The Witching Hour: The Devil's Hour

You roll over in bed and force your eyes open, only to read the blurry red lights of the digital clock “3:15.”

Wikipedia refers to the witching hour this way; “In European folklore, the Witching Hour is the time when supernatural creatures such as witches, demons and ghosts are thought to be at their most powerful, and black magic at its most effective. This hour is typically midnight, and the term may now be used to refer to midnight, or any late hour, even without having the associated superstitious beliefs. The term ‘witching hour’ can also refer to the period from midnight to 3am, while ‘Devil’s Hour’ refers to the time around 3am.” Apparently, the Devil’s Hour is the exact opposite of the time Christ supposedly died at 3 p.m. (I won’t even get into the logic of this for those of us on Mountain Standard Time).

Libby from Thoughts…usually with attitude… made a mention of how she often wakes up at 3:15 am. How many of you wake up during that 3 am hour? I know people who wake up during that hour and can’t go back to sleep, no matter what they do. I find, more often than not it’s that magical 3 am time when I note the blurry red lights on the clock during the night.

It’s been suggested that this is the time of extreme early morning when more firefighters and police are called. That’s true, but then it takes a whole night of drinking to get into trouble at 3 am. It’s also believed that we might be having access to our God figure in that state of mind in deep theta sleep and in between REM sleep. Others think that it’s the extreme darkness that occurs just before dawn that permits melatonin to adjust and create a sleep state that’s in the process of shifting, a time in which we could awaken. It’s also entirely possible that discomfort after hours in our beds is what jostles us awake at about that magical time (especially middle-agers). Whatever the reasoning, any time you’re under extreme stress, you’re likely to wake right around that 3 am hour and not be able to fall back asleep again. Obviously, our bodies are telling us that some sort of stimuli (earthly or unearthly) is creating a dark-of-night awakening.

If this continually waking at 3 am is putting a damper on your life, there’s some things you can consider to get your rhythms back in order:

You can try to go to bed later than usual.

You can set your alarm for 1 am and then go back to sleep.

You can darken your room completely.

You can cool off the room more so your body temperature can stay down where it needs to be for the brain to induce sleep state (running a noisy fan is a good option—it also masks outside sounds).

Try and turn the clock around so you can’t see it.

You can try having a light snack with carbs before bedtime to feed your brain.

You can consider taking a Benadryl at bedtime.

There are conditions such as depression and anxiety that can cause insomnia, as well as chronic medications that can affect sleep. How does one know if waking at 3 am is spiritually related or physically? Look at the clock.

Have you ever had to get up at 7:30 the next morning and you wake up at 7:28? Yeah, our internal clocks are amazing. If you start waking at 2:37 in the morning, you’re likely to continue to do that so long as that number is in your head. You need to consciously remind yourself “7:30” over and over again as you go to sleep. Set the clock. Look at the alarm time several times to visualize that number. Print it into your brain. If you keep waking up at 3:08 every morning, your internal clock has been reset to anticipate that time on the clock. Ideally, just turning the clock around works great. You wake up, don’t memorize numbers on the clock, problem gone. Give it a try some time.

If you ever awaken during this time with a rush of emotion and don’t understand where it’s coming from, it’s entirely possible that your true self or your higher self are trying to communicate. Should you be gathering communications from “the other side” because you seem receptive in the sleep state, once you awaken that sense of someone being there will dissipate. You are in a new brainwave state and are now no longer a receptive receiver.

Scientists tell us that our circadian rhythms in our bodies tell us when to sleep and when to wake. What if those factors weren’t dictated by body temperature, emotional state, or a noisy neighborhood? What if they were affected by a time when our minds are in the sleep state combined with the thinnest veil between our world and the other(s)?

I admittedly have found the time between midnight to 4 am is prime ghost hunting hours. Not always convenient when you’ve been sitting still for the past four hours already and are feeling the body’s need to hit the sleep state. Perhaps our senses are more acute in that need-to-sleep state. I know that a tiny sound when I’m sleeping can keep me up. A trickle of light will make it impossible to sleep. A sore muscle can feel like agony. Perhaps the combination of our mind running in the deeper sleep state along with sharper senses make us ideal barometers for paranormal activity.

It might be the one time that all humans are, in effect, psychic mediums.

UPDATE:  LINK Today’s monster geomagnetic storm, and the explosion of solar flares and coronal mass ejections over the past week, have been wreaking havoc on people’s moods, sleeping patterns, and a host of other human health effects. Many people are experiencing disturbances with their circadian rhythms, waking up around 2am and having trouble getting back to sleep. “Solar storms desynchronize our circadian rhythm (biological clock). The pineal gland in our brain is affected by the electromagnetic activity, and [solar storms cause] the gland to produce excess melatonin, the brain’s built in ‘downer’ that helps us sleep. ‘The circadian regulatory system depends on repeated environmental cues to [synchronize] internal clocks,’ says psychiatrist Kelly Posner, Columbia University. ‘Magnetic fields may be one of these environmental cues.’ ”

Projector Alarm Clock