The Missing 13th Floor!

Today's Friday the 13th (and a full moon - won't happen again until 2049), but I am not going to mess around with the cliche Jason Voorhes movie pics or the history behind why 13 is bad luck or even phobias for the number 13. Not me. I just want to talk about something that has fascinated me to no end since I was a kid and went to New York. In DC, the buildings had to be shorter than the monument, so I don't think I'd ever been in a building higher than the 13th floor. I didn't know about this missing level until I took a trek to the Big Apple and had a million questions for my ever-patient parents.  Ever since then, that missing 13th floor has haunted me like the missing ships in the Bermuda Triangle!

The missing 13th floor is such a common part of our daily lives, that we enter buildings with no designated 13th floor and yet we don't stop to think how very archaic and unusual that is.

Here's is what Wikipedia says about the 13th floor. "Reasons for omitting a thirteenth floor include triskaidekaphobia on the part of the building's owner or builder, or a desire by the building owner or landlord to prevent problems that may arise with superstitious tenants, occupants, or customers. Based on an internal review of records, Dilip Rangnekar of Otis Elevators estimates that 85% of the buildings with elevators did not have a floor named the 13th floor. Future building designers, fearing a fire on the 13th floor, or fearing tenants' superstitions about the rumor, decided to omit having a 13th floor listed on their elevator numbering. This practice became commonplace, and eventually found its way into mainstream culture and building design."

I always fantasized that there was a 13th floor, one that it took the right conditions to stop at and in which one would find a strange "other" world. There was a pretty cool movie called "Nightmare on the 13th Floor." It was about a reporter learning about people missing in a hotel and comes across an unmarked 13th floor. It ends up with some kind of satanic group and a killer on the 13th floor that they send people to. I really enjoyed it and wouldn't mind owning that one. Anything having to do with the 13th floor has my interest.

If any of you happen to work or live in a building that has a marked 13th floor, please take a picture! They are very hard to find!