The Witching Hour

On 3.15am, Bad Habits & Night Restlessness

“We are quicksilver, a fleeting shadow, a distant sound…our home has no boundaries beyond which we cannot pass. We live in music, in a flash of colour…we live on the wind and in the sparkle of a star!”

Endora in Bewtiched, Season 1

On endless nights as a little kid, I lived in a breathless combination of thrill and terror waiting for the numbers of the Witching Hour - that’s 3.15am for those who don’t know - to flip into place on my beloved digital clock (I couldn’t ‘tell the time’ with a regular clock face until I was ten years old - or tie my shoelaces or ride a bike - much to the mocking amusement of my friends).

I was a hardcore insomniac/restless sleeper who would sometimes read two Famous Five novels in a single night, as a way to calm myself as time marched towards this ineluctable moment.

Ah the soothing antics of these wild young adventurers!

3.15am was the minute when the natural order of the cosmos that ruled the world disappeared, meaning spirits and sprites were free to roam and all Hell could break loose. If something bad, mad or unexplainable was gonna happen, this was the time it would go down.

The Witching Hour is a moment of revelation, when the veil between worlds is thinnest, and the truth can no longer be ignored.

-from The Witching Hour by Augustus Thomas 1907-

As that 6 flipped into place and knocked the 5 out, I’d sigh in relief that I’d survived another night, my little eyes would droop and I’d finally pass out til it was time to wake up and put on my platform heels for my walk through the badlands/North Adelaide Parklands to school.

Taken a few nights ago….or back in the 70s?????

In recent times, I’ve been back to my bad old ways.

Though I’m no longer scared of the lifting of the veil or a nocturnal pile on by ghosts and witches and elves and demons, I still feel residually spooked in the deepest part of the night. But I kind of love it too.

These days I’m often tired enough to fall asleep early but even if I don’t sleep til midnight, I inevitably wake up around 3 and restlessly struggle to return to sleep until at least 5am. And try as I might, I can’t keep my eyes away from the compelling blue glow of those numbers on the bedside clock until the Witching Hour has passed. So ridiculous, so dramatic! I tell myself I’m looking for trouble. That my mind wants to create patterns and habits, as minds like to do, and so it’s returning to this old familiar bad habit. There’s a ritualistic mentally satisfying element of control in habits, which is why we form them.

It’s weird to think of one’s own mind as an enemy, a kind of mischief making agitator that needs to be firmly taken in hand and set right, but there’s where I’m at. I want to show my mind who the boss is and break the spell.

Now we’re back on the witch trip. I’ve always had a witchy thing going on. I naturally related to them from a young age and was often dressed as one. Kids around me believed I was one, and secretly I did too. I made up my own little incantations and manifestations and knew I could convene with flowers and butterflies and certain animals and had an ability to see things other people couldn’t see. But with hindsight, that could have been the result of wandering around a house often thick with marijuana smoke as many homes in the early/mid 70s were. I am a sensitive soul.

I would read any books I could get my hands on about witches and supernatural things, and loved to try to read palms (we had the Palmistry book below) and study up on esoteric philosophies. I believed we all had a third eye we could learn to see with through meditation after reading our dog-eared copy of Tibetan monk Lobsang Rampa’s The Third Eye - the book that was later revealed to have been written by one Cyril Hoskin, son of a British plumber. I believed there was a thin veil separating the world we lived in and some other world. I still do.

And of course, like any self respecting little girl, I was obsessed with Bewitched and to a lesser extent, I Dream of Jeannie - although I truly dug her exotic look and longed to visit the genie bottle she called home, Jeannie was too subservient and desperate for attention and manipulative for my liking. Sam was totally cool, even if she had to hide her magical light from the world around her, she wasn’t afraid to bust it out when necessary and be the baddest witch in town.

There’s an episode where Sam cautions her toddler daughter Tabitha “I know what fun it is to be a part of the magical life ... to have so much at your fingertips. But we’re living in a world that’s just not ready for people like us, and I’m afraid they may never be. So you’re going to have to learn when you can use your witchcraft and when you can’t.”

Even though that message is kind of messed up, it made sense to me and felt comforting to me then - like it’s OK to be strange, but you don’t have to show everyone all the time, you can keep it for yourself. And, oh, those dresses. Sam - and her mother Endora - is my forever fashion icon, in both witch and housewife mode.

As much as I’m into spooky shit, I’ve always kept one foot firmly in the practical camp. I adore scientific facts. I prefer to lean into the idea that we have power over ourselves rather than the idea of preordained fate or being at the mercy of outside forces.

So last night at 3.16am as tried to lull myself back to my sleepy state by playing Cindy Lee’s mesmerising masterpiece Diamond Jubilee, I did a little light research (I know, I know, don’t pick up my phone - I’m full of bad habits) and discovered that apparently in times long past (don’t ask me when, just pre-electric times) people would often sleep in two sections, getting up in the middle of the night to make use off the moonlight to do some chores and socialise and then go back to bed. It’s called bi-phasic sleep. I like that, it sounds scientific and makes sense to me. I like making use of my time awake by writing or reading or listening to music. I should probably vacuum but whatever.

‘Midnight, its never too late, 2 o’clock to get over, four o’clock, to get over, sunrise, oh yeah, sunshine…’

What’s It Going To Take from Diamond Jubilee by Cindy Lee

I was also awoken just before 3.15am the other night by an incredibly vivid dream, where I literally stepped through a door into a kind of shadow version of the space I was in, and my dear old friend and bandmate James, who died way too young from cancer many years ago, was right there, smiling in a Hawaiian shirt, glowing golden with good health, welcoming me into his arms. We laughed incredulously and hugged and then I awoke with a jolt and saw the time and snapped the picture of the digital clock I posted earlier in this piece, almost thinking I might catch a lingering glimpse of James. The feeling of having seen him has stayed with me so strongly, it keeps coming into my mind and leaving me standing there with an idiotic grin on my face. Nothing like seeing an old friend.

Me & James & Justine, by Monica McMahon 1995

Maybe there is just a thin veil between worlds, and maybe waking up is my own little way of finding a secret path to that place.

As Glinda the Good Witch said in The Wizard of Oz, “You’ve always had the power, my dear. You just had to learn it for yourself.”

Embrace your inner witches, bitches, and dance with your demons til next we meet. May the thin veils between worlds part for you in all the best ways when you least expect it.

Lo x

PS Don’t be shy, leave me hearts, your thoughts, share with a friend etc … you know I need all the help I can get!

For more spooky Loose Connections stories, try this one:

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