Talk:Witching hour

What happened to the other page?

So last year, Witching Hour (disambiguation) was merged with this page and the other page and its history disappeared? Why? The witching hour page before was better in my opinion. Can someone explain to me what happened to the other page? Thanks! 24.150.196.3 (talk) 02:30, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Requested move 28 November 2019

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved first one as proposed. Moved second to Witching hour (disambiguation) as there is no proposed new target for Witching Hour. – bradv🍁 05:02, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

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• Witching hour (supernatural) → Witching hour
• Witching hour → Witching Hour

– Per WP:DIFFCAPS / only use of this term in lowercase. _{ZXCVBNM (TALK)} 16:40, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose. As someone said in some others in this series of "takeovers", DIFFCAPS properly applies when the capitalization scheme in question is very distinctive; it doesn't really work in a case like this. That would leave us with a WP:PRIMARYTOPIC argument for the move, and I don't think the supernatural concept qualifies. Most people don't believe in that sort of stuff (and haven't for several generations), and the phrase survives primarily in pop culture references like song lyrics, etc. I wouldn't oppose moving the DAB page to be capitalized, though, since most entries are.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:12, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
  Changed to Support per Crouch,_Swale's stats. I have no idea why it's a popular reading topic, and it might be some kind of recentism thing that will fade over time, but I guess we can reassess if that happens.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:13, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose because lower case title remain ambiguous with upper cased titles because users search for upper case title in all lowercase. And WP:SNOW close. --В²C ☎ 01:44, 3 December 2019 (UTC) see below. --В²C ☎ 23:34, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
• Support per views [[1]] the supernatural gets 32,451 views with Witching hour (investing) only getting 64 while the upper case titles get 718. This means that the supernatural gets over 507x the views of the other topic called in lower case, clearly meeting primary topic by a large margin. It gets over 41x the views of the other topics called Witching Hour and Witching hour so even if we ignore WP:DIFFCAPS its clearly primary. When I search on Google all the results are for this topic. This is also the only topic I've heard of. While the article is not that much more than a dictdeff its clearly the primary topic. Its also likely the primary topic by PT#2 since its likely that all the other uses refer to this topic (at least the upper case ones). @Born2cycle and SMcCandlish: you might want to reconsider. Crouch, Swale (talk) 22:48, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
• Support per WP:PRIMARYTOPIC/Crouch, Swale. Nom's reference to DIFFCAPS is misleading. --В²C ☎ 23:34, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

  I wouldn't say nom's reference to DIFFCAPS is misleading, you have usually supported DIFFCAPS such as Woman in the Dunes/The Woman in the Dunes , Friendly fire/Friendly Fire, Mass hysteria/Mass Hysteria and the Slip knot articles but I think the point is that the easier a term is to type the more weight we need to give to it for PT#1 since many readers probably won't bother to capitalize even when searching for upper case terms while few would capitalize the 2nd "F" when looking for the generic topic (I might if I wasn't that familiar with WP). Crouch, Swale (talk) 13:33, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

• Support moving this page to the primary title, but suggest moving the dab to Witching hour (disambiguation) instead – not all the entries there are proper names. —swpb^{T • go beyond • bad idea} 17:26, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
• Support. Historic meaning of the phrase. Hyperbolick (talk) 20:52, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

"Women caught outside without sufficient reason during this time were sometimes executed on suspicion of witchcraft".

When and where did this happen, and how often? It's a very vague accusation, and seems excessive even by the standards of witch trials. The source given for this isn't accessible from the UK, so I can't check what it actually says. Iapetus (talk) 09:09, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

The link to Witch trials in the early modern period is there to provide that information. The source says what the sentence says – that being outside during that time was sometimes used as evidence in witch trials. It does not specify exactly when and where this occurred. It would be great to be able to cite that info, but not being able to does not make "sometimes" a weasel word. The inline template {{vague}} could be justified. —swpb^{T • go beyond • bad idea} 18:08, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

OK, I've added the tag instead. I can't find anything in Witch trials in the early modern period that says anything about "being outside during that time being used as evidence in witch trials". If it was, I would think it should be added there. Is this Discovery article reliable? I've heard of all sorts of things being used as evidence of witchcraft, but never "being outside in the small hours". Iapetus (talk) 09:14, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't see anything about it either. Swpb, where are you seeing this information? I also tried to search for that Destination America episode and found nothing that matched the title. -- Fyrael (talk) 14:41, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

The link may be dead. If I get time, I'll try to find another source for the statement; if we don't have one in a few days, I'm fine removing it until we do. —swpb^{T • go beyond • bad idea} 15:34, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

Shaming/Persecution

I want to call into question the following sentence, under section "Origins"

"The association with witches could have been one way in which to shame and persecute women who were believed to go against the status quo.[4]"

Without disputing that the general idea of "witches" may have done precisely this, it's not clear to me that the idea of a "witching hour" could have done so, nor how exactly it would have - how associating a pre-dawn hour with witches would have added to the shaming or persecuting of women. FWIW, the reference (4) does not actually reference the witching hour.

I suspect there is a real idea here that has been somewhat garbled in the sentence above, but unless someone can help it express itself, I recommend this sentence be deleted. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.225.219.18 (talk) 17:55, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

I agree with your analysis and have boldly removed the unsupported statement. -- Fyrael (talk) 05:31, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Modernism.

"time between 3:00 am and 4:00 am."

This is a new invention from Paranormal Activity, the movie. There is no reference to it elsewhere. The witching hour has always been either the hour AFTER midnight, or 11:30 to 12:30. 4AM at some latitudes is literally daylight so daylight isn't very spoopy. But yeah, from my research on the topic besides it now being accepted as a 'fact' because Wikipedia says so (thus a circle of references of journalist articles quoting Wiki as 4am as a source then wiki potentially quoting the journalists) it appears ALL of the 3-4 stuff is directly from Hollywoods imagination nothing else, and solely because the 'paranormal activity' in the first movie was set around that time. 124.190.192.47 (talk) 10:55, 29 June 2022 (UTC)