3:15

 

As alluded to in an earlier post this month, I wake up every night at 3:15 a.m.

 

So did George Lutz of The Amityville Horror fame – or, rather, infamy!

 

So do many experiencing attacks of the demonic or spiritual crises, as a quick Google search will tell you.

 

As for me, well … I kinda agree, hate to say.

 

Now, I don’t always awaken at 3:15. Maybe every ten days I will wake up at 3:15 on the dot. I see it on the microwave I pass as I make my way in the darkness to the bathroom. And let me tell you, I almost know it’s going to display 3:15 before I get there, and when my suspicion in confirmed, I can’t tell you how eerie it is. Goose-bump eerie. If it happens to you, you know. If not, I can’t convey it in words adequately enough.

 

Most of the time I awake around 3:15. Sometimes I come very close – 3:12, 3:20, 3:08. This morning I woke at 3:40. And it doesn’t matter when I fall asleep. Normally I go to bed around 11:30. On the weekends I go to bed later, midnight or 1 a.m. not being uncommon. Last night I was exhausted from a tough work week and some insomnia and went to bed at 10:15. But no matter when I go to sleep, I wake up near or at 3:15, invariably. Only two or three times a month, at best, do I not wake up at the witching hour.

 

Because that’s what it’s called. The witching hour. The dead hour of night when witches covens are most active and dark spells suffuse through the chilly black air on their evil errands. The hour diametrically opposed to the death of Jesus on the Cross, traditionally held to have happened at 3 in the afternoon, the hour when salvation came to mankind. Evil naturally gravitates, accelerates and accentuates its designs at the hour 180 degrees from God’s saving work in history.

 

Perhaps there could be a more mundane explanation. Long ago I’ve read about the “reticular activating system” in our minds – when we learn something or are pointed towards something, we begin to start noticing that something more often. The best example I heard is if you go to a auto dealership and take a fancy to a car model you’ve never seen before. Suddenly, out on the roads over the next few days and weeks, you’ll suddenly see that car model everywhere. It’s not like they haven’t been out on the roads all this time. It was never called to your attention so you never noticed it.

 

Perhaps it has something to do with that. You hear some creepy weird things about 3:15 a.m. You wake up one random night at 3:15 a.m. and remember that spooky thing you heard about it. Then it happens again next month. Then, sooner. And now you’re a 3:15 a.m. junkie like me, getting your fix every night.

 

Something similar happened to me when I was young. I was fascinated with the time 11:11, and would point it out to anyone within earshot when I caught it on the digital clock. Pretty soon every time I look I see 11:11. Later, as an adult, I would see 9:17 on the clock – my birthday – and tease my little ones, especially Patch, whose birthday is September16. Now it seems every time I see a clock on my phone or laptop or on the microwave, if it’s morning or evening, it will show 9:17.

 

What to do?

 

Well, I’ve read some accounts by individuals afflicted with this odd phenomenon. The “spiritual crisis” thing resonates cuz, well, I’ve been undergoing one of varying magnitudes for most of my adult life. Sure, I’m about 90 percent in the traditional Roman Catholic camp, after many years reading, thinking, puzzling out and experiencing, but I still have the urge to explore. Be it philosophy, Eastern religions, or different shades of Christianity, I seem to never feel safely secure in my traditional Roman Catholic camp. Yeah, it might have something to do with that idiot Pope we’re saddled with. Or maybe it’s my habitual sins I’ve struggled with and can never shake. Or maybe it’s a lack of personal supernatural confirmation from the “out there.” I dunno. But I think this 3:15 thing might be a signal to me.

 

What I try to do is follow some advice I read. Specifically, when I find myself up at that hour of the early morning, I say the St. Michael Prayer:

 

St. Michael the Archangel

Defend us in battle

Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.

May God rebuke him we humbly pray

And do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly host

By the power of God

Cast into hell Satan and the evil spirits

Who prowl about the world

Seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

 

And if I can’t remember that or am too befuddled with sleep to get through it, I mutter a Hail Mary under my breath, return to my warm cozy bed, and fall back into my dreams and the darkness.