inside. And has never ever been opened. Transylvania is not Transylvania anymore, it's Romania, and you don't any longer have to go through Russia to get there. And there are more than one capsule, there is more than one castle associated with Dracula, just for the FYI. So there's the movie capsule, the castle that's in ruins, there's another castle that's in ruins. There's one more that I know of that is actually a motel that you can stay in. Now, the last time that I knew anybody that went that way, number 13 was available to stay in. But it seems like no one has ever been able to complete the stay for a night. An acquaintance of mine stayed there, and he claims that the motel is now going to eliminate the room from the rentable roster. They're gonna seal it, hang a tapestry over the door. I do find that interesting. Many cultures have many numbers that take the place of R number 13. So the question remains, asked by the gentleman concerned. What's your story of cursed numbers? Do you fear 13, or maybe even specifically Friday the 13th? Do you have a ghost story that involves the number 13? All of those things we would love to hear about. And again, I want to thank everybody for spreading the word and for tuning in and listening not only to Doctober, but all of the other things that you do for us. And as we always say, keep in mind, there is indeed a world unseen. It's a world that exists all around us all the time. And every now and then, for whatever the reason, we catch a glimpse of it. And the dead get in. We'll be back tomorrow with some other sort of story, but in the meantime, tell a ghost story. It's good for you, even if it involves the number thirteen. Good night from Phoenix, my friends.
