Witching hour

The phrase "witching hour" began at least as early as 1762, when it appeared in Elizabeth Carolina Keene's Miscellaneous Poems. It alludes to Shakespeare's Hamlet, in which Prince Hamlet declares: "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 beliefs set the period from midnight to 1:00 am, The significance of midnight in folklore is often tied to the concept of liminality; as the exact transitional point between one day and the next, it is considered a threshold time when the "veil" between the living and the spirit world is at its thinnest, allowing for heightened supernatural activity and magic. 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==

's The Nightmare (1781) 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 is reduced, and breathing patterns and blood pressure are 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; these 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 the common cold seem to exacerbate because there is less cortisol in the blood late at night and especially during sleep. As a result, the immune system becomes highly active and white blood cells fight infections during sleep, which can 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 fussy 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 the "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 peak at midnight on average, and DUI police incidents tend to occur at around 2:00 am. ==See also==