3 a.m. and Knives

I always remember as a kid, watching the Amityville Horror movie and being freaked out by seeing the Dad, George Lutz wake up every morning at 3:15 am. Something about, being woken up at a specific time, the same time, every night does kind of freak you out and make you wonder why? In the Amityville story, he was waking up at 3:15 because that is when some of the murders of Ronnie DeFeo's family (by his own hand) took place. Still, many of us now relate 3 am and around this time to be a bad time to wake up in the night. Especially in your haunted house.


I do this often, but it is not because of my belief in the Amityville Horror story, or my fear of it, from when I was a child (although it did scare me quite a bit, real or not!). I have only started waking up in and around 3 o'clock in the morning since living in my "haunted house". Sometimes, I will have a nightmare, and when I awake, it's 3 am. Sometimes, I will wake up at 3 am, and not know why, and then I will hear some sort of activity, walking, voices etc... Now, I live with teenagers and even if they're home on the weekends, they tend to be up in the night. There are many complaints from them of hearing someone walking around the house, banging and once my daughter felt someone pinch her waist and breathe in her ear at 3 am. I am of the opinion though, that they are just asking for trouble, if they want to sit on Facebook, or msn at three in the morning, when you have a ghost in the house. If the activity is happening at 3 am, book it upstairs at two or earlier and try to fall asleep before 3 am and hope to hell, it doesn't wake you up!


My son, had trouble sleeping last night and so he was watching his TV, when her heard walking and then a man speaking to him. The voice, he described as too low to hear clearly (for once as it's usually loud) but he knew it was a man. Well guess what time it was, just after 3 in the morning! I should really equip these guys with a digital recorder, to see what we can pick up. I think I may get one this weekend.


Anyways, back to 3 am.
During my week, I always come back to 3 am and wake up at least once, for some unknown reason around that time. I admit, I've become used to it and some of the activity that follows, but I still have those times when you wake up at 3 in the morning and your blood runs cold because what you are hearing can't possibly be. My alarm sometimes goes off at 3am and like I said before my doorbell has rung 3 times at 3 in the morning, which really scared me. The doorbell situation has happened more than once and I hope it never happens again!


Three in the morning is called by some, "the Devil's Hour". One explanation is that Jesus died on the cross at 3 pm. So because of this, people believe this is a very holy time and so therefore 3 am (the polar opposite of 3 pm) is assumed to be time when evil spirits and demons can make contact with humans. There are many theories on demonic influences having more significance or power at 3 am. I know the popular A&E show Paranormal State, holds their peak investigation time "Dead Time" as they call it, at 3 am (I love the name). There are actually many paranormal investigators that claim this is a good time for an investigation and have witnessed activity at this time.


I don't know if all that's true, but I do know that 3 am is a reality and party time in my haunted house. I know that it has been consistent since the beginning of living here and so my ghost at least feels frisky at that time, for whatever reason that may be. Maybe one day, we'll uncover why that truly is.

Now, onto the part that is really strange and more intimate to my haunting... the knives!

Approximately 1 year ago, I was cleaning the house, in preparation to try to clear the ghost that is here. We were going to go into the attic, because strange noises were sometimes coming from there, such as footsteps and banging. My attic is not finished and is just full of insulation, but it really creeped me out because of the noises, so I never went up there before this. My closet was, I admit a horrible mess. It is a walk in closet and the ceiling of this closet is where you access the attic, so I had to clean it up. So, off I go, pulling things out to organize and rearrange or throw out and what do you think I keep finding in my closet??? First one knife, then as I take more things out, another knife, then as I take more things out, another knife. Three knives in total came out of my closet as I was cleaning it. I know you could say, it was my teenagers trying to scare me (haha!) or someone just put them there as a joke, but all of us here were completely baffled.

What was to come next though was really strange. When my friend, a local ghost hunter did go up into the attic. What do you think he found in the insulation? A knife!
None of us had been up there the entire time we lived here. The knife was in the far corner of the attic, very far away from the hatch like door, so if someone was trying to pull a fast one, they would really have to have gone to a lot of trouble! Another night shortly after, we found another knife in the drop ceiling of the basement, while adjusting a tile! One of the knives was from my kitchen. The rest of the knives that were found were steak knives that I did not recognize. Makes you wonder if my neighbours were missing knives!

I am saddened to admit though, I was so freaked out at first that we did end up throwing out the knife from the attic and the others that were not mine. My son has told me off about this since, because it may have been evidence for something that happened here, such as a past crime. He has told me that I shouldn't have panicked and used my common sense and he can't think of another reason a knife would be hidden up there.
I don't know if that is true, but I do feel bad for getting rid of the knife that was hidden in the attic and most of the others we found. It was just so overwhelming at first, finding all these knives. So, too late, after we threw out the knives out I started to process what they might mean.

So now you may be asking how I can live here?
It's simple. I didn't get the feeling that the knives were a sign of our impending doom by stabbing. I didn't get the feeling of a threat. I did get the feeling that the knives are a form of communication to whatever is here, and that it is trying to tell us something very important about itself or circumstances. Another year has passed and it is happening again. I wish I had written down the exact date of when it happened last year, but I did not. I believe it was somewhere around March - May of last year (2009).

So, this week around 3 am, my daughter wakes me up from a dead sleep and says "Mommy, there's a knife on my dresser" She woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and saw it sitting there. She says it was not there when she went to sleep and it was a steak knife that looked exactly like one of the knives I threw out last year. I will keep you updated if we find any more. Please let me know any thoughts you may have regarding knives and their symbolism. It could be as simple as the ghost had been fatally stabbed in life, I guess. Who knows?

I know one thing though and that is that I will try to find that answer and see if we can give a name to our noisy roommate.