In 1907, a wealthy Boston businessman named Thomas Lawson published a novel called Friday, the Thirteenth.

It told the story of a stockbroker who exploited people's fear of an unlucky date to trigger a financial panic.

That same year, a seven-masted schooner bearing Lawson's name sank in the Atlantic.

In Boston, where Lawson lived, the date was Friday, December 13th.

Only two men survived.

For generations, Friday the 13th has been associated with terrible luck, mysterious curses, and the fear that something awful is waiting to happen.

But the superstition isn't nearly as ancient as people believe.

Tonight, we're tracing the strange history of Friday the 13th, from medieval superstitions and the Knights Templar to a secretive New York dining club, a Wall Street panic, and the horror movie that turned an unlucky date into one of the most recognizable names in American pop culture.

Along the way, we'll uncover the stories that were invented, the coincidences that actually happened, and why Friday the 13th feels especially ominous when it falls in October.

Welcome to Day Nineteen of 31 Days of Halloween.

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Tales from the Shadows Weekend in Lancaster PA

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In 1891, a jeweler in Salem, Massachusetts, began selling a silver souvenir spoon decorated with a witch on a broomstick.

Beneath the witch were three small pins.

Those pins were modeled after evidence used two centuries earlier, when frightened girls accused their neighbors of being attacked by invisible spirits.

The accusations helped send innocent people to their deaths.

And now their story was being sold as a souvenir.

In 1692, Salem Village became the center of one of the most infamous witch hunts in American history. Nineteen people were hanged, one man was crushed beneath stones, and five others died in jail. More than 170 people were accused.

But the history of Salem didn't end when the executions stopped.

Over the following centuries, stories of curses, restless spirits, and haunted buildings grew alongside a very different kind of tradition: turning the town's darkest history into a Halloween destination.

Tonight, we're returning to Salem to examine what actually happened during the witch trials, the people who suffered, the legends that followed, and how a town once ashamed of its past became America's Halloween capital.

Welcome to Day Eighteen of 31 Days of Halloween.

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In 1845, a strange fossil bone appeared in the Australian town of Geelong.

When an Aboriginal man was shown the remains, he reportedly identified the creature immediately.

It was a bunyip.

According to the newspaper account, the animal stood more than twelve feet tall, had the head of an emu, the body of an alligator, and claws capable of killing a person.

Within two years, a supposed bunyip skull was on display in a Sydney museum, and reports of mysterious creatures were spreading across colonial Australia.

But the bunyip's history began long before European settlers arrived.

Across Aboriginal Australia, different communities had their own stories of powerful beings inhabiting rivers, lakes, and deep waterholes. These weren't simply tales of monsters. They carried teachings about danger, responsibility, and the relationship between people and the land.

Tonight, we're exploring the history of Australia's most famous water monster, the extraordinary sightings that fueled a nineteenth-century obsession, the strange explanations offered by scientists, and the Indigenous traditions that survived long after the colonial bunyip became a curiosity.

And we'll discover why Halloween itself feels a little different in a country where October marks the arrival of spring.

Welcome to Day Seventeen of 31 Days of Halloween.

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Tales from the Shadows Weekend in Lancaster PA

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