Real-Life Friday the 13th Horrors to Actually Be Afraid Of

Ooooo, careful everybody! It’s Friday the 13^th! Gasp, squeal, run for your lives!

Y’know what’s not that scary? A thirteenth Friday…in May. Nothing says spooky like the magic of springtime, when the sun is out, birds are chirping, and children are playing (or doing some solid outdoor Instagramming, anyway). It’s the time of year where you half-expect to find Julie Andrews out teaching forest animals to harmonize. At the very least, Justin Bieber out feeding squirrels. Visit your local pet cemetery during your lunch break today— I’ve got five bucks that says the only things rising from those graves are budding tulips. Not undead tulips, or evil tulips; just really nice, regular tulips.

So maybe this Friday isn’t classic Wes Craven-level freaky. I know what you’re thinking, hardcore horror mongers: what about the villains? It isn’t just about avoiding black cats and opening umbrella indoors for you. No, you love obsessing over unreal, bone-chilling bad guys. That’s perfect! Spring might not be a new installment of The Human Centipede (shout out to the Donald Trump-Paul Ryan joint statement), but there’s still more than enough everyday jerks and frustrating phenomenon antagonizing people on this special day.

Think Michael Myers is terrifying?

A blank faced-goon in a full body jumpsuit really gets you going? They’re called landscapers. I see a half dozen of those exhausted laborers almost every day lately, blocking my Uber from completing shortcuts with their wheelbarrowing and machine operating in and out of the street. Not an easy bad guy to beat.

If Freddy Krueger is more your style…

And you love having your sleep interrupted repeatedly with fever dreams, try having pollen allergies and my finicky air conditioner at this time of year! (I dub this villain “AC Sneezer.”) I haven’t died in any of those dreams lately, but if you’ve got to be at work by 8 a.m. and woke up 14 times in the night with a runny nose, you’ll wish you had.

Maybe you’re more of a monster lover, like the Thing

A creepy creature that disguises itself in human skin and tries to feast on a host? You’re describing ticks, pal. Springtime is their busy season, and there’s nothing more haunting than Lyme disease. Every time I come out tick-free after walking through high grass in a flagged park, I feel like a young Jamie Lee Curtis.

Those zombies tho

They’re just slow-moving teenage pedestrians, just like Jack Nicholson in The Shining is your Uncle Lou after a cagey winter, and Jaws is just…an actual shark. (Okay, the ocean IS terrifying.) So what? It’s all manageable. At this point, the only villain that can truly ruin a sunny, not-so-spooky Friday the 13th for me is climate change.

Do your worst, El Niño!

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