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Friday the 13th Horror Stories: 13 Tales of Curses, Bad Luck and Unlucky Numbers
The next Friday the 13th falls on November 13, 2026. Nobody agrees on where the superstition comes from. Thirteen has been an unlucky number in many places for a long time, and Friday was an unlucky day for a long time too, but historians have had trouble finding the two put together in writing before the late 1800s. However it started, it’s a good excuse to read about people whose luck runs out.
So here are thirteen. Every one is about a curse, a bad bargain, a warning ignored, or a number that should not be there. Nine are classics and four are AI-written stories by Pastada. Each entry gives the length and reading time, and none of the descriptions spoil the ending.
Start with the number itself
The obvious first pick, and one of M. R. James’s best. A quiet English scholar takes a room at a hotel in Denmark that, like many hotels, has no room 13. He’s in room 12. At night he can hear his neighbour through the wall. James keeps it funny and almost cosy for a long time, which makes the wrongness all the sharper when it arrives.
Curses that follow you home
A man rejects a paper on alchemy for a learned society, and the author, Mr. Karswell, takes it personally. The rules of the curse are simple and the clock is running. The story inspired the 1957 film Night of the Demon, and it remains one of the tightest plots James ever wrote.
In 1690 a woman is hanged for witchcraft on the word of the squire of Castringham Hall. The great ash tree outside his bedroom window has been there the whole time. This one moves slowly across the generations of a family, so give it a quiet half hour. Not for anyone who dislikes things that crawl.
A dairymaid who was abandoned by a farmer dreams about his new young wife, and soon afterwards the wife’s arm begins to wither. Thomas Hardy draws on the folk beliefs of rural Wessex. The cure the young wife finally goes looking for comes straight out of old country superstition, and it’s the most chilling thing in the story.
Written by AI (Pastada). In a records warehouse outside Kent, Washington, every box has a barcode and a destruction date. One box, in an aisle that isn’t on the map, has the narrator’s name on it. A curse for the age of paperwork.
Bad bargains and lucky charms
The great “be careful what you wish for” story. A visiting soldier leaves the White family a dried monkey’s paw that will grant three wishes, and they can’t resist trying it. W. W. Jacobs was best known for comic stories, and his sense of timing is perfect here. Listen for the knocking.
A collector can’t believe his luck when he picks up a magnificent antique dolls’ house. That night, he watches something terrible play out in its tiny rooms. Seeing it in miniature, at one remove, somehow makes it worse.
Written by AI (Pastada). On the Bering Sea crab boats, luck is everything, and sailors take their superstitions seriously. On the narrator’s first season, a pot comes up with a wedding ring tangled in the mesh. The man it belongs to is standing on deck, wearing it.
Warnings you should listen to
A short, almost chatty story about a premonition, told by a level-headed man who has one firm rule about which vehicles he will board. E. F. Benson’s tale was adapted for the 1945 British film Dead of Night, and its key line has been retold ever since.
Written by AI (Pastada). A highway crew worker’s job includes taking down unpermitted roadside memorials. On one stretch of Highway 395, white crosses keep appearing for people nobody remembers dying. A story about the worst kind of omen.
A New York painter keeps seeing a pale, puffy churchyard watchman staring up at his studio window. Robert W. Chambers’s best-known King in Yellow story is about nightmares, a doomed romance and the symbol of the title. Lovecraft admired it.
Places where the luck has gone out of the ground
Two boys in Sweden take a shortcut over the hills and find a valley where nothing grows and nothing makes a sound. Ralph Adams Cram wrote only a handful of ghost stories, and this short, strange one is often thought his best.
Written by AI (Pastada). A land surveyor is hired to retrace an 1884 deed before a sale. The deed sets aside a single acre in the hill woods that is “not to be entered,” and its corners are not where they should be.
And one to finish on
While a plague sweeps the country, Prince Prospero seals himself and a thousand guests in a fortified abbey and throws an endless masked ball, as if luck could be locked out. Poe’s story takes place in seven coloured rooms and one ebony clock. Read it last, close to midnight.
Want more? Every story about curses is on the Curses page, and the Halloween reading list has seventeen more for long nights.
AI was involved in writing this article.