science

Witching hour

Witching hour is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Witching hour rather than just read about it. In short: In folklore, the witching hour or devil's hour is a time of night that is associated with supernatural events, whereby witches, demons and ghosts are thought to appear and be at their most powerful. Definitions vary, and include the hour immediately after midnight and the period from 3:00 am to 4:00 am.

Key takeaways

Witching hour belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Witching hour to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Witching hour from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

In folklore, the witching hour or devil's hour is a time of night that is associated with supernatural events, whereby witches, demons and ghosts are thought to appear and be at their most powerful. Definitions vary, and include the hour immediately after midnight and the period from 3:00 am to 4:00 am. The term now has a widespread colloquial and idiomatic usage that is associated with human physiology and behaviour to more superstitious phenomena, such as luck.

Origins The phrase "witching hour" began at least as early as 1762, when it appeared in Elizabeth Carolina Keene's Miscellaneous Poems. It alludes to Hamlet's line "Tis now the very witching time of night, When Churchyards yawne, and hell it selfe breakes out Contagion to this world."

Time There are multiple times that can be considered the witching hour. Some claim the period from midnight to 1:00 am, while others claim there is increased supernatural activity from dusk to dawn. The New Zealand Oxford Dictionary identifies midnight as the time when witches are supposedly active. During the time in which this term originated, many people had sleeping schedules that meant they were awake during the middle of the night. Nonetheless, there is psychological literature suggesting that apparitional experiences and sensed presences are most common between the hours of 2:00 am and 4:00 am, corresponding with a 3:00 am peak in the amount of melatonin in the body.

Physiology

The idea of the witching hour may stem from the human sleep cycle and circadian rhythm – the body is going through REM sleep at that time, where the heart rate is slower, body temperature reduced, breathing pattern and blood pressure irregular. Sudden awakening from REM sleep could cause agitation, fear and disorientation in an individual. During REM sleep, which usually occurs within the witching hour, unpleasant and frightful sleep disturbances such as parasomnias can be experienced, which include nightmares, rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder, night terrors, sleepwalking, homicidal sleepwalking and sleep paralysis. During the night and well into the witching hour, symptoms of illnesses and conditions such as lung disease, asthma, flu and common cold seem to exacerbate because there is less cortisol in the blood late at night and especially during sleep. As such, the immune system becomes very active and white blood cells fight infections in the body during sleep, and this would thereby worsen the symptoms of fever, nasal congestion, cough, chills and sweating.

Colloquial usage The term may be used colloquially to refer to any period of bad luck, or in which something bad is seen as having a greater likelihood of occurring. In investing, it is the last hour of stock trading between 3:00 pm (when the U.S. bond market closes) and 4:00 pm EST (when the U.S. stock market closes), a period of above-average volatility. The term can also refer to a phenomenon where infants or young children cry for an extended period of time during the hour (or two) before their bedtime, becoming irritable and unwieldy with no known cause. To reduce gun violence, curfew hours in Washington D.C. have been in force between 11:00 pm and midnight to lower juvenile gunfire incidents. Influenced by the idea of "witching hour", this occurs between 11:00 pm and 11:59 pm on weekdays and is referred to as the "switching hour". Furthermore, violent crimes like rape and sexual assault would peak at midnight on average and DUI police incidents would usually tend to occur at around 2:00 am.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Witching hour

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Witching hour claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Witching hour before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Witching hour ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Witching hour

In research: Witching hour appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Witching hour in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Witching hour is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Canonical hours, Circadian rhythm, Demons in Christianity, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Witching hour outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Witching hour in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Witching hour means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Witching hour out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Witching hour in simple terms?

Why does Witching hour matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Witching hour?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Witching hour.