In a follow up from last weeks post I have revived this old post on superstitions from the archives
I am not as it goes a superstitious person in relation to numbers. I have superstitions about other things but numbers not so much.
So where is this post going? Well, I have for my sins stayed in hotels up and down the UK with work. I have stayed in some posh hotels and some real hovels.
I have found that throughout the UK there is something that hotels all had in common.
NO room 13
This is usually done in one of two ways.
The simple miss out
This is pretty much as it says the hotel rooms are numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14 so there is 13 rooms in the hotel and they just omit the number 13 and calls it 14.
The using floor number
So the rooms are numbered with the floor number first, so floor 1 rooms all started with 1. e.g. 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113 this means that room 13 is actually 113.
I have asked in a number of hotels and people who worked in them and there appears to be only one reason for this. People won’t sleep in room 13.
However in the last couple of hotels, I have stayed recently, there has been a room 13, so are people getting less superstitious and therefore the need for not having a room 13 disappears.
So would you stay in a Room 13? tell me in the comments
To add to this original post I was recently in a hotel in Kuala Lumpur and it and I could not work out what I was staying in Room 213a and it turns out that in Malaysia like China the number 4 is bad luck so they often remove the number 4 by writing 3a
3 September, 2012
It is after all a number, something could be made about everything. If your dream house was addressed as number 13, you wouldn’t seriously not buy it would you. Strangely I only believe in superstitions if I can see something substantial in it. I can think of a couple of ‘strange scouty superstitions’. When I take the Cubs to a district type competition, I always take tuna sandwiches for a packed lunch. Every time I take them, we do well, when I don’t we won’t do well. I also had an ACSL who whenever he bought his small tent, it rained. When he didn’t bring it, weather was great. He even camped abroad, took the tent and it rained. He then binned it and bought another one, rest of the holiday not a drop of rain.
4 September, 2012
I agree there are some superstitions that seem to come from sound advice.
Don’t walk under ladders – that not a superstition that good advice you never know what will land on you.
Broken Mirror = 7 years bad luck – that is because it cost a maid 7 years wadges to pay for a new mirror.
But some are just very odd. The number thing can also work in reverse look at the Irish rugby play Brian O’Driscoll it always played in number 13 started playing as an outside center (shirt number 13) and then where every he played he played in shirt 13. Guess it is lucky for some.
C