It's baaaaack...
This Friday we mark our second Friday the 13th of the year. If you feel like we just observed the dreaded day, you're not imagining things.
2015 is an unusual calendar year in which we experience three Fridays-of-the-feared-number (as opposed to the usual one or two). And those Fridays arrive in an even rarer one-two punch in February and March, just four weeks apart, with the final in November.
This proximity of Fridays the 13th occurs in the Gregorian calendar when new year's day falls on a Thursday in a non-leap year, like this one. In a common year that begins on Thursday, the date Friday the 13th inevitably lines up in a February-March-November pattern.
The last time this happened was in 2009 and the next time won't be until 2026. (For the full mechanics check out this helpful analysis at EarthSky.com.)
Three of these bad-boy Fridays also occurred in 2012 (though they were more spaced apart), which provided fodder for people who had apocalyptic associations with that year.
This is why you're feeling Friday-the-13th déjà vu. And this cycle won't occur again for eleven years. Bad luck or simple calendar mechanics? You can learn the background of how 13 and Friday became unluckily bound up in this episode of our new web series, "ORIGINS: SUPERSTITIONS", directed by the Orson Welles of the weird, Ronni Thomas: