The night is dark and full of terrors.
Melisandre, the Red Witch. Game of Thrones

… and the darkest hour is just before dawn.
The Mommas and the Papas

American author F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in The Crack-Up: “In a real dark night of the soul it is always 3 o’clock in the morning, day after day”. And who hasn’t awoken at 3am and stayed awake into the early hours overthinking everything when random thoughts scatter and shatter, when matters large and small pitter-patter across the mind like mice scurrying across the room. With the late Warren Zevon, “we contemplate eternity beneath the vast indifference of heaven”, inevitably pondering, as we try time on the descending escalator, the ever-approaching End. And the next second, it’s tomorrow’s “to do” list, the credit card bills, or doctors’ appointments, or “did I turn off the hose in the veggie garden?” The mind runs through a myriad of things that are inconsequential during the daylight hours but are now morphed into potential catastrophes that may or may not come to pass.

Even if one doesn’t actually awaken, dreams at this hour can be disturbing, confusing or straight-out strange. Often, I awake from a dream, contemplate its content, and after a while, fall asleep once more and jump back into the same dream. There are times too when I get repeats of dreams past and actually say, in the dream, “I’ve been here before!”  And then of course there are the recurring themes. My most frequent is that of packing – packing for travel or for tiding up, often featuring unmanageable quantities of whatever or unattainable deadlines, and all for reasons or purposes that not explained.

So, in short, nothing good comes from 3am. Only memories, words unsaid, things unfinished, heartbreak, even, and loss – those “decisions and revisions” that tormented TS Elliot’s J Alfred Prufrock so much. Sleep eludes you and when you do fall into a fitful sleep, it’s a tormented one that leaves you quite enervated, exhausted even, in the morning. And usually, everything always looks much better in the morning, although at times, you may carry around the night’s woes with you for the rest of the day. In an entertaining piece in the Sydney Morning Herald columnist and writer Monica Dux offers that “maybe our daylight optimism is the delusion, and those dark 3am moments are actually glimpses of a fundamental truth, as the distractions of the day are stripped away, and it’s just you and your mortality staring each other down”.

It doesn’t help if you actually retire to bed in a state of stress. When you are stressed, overstimulated and, perhaps, overwhelmed, your bodily functions are incongruent with good sleep. The body, revved up by anxiety, cannot easily slip into the peaceful state needed for rest. The autonomic nervous system is on high alert, making good sleep an impossible goal. For this reason, therapists say that it is important to wait until you feel naturally tired before attempting to sleep. And yet, even then, the 3am bell might ring still.

Science, of course, has an explanation or two for this pre-dawn desolation. We all wake up many times through the night, and usually slide straight back to sleep. Unless the bladder has sounded a renal reveille, as is common with folk of a certain age. But around about 3am our core body temperature starts to rise, sleep hormones have peaked, and the stress hormone cortisol kicks in, preparing you for the coming day. So, if you wake fully, there’s a good chance you’ll stay that way. And your brain, deprived of other stimulation, will start playing tricks on you, distorting your sense of proportion and reality.

An alternate and seemingly contrary theory is that the hour may be when we emerge from our sleep cycle and circadian rhythm. The body goes through REM sleep at that time; 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. Also, during REM sleep, unpleasant and frightful sleep disturbances such as parasomnias can be experienced, including, maybe, nightmares, rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder, night terrors, sleepwalking, and sleep paralysis.

But why let scientists have all the fun. Don’t we all know already that if you’re going to slip off this mortal coil, odds are it will be between. 3 and 4 am because this is an ambiguous hour of no rules. Before 3am it is still night; after 4 it is morning; and In between lies, we’ll, purgatory. It’s a time when the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest – betwixt the spiritual world and our own, between the living and the dead.

And it’s a well known fact that 3pm was the time when Our Lord Jesus Christ expired on Golgotha. The opposite, 3am, belongs to Old Nick. It’s the evil hour and supposedly, a time of power for satanic skullduggery and supernatural phenomena. It’s not called “the witching hour “ for nothing. Though how Christians worked all this out beats me. In the sixteenth century, the catholic church endeavoured to forbid nocturnal activities between 3 and 4 due to burgeoning fears about witchcraft in Europe, and the fact that this was the hour witches, demons and ghosts were out about and reckoned be at their most powerful.

A forelorn hope, perhaps. Back in those days, it was customary for folk to break their slumber between what we now know are customary sleep cycles with a first and second sleep – one shortly after sundown, followed by a period of nocturnal activity, until one was sleepy again. That in-between waking-time was known  to be especially propitious for making magic. Interpret that as you will.

Over to Mister Pickett:

I’m gonna wait ’til the midnight hour
That’s when my love come tumbling down
I’m gonna wait ’til the midnight hour
When there’s no one else around

© Paul Hemphill 2023. All rights reserved

Postscript

Since writing this piece, I’ve gotten into a habit of not checking the time when awake in the early hours to answer nature’s call. More often or not, this enables me to return to peaceful slumber – this tactic if not foolproof, however. On a whim, I asked ChatGPT to compose a poem about the three o’clock blues, and whilst a bit lame, it’s not half bad. I’ve republished it below.