The Witching Hour: What Actually Happens at 3 AM?

Your eyes snap awake, wide open. You look around, confused, thinking that maybe you haven't woken up yet. You see the small red and green LEDs of the internet router, the one from the television too, And it isn't how you would expect to be feeling at that time of the night. This time, you're completely awake to turn over to tap the phone to see the time, and there it is three a m. Now this would be completely normal if it wasn't the fourth time it happened, waking up at the exact same time. And I've been there before, waking up with the lingering sense of dread, like if something bad is about to happen, ready to let all of my thoughts come bursting back. In other times, I just go hmm, that's odd and eventually get back to sleeping. Now we've heard about this in movies, books, reddit posts, and all over the place. They see that evil things happen at three am, that the veil is thin. They might be right, because three am has documented history deeply rooted in human biology, theology, and also how things were in the past for our ancestors. If you were to ask a biologists about this, they will tell you about a survival mechanism, one that we've had for thousands of years, that at night, there were certain animals that could get around at the dark, and sometimes they were predators. So our mind evolved into this hypervigilant state in the dark, literally to save its own life. Today, eerie silence and darkness makes our imaginations fill in the unseen with the worst possible scenarios. Some of these end up being paranormal in nature and throughout history. Actually, the name's witching hour or the devil's hour, where we used to refer to this window of the night when demons, evil entities, witches and ghosts are at their most powerful. So today we're going to take a look at this collective dread, the one that we feel at three am, and if maybe you should be afraid of being awake at such ungodly hours. My name is Edwin, and here's a horror story. Historically, the Witching hour was actually not linked to three am at all. Actually, in fact, it was three hours late because they used to refer to midnight being the witching hour. These concepts came to us from William Shakespeare's Hamlet that was written around the turn of the seventeenth century, and in it, the Princess tis now the very witching time of night, when Churchyard's yawn and hell itself breathe out contagion to this world. And with that line we started associating midnight with evil. Now remember around this time people also believed that dark magic was super effective. But also why midnight. So the people like Shakespeare, midnight was what they called the ultimate liminal threshold, representing the the exact mathematical point of transition, the one between day and night, or one day and the next. It was kind of like a transition moment that eventually got associated with the veil, something that separates the physical world of the living from the spiritual realm that dissolves for an instant or becomes its thinnest. At that time, now this was what allowed higher levels of supernatural activity and magic to slip through into our world. But it was like this, midnight, not three am, being the witching hour, and it was kept like that for the late eighteenth century Gothic and Romantic literature using that exact phrase the witching hour, and all of them again referring to midnight twelve am. And it took until the nineteenth century that all of our nightly horror started switching away from midnight into something that went much deeper into the night. Now, how we switch from midnight to three am didn't happen randomly through campfire ghost stories or horror movies. It was actually more of a perfect storm. You see, there was a cross, no pun intended, between Christian beliefs, tough realities, and human biology. And here's how it happened. First, we're to look at demonic mockery, the darkest of all topics here. Right, According to historical belief and to some gospel traditions in Western Christian theology, Jesus Christ was put on the cross at nine am and at exactly at three pm. Because Christian demonology believes strictly that evil or malevolent entities work by inverting and mocking everything that is sacred, the exact opposite of the death of Jesus would be three a m. Therefore, it's a designated time when demonic forces are at their most powerful. They say that they user power to influence in the dead of night and perform a deliberate mockery of the crucifixion. But here's another creepy part. Of this mockery. It turns out that three in this case happens to be a holy number because it represents the Holy Trinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So in order to mock it, paranormal phenomena that gets reported around this hour, such as three knocks on a wall, three unexplained scratches, even if they don't happen at this hour, actually get interpreted as parody of the Trinity. So if you're sleeping peacefully and suddenly joel to wake at three am, it is believed that the devil just visited you and you just missed on. This kind of framework wasn't made up of local superstition, though, it was actually enforced by early church rules. But how did this come to be? I mean, that's what we're here for, right after all. If it was a church official rule, it was as good as a law, after all. So I started digging a little deeper here to early modern Europe and around I don't know, the sixteenth and the eighteenth century, give or take. Now. It turns out that at the time there was a lack of medical understanding, and people couldn't understand why there were so many unknown diseases everywhere, so they started blaming the dark arts witchcraft. I found a couple of landmark events regarding these They have no proof of ever existing, but they're worth mentioning. I'm saying this because it's a simple Internet search. It's going to bring them up. First, the fifteen thirty five Ecclesiastical Curfew, when the Catholic Church started strictly prohibiting people going out at night between three and four am anyone. But let's be real here. It was women who was outside or awake during this window of time would be automatically suspected of practicing sorcery or going to a demonic church equivalent. How did it work Well, it made people even more paranoid to about the witching hour, because who would even want to be out when the church is telling you that during that time there are witches out? Again that candn't find any evidence of this, right, but this is what the how the story goes. Then I found out that there was a fifteen sixty decree by Pope Pious the Fourth who supposedly coined the term witching hour. But wait, we already said that it was coined by Shakespeare. So without much evidence for this, it tells me that the search or reason for this spear at three am. It's going to have a lot of twists and turns. Of course, I also found out about the witch trials here and how it had to do with three am. It actually happened, as you may know, and it definitely added to the paranoia of witchcraft. I mean, after all, unestimated sixty thousand people were executed during the witch trials because of all of these unexplained diseases happening. But how does that tie to three am? So while church and religion set the background for this phrase Devil's hour, modern history has provided its own chilling examples. November thirteenth, seventy four, a horrific real life event firmly cemented the three am window in the public consciousness. At a time of true demonic possession, in the quiet town of Amityville, New York, Ronald de Fayo Junior murdered his parents and four siblings in their beds with the thirty five Marlin rifle. The estimated time of these brutal killings was around three am to three point fifteen am, and when questioned by detectives, Dafeo claimed that he was in a trans like state, driven to kill by disembodied demonic voices inside of his head. The subsequent haunting of the Lutz family in that same house, where George Lutz reportedly woke up every single morning at exactly three fifteen am, further tied this specific time to this active, malevolent presence. So this pure terror of the three am hour was also brought to the masses by the two thousand and five film The Exorcism of Emily Rose, which was loosely inspired by the tragic real life story of Anal's. Michelle and Annely's was actually a German woman who underwent sixty seven intensive Catholic exorcism sessions. I mean not sure if you've seen the movie, but she tragically died from malnutrition and dehydration in nineteen seventy six. Now, in the movie of her story, the horror is heavily stuck to the pre done time frame. Characters find themselves working up at exactly three am every single night, overwhelmed by the sudden smell of burning material, extreme freezing temperatures, and terrifying invisible presences. Now, the narrative explicitly says that this ancient believe that there are demons out there specifically choosing three am to mock the Holy Trinity in the three PM time of Christ's death. So all these terrifying cases highlight a chilling centuries old belief that during the Devil's hour, malevolent forces are strong enough to completely take over the will of humans. They will do with us whatever they want. Paranormal theorists suggests that because most of the world is in deep sleep at this hour, the collective human minds interaction with the physical world is at its absolute lowest. To this lack of conscious human interference causes this veil between the physical and the spiritual realms to become incredibly thin. Unclean entities and demons take advantage of this quiet, unguarded night to cross over and isolate their victims, turning our most vulnerable hours into a terrifying battleground. You've probably heard of these sleep paralysis episodes. Right when you wake up, your eyes are wide open, but your body is entirely frozen. So even though modern clinical medicine politely calls this, you know, sleep paralysis, countless cultures throughout history have interpreted this physical immobility as a direct terrifying assaults by a demonic entity. Because these horrifying episodes predominantly occur during the second half of the night, coinciding perfectly with the three am window when ramsleep is at its peak, this paralysis has served as a primary cross cultural topic for demonic lore across history. When individuals woke up in this frozen state, they naturally concluded that they were being physically assaulted by the devil, or a witch, or some oppressive supernatural spirit. The things that they report during this dreaded hour are pretty dark. Victims often say that they see this terrifying presence of a dark, shadowy figure or an unseen intruder standing right at their bedside. And even more horrifying is an incubous phenomenon. For victims report feeling a heavy crushing pressure on their chests, accompanied by the sensation of being actively choked strangled. People are always talking about these entities, these nocturnal press and says as violent threatening sends them into this state of absolute panic as they struggle to breathe in the pitch black of their bedrooms. This three am bedside terror is so incredibly universal that it has earned sinister names all over the world. In Newfoundland, this nocturnal assault is famously known as the Old Hag, for victims report a malevolent person or animal sitting directly upon their chests and they are unable to move. In Aero folklore, the terror is attributed to a djin known as al Jatoum or Rabus, this entity that is believed to perch heavily on the sleeper. Navigali folklore, this exact same phenomenon is blamed on a supernatural entity called the boba, which attacks by violently strangling you in the dark. In Japan, the experience is known as the kanashibai, meaning metal binding. The folk horns of dangerous spirits sitting upon victims to paralyze them in their bent No matter where you look in the world, this terrifying experience of waking up paralyzed in the dead of night is universally recognized as an encounter with a true, unseen or sometimes seen evil. Now in the folklore of New Mexico, there's this terrifying urban legend known as La Malaora, which translates to the evil hour or the bad hour, and according to the legend, at three am, an evil spirit appears in the isolated countryside to haunt lonely travelers. She takes the form of an old woman with a terrifying demon's face, and if you're unlucky enough to cross her path in the dark, it is a grim omen that a loved one will soon die. Now, this eerie tale serves as a cultural warning that the supernatural actively lurks at the boundaries of the night, specifically around three am. Again going back to Japan, the deepest, darkest part of the night between one and three am is known as ushi no Koku, or the hour of the Ox. During this time, it is believed that even the grass and the trees are asleep, and the boundary between the world the living and the world of the dead is at its absolute weakest. And because evil spirits are at their peak power during this window, it is a specific time required to perform Ushi no koku mighty, a dreaded black magic curse that translates to shrine visits. At the hour of the Ox, practitioners sneak into a shrine in the dead of night to hammer a long iron nail that will straw effigy into a sacred tree. Now, this dark ritual is believed to symbolically break the barrier between the worlds, calling out to demons, yokai, malevolent spirits to enter our reality and torment the curses victims. So what should we do about waking up in the middle of the night. Modern clinical medicine tries to comfort us about three am. And that's because science tells us that we're simply experiencing a natural biological shift in our circadian rhythm. Now, we can blame our sudden chilling disorientation on our core body temperature when that reaches its lowest point. Are also melatonin levels peaking at that time. Our stress hormone cortisol beginning its early morning surge happens around that time. We can politely tell ourselves that our ancient evolutionary fear of the dark is just causing our brains to panic and project monsters into the shadows. The folklore, urban legends, centuries of cross cultural beliefs asks us, hey, are you sure The next time you wake up with a jolt three am and you feel an unseen presence watching you from the darkest corner of your bedroom, your ancient survival instincts might be telling you the truth. But what if it isn't just biology to be afraid of some creature, and what if during the Devil's Hour we are truly not alone. What I took away from this episode when I was doing the research and trying to figure it out, is just how many stories are out there from different places around the world, every single one saying that it's the truth, that this is why we should be afraid of three am and all of these stories that happen at three am. However, on my podcast True Scary Story, I get to hear from people who experience paranormal things, and sometimes when they mention the three am phenomenon, I can't stop and think, like, this isn't real. Something happens within us. We wake up and we see something and we can't be certain that it's there right because we had just woken up. But also the idea of three things knocking is what really gets to me. You know, we have three scratches, three knocks, all these things that paranormal shows, ghost hunting shows, all these other places they talk about it mocking the Holy Trinity. Now, is that a coincidence? It might be, but also what if it isn't. And that's the part that gets me the most. I really enjoy looking up this information. Actually it was an interesting research project, I guess because there were so many loops and turns and a lot of dead ends. Also with three AM, and in the end, we don't really know, we're not sure. So I really hope you liked it. I'm always open to ideas of topics that you want me to look into. Our next episodes dive into a little something a little bit darker, so imagine a little darker than this, with a little more historical context. So I really hope you tune in next week to send me your ideas. My contact information is in the description of this episode, and I'm currently working on the bonus content, actually the bonus episode for a Scary plus members where we do a little bit of a deep dive into one of the episodes that we covered this month. So if you have any ideas of which you want me to talk about, just let me know. As always, thank you very much for listening. Keep it Scary everyone, Yeah soon