Witching Hour

#7

Few feelings rival the one felt when strolling around a city deep into the wee hours of the night.

Your head is spinning from the magical elixir, a combination of tequila sodas (with a lime), a Wintergreen Zyn positioned in the lower left lip, and a burning sensation of love for your domain. Every step across the cool pavement is a step nearer towards great danger. The unhinged, schizophrenic crackhead with nothing to lose. The grifter preying on solo divers like yourself. The street walker who offers you a weeknight discount. Danger, destruction, despair, destitution, desolation, desecration. All within grasp. All within a block or two of your current location.

You wander over to the glistening river that winds through the heart of the city. She invites you over like a wine-drunk college girl, and you innocently stroll over to her, looking for a taste of her sweet waters like a thirsty denizen of the African savannah. As you make your way to the bank, you see your reflection in the calm, shimmering surface. Like Narcissus, you are enamored with your own existence. It feels as if you have all the time in the world. Your mind is racing with thousands of thoughts as you sit on the park bench, waiting for nothing to happen. Eventually, in the midst of the deafening silence, you come to the realization that you are, in fact, balls-deep in the phenomenon known as the Witching Hour.

At this point, you might be asking if I have gone off the rails (to which you already know the answer to that question). But in all seriousness, you may be wondering what the Witching Hour is. Allow me to offer my two cents.

If you were to plug the term into a search engine, the results would be varying and confusing. The Wikipedia page suggests there are religious underpinnings to the Witching Hour (I refuse to do any research beyond a quick scan of that page, so perhaps one of you modern Christian scholars can do a deeper dive into this topic). Folklore states that the hours between 3 AM and 4 AM are the hours that bring out demons, witches, supernatural occurrences, ghosts, ghouls, and otherwise spine-tingling, bone-crunching, goosebump-inducing entities from the dark side of our world. Unsurprisingly, the page implies a linkage between disruptions in the human sleep cycle and Witching Hour occurrences. Being sharply awoken from REM sleep can result in night terrors and hallucinations, which we might perceive as real-life demons. Disease may also be a culprit.

And of course, due to the phrase being quite catchy and marketable, it has inevitably made its way into various pop culture media forms, ranging from song lyrics to film titles, and everything else in between. Some stockbrokers and derivatives traders call the last hour of trading on the 3rd Friday of each month the “Witching Hour”, due to the sheer volume of options and futures contracts closing on that specific date, and the increased volatility that ensues. And anyone that is an NFL superfan knows that NFL Redzone host Scott Hanson calls the final hour of the early set of Sunday NFL games the “witching hour”, due to the large number of games ending at or around the same exact time.

Everywhere we go, the Witching Hour is lurking in the shadows, ready to flip our worlds upside down with the flip of a switch. I would venture to say that you dear readers have had your own experiences with the Witching Hour. You can sharply remember a specific day, hour, or even minute where the normal laws of the universe were set aside to make room for the darker, stranger ones.

I vividly recall a time when I found myself lost in the sauce of the Witching Hour in a mid-sized US city. I was down on my luck as the night came to a close, having struck out first at the bar, then at the casino, and then finally in my list of contacts. I had thrown up three consecutive Hail Marys into the end zone, and not one of them was ripped down by my wide receiver overtop a sea of defenders. So there I was, roaming around like a gypsy, at 4:30 AM Eastern standard time, with my phone on 2%, locked out of my buddy’s apartment building. After about the 5th FaceTime attempt to wake him up, my inner desperation suddenly faded to acceptance. The decision was made that I was either finding a cozy alley to sleep in that night, or I was going to find the nearest gas station, shotgun a couple of Starbucks Double Shot Espressos behind the dumpster (which is a useful energy hack if you are in a pinch and your plug is dodging you), and pull the coveted all-nighter.

It was liberating. I had freed myself from any doubts, worries, and fears of death or embarrassment. I roamed around the streets that most drew my curiosity. There was no premonitions of bad neighborhoods, areas to avoid, or rough patches. I just walked, listened, and observed. Despite being fairly inebriated, dehydrated, and downright exhausted, my senses were stimulated like a bird of prey. The neon colors of streetlights and signs radiated like one thousand suns. Moving cars sounded like erupting volcanoes and trembling earthquakes. The sky was as clear as the crystal-clear waters of the South Caribbean.

There was an interesting character I met along the way. He was an older fellow, who had the look of the streets deep in his eyes. I could see every heartbreak, every botched drug deal, every close call deep in every wrinkle and blemish on his face. He walked with a slight limp, and his overly arched posture gave the appearance that his clothes were baggier than they actually were. He wore a sling – I don’t remember if it was his right arm or left arm. I remember making eye contact with him as we were walking in opposite directions on a well-lit street. The one thing you don’t do late at night is make eye contact with the nightcrawlers that meander the concrete jungle during the Witching Hour.

Yet when I approached him, his aura immediately signaled to me that he was friendly. Not only that, but his warmth made it feel like he was an old, long-lost friend. I hardly remember the specifics of the conversation. We exchanged pleasantries, I think he asked me how my night was going, and why a “city slicker” like myself was out so late. For some reason, I told him my exact circumstances. Another dumb idea, but this gentleman’s friendliness had reeled me in. He inevitably asked me for a few bucks. I disappointingly told him that my supply of cold hard cash had run dry at the strip club and casino. He understood and went on his way. I told him that I would likely still be walking around, and that if I saw him again, we would get something to eat. I had no idea what establishment could possibly be open at 5 AM, but I made the promise nonetheless. He said he would like that, and we parted ways, continuing in opposite directions.

All hope had been lost. I found the most secure alley in the entire city – it was wedged in between two parking garages, and slowly narrowed the deeper you walked into it. The alley also had a ledge that grew gradually higher and higher – eventually coming to a stop that overlooked a nice-looking courtyard restaurant. The ledge would serve as my humble abode on that particular night. The parking garages were for a luxury hotel, so I figured this place was as good as any of a place to sleep. The feeling was as serene as it possibly could have been, given the bizarre and desperate circumstances.

And then my guardian angel reached out. With my phone on 0.0025% (yes, I knew exactly it was at this battery percentage, don’t ask me why), my last remaining friend, who had still been at the casino trying his luck, reached out and asked if I could let him into the apartment. If only he knew. With seconds of life remaining on my phone, I quickly told him the situation and my whereabouts. A few moments later, we were reunited, postulating on the next course of action. He reached out to his father, who lived in a suburb about 10 minutes out of town, who agreed to let us crash for the night.

On the Uber ride over to his dad’s flat, I told my friend about the homeless guy in the sling. He said that on his walk over to my hideout, he had seen the same guy. Chatted him up as well. Almost offered to give him his entire wallet (most likely an exaggeration, but funny either way). As the night came to a close, I asked myself what it all meant.

Regrets are useless, and I have very few of them in this life. One of them came in 6th grade, when I failed to follow one of the girls my friend and I had snuck out to meet up with to the other side of the playground when she playfully ran off by herself. The other one is not venturing to the nearest inner city Waffle House or Taco Bell to share a meal with my Witching Hour ghost. You see, looking back at this moment, I am not quite convinced he was real. Perhaps he was nothing more than a product of the Witching Hour. One of those hallucinations brought on by sleep deprivation. But either way, I would’ve loved nothing more than to chop it up with the homeless man in a sling over a couple of Crunchwrap Supremes and a Baja Blast. We could’ve shared life stories. He would’ve shared insight (apologies for using that word) on life that no six-figure money twitter hustler guru could ever provide. Real wisdom and real advice from years of living the hard life. Maybe I could have helped him, financially other otherwise. Or maybe he was just another scammer or grifter, leading me into a robbery. In all honestly, that’s the most likely scenario.

Meaning and purpose are two of the fundamental questions in life. And so as I sit here and recall my bizarre experience with the Witching Hour, I wonder why the Witching Hour even exists in the first place. What is its origin story? What causes Witching Hour experiences? Is it religious, as mentioned before? Or is it more metaphysical? Are other great life forces at work, such as astrology?

I wish I had a straight answer for you. But like most of these streams of consciousness, I am going to leave you empty handed. Big questions are often best left unanswered, and this question I have explored today is no exception to that heuristic.

Perhaps the Witching Hour is a reminder to us all that we are in fact human, and there are greater forces at work. That when these greater forces are at work, tension is high, our awareness is raised, and time ceases to exist on either side of each passing second. We can’t prepare for the Witching Hour, yet it is inexorable. It will come for us all, and we cannot do a thing about it, other than marvel at the wonder and beauty and weirdness. Lean into the heightened feelings of doom and despair and nervousness. Stand in the batter’s box in the bottom of the 9th, with the bases loaded, 2 outs, and the winning run on 3rd. Wander the streets during the hours of the night when the freaks come out. Do copious amounts of stimulants and scribble furiously into the notebook when the sleep deprivation kicks in. Watch the sunrise on the beach with your friends after a long night of debauchery. Drink the witch’s brew. Seek those otherworldly moments out, and treasure them when they do come, because without them, life is too normal. As the great TV Philosopher Adam DeMamp from the deeply insightful show Workaholics once said, “Let’s get weird”.

Onward,

Tony