Leave Something Witchy

Maybe it's my current obsession with all things Manson, Helter Skelter & The Family.

But I'm all too aware that tonight I'm up way past my bedtime... I've strayed into the Witching Hour and I'm feeling Witchy.

In European folklore, the witching hour is the time when supernatural creatures such as witches, demons and ghosts are thought to be at their most powerful, and black magic at its most effective. This hour is typically midnight, and the term may now be used to refer to midnight, or any late hour, even without having the associated superstitious beliefs. The term "witching hour" can also refer to the period from midnight to 3am.

One of the earliest known uses of the exact phrasing "the witching hour" is from the 1831 edition of Frankenstein in the introduction by Mary Shelley: "Night waned upon this talk, and even the witching hour had gone by before we retired to rest."

In 1835, the phrase appeared in the last line of a short story by Washington Irving: "Two pairs of eyes are watching me now, from the couch and the ledge by the window. Faerieland shines in those eyes. And I must leave you, for it's the witching hour and a full moon is rising. . . ."
However, variants of the phrase were in use much earlier; Shakespeare refers to "the witching time of night" in a soliloquy in Hamlet:

Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on.
[Act III, sc. ii]

And with that, good night!

P.S. - Thank you Wikipedia.