Haunted hours. Ticking clocks. Times when something strange is meant to happen, or hours counting down to an unsual destination. Whether it be an obscure alien broadcast or the apparition of a ghost for a handful of seconds, it’s all about time.
Most of the uncanny happens at night. Why? Maybe it’s because humans have an evolutionary predilection to fear darkness, and as you may have noticed, the night can be pretty dark. It is, after all, a liminal space where the living should rarely linger. Night is also when we dream (if you have an ordinary sleep schedule), and with sleep can sometimes come night terrors like the Old Hag or sleep paralysis.
Folklore features a number of special hours when the veil between worlds is thinnest.
Haunted Hours In Folklore
- Witching Hour. Commonly thought to be 3:00 a.m. (though sometimes is referenced as Midnight). In folklore, the witching hour is when supernatural energies are their strongest as the veils to the beyond are thinnest. Literary origins of the idea include Shakespeare’s Hamlet (circa 1600) and his use of the phrase “witching time of the night,” though the term “witching hour” itself appeared in Elizabeth Carolina Keene’s Miscellaneous Poems in 1762. The term appears (in at least one online copy) inside the poem The Hag:
“Tis the baleful witching hour,
Lo! the moon withdraws her light;
Hark from yonder mould’ring tow’r
Screams the ill-boding bird of night:”
- Devil’s Hour. Similar to the Witching Hour and also at 3:00 a.m., though connected to Christianity and thought to be an inversion or mockery of the hour of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion, which is said to have happened at 3:00 p.m.
- Ox Hour. The time between 1:00 a.m. and 3:00 a.m., associated with the double-hours of the Chinese Zodiac. A vengeful Japanese curse known as ushi no toki mairi is typically performed at this time.
- Wolf Hour. A Swedish concept (vargtimmen) concerning the time between 3:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m., the quiet hours of the night when dreams are their most vivid.
- Twilight Zone. Dawn or dusk, the liminal spaces between day and night. Some animals, especially cats, are crepuscular, meaning they naturally have more energy in low-light hours, which can cause some chaos. In Japan, a term for twilight or dusk is Tasogare-doki, or twilight time. Tasogare itself, which means twilight, also means “who is that?” Because it can be hard to tell who someone is in the low light.
Haunted Hours In Media
- Final Fantasy XIV – The Ghost of Edda Pureheart appears randomly at 2:00 a.m. Eorzea time, the Ox Hour.
- Animal Crossing: New Horizons – An alien broadcast can be seen on TV every Saturday morning at 3:33 a.m.
- Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest – Every night, Simon finds out that it’s a horrible night to have a curse.
- The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask – Link finds himself in a tangent universe with only three days to prevent a moon from falling.
- Donnie Darko – Donnie finds himself in a tangent universe with only 28 days to prevent it from collapsing.
- Five Nights At Freddy’s – Takes place during a routine shift at a pizza arcade from Midnight to 6:00 a.m.