Unholy Hour

Perhaps you have heard the legend of the supposed “holy hour” that occurs on certain days of the year: Christmas, Easter, Good Friday, November 1, and the first of both February and August, each day between 7 and 8 am (not including Daylight Savings Time, mind you, because it is a human invention and supernatural entities do not observe it). When you were a kid, this was the hour in which you probably opened Christmas presents and started tearing apart your Easter basket after dragging your parents out of bed, and much to your parents’ chagrin refused to eat anything but leftover Halloween candy from the day before for breakfast; however, more than likely you had never gone into a darkened room in preparation for this ritual. However, perhaps you’ve heard others speak of it.

Go into a room with a mirror, preferably one without windows, between 7 and 8 am on any one of the dates listed above. You do not have to perform this ritual alone; if you have any friends, you may in fact want them to come in with you to help you perform specific tasks outlined that are difficult to do in the dark. (Important: The only light in this ritual must come from either a candle or a lighter – some tiny, flickering flame. Save for this light, you must be in total darkness – otherwise there is a strong possibility that you won’t see anything, hence the suggestion that you perform this in a room without windows. However, it all depends on your own sensitivity to the paranormal; when my friend performed this ritual last November 1, we had to shut all the doors in the hallway first because the light from the doorcrack kept distracting him.) Make sure that you perform this ritual in comfortable clothing – you want to avoid any unnecessary discomfort.

Once inside this room, close the door and light your candles and/or your lighter. This/these flame(s) must remain lit until the end of the ritual, although I know of people who have chickened out and blown the flames out which instantly ends it and generally leaves them wallowing in their own cowardice for days on end afterwards. You may have your friend(s) hold or light the candles or lighter if desired, as long as the flame is reflected in the mirror. Now begin chanting some Christian prayer – any one will do, even the “Sinner’s Prayer” on the back of those Chick Tracts, as long as it mentions God, Jesus, or the Holy Ghost at least once – as you stare into the mirror. It must be the same prayer and, again, the number of times you need to chant this prayer varies depending on your own sensitivty to the paranormal, but generally twenty times is more than enough. (My friend chose Our Father, and he needed to chant it fifteen or sixteen times.)

When you have chanted for long enough, one of your flames will flare and then change color. (Ours turned red, but I’ve heard of flames turning blue, white, and even green and lavender before.) A few seconds later, an image will appear in the mirror of the archangel Michael – he looks a lot like the usual images of Christian angels, only he has this really nasty burn mark on the left side of his face. Also, he has really deep-set eyes.

Bow to Michael; again, it is important to make sure you don’t accidentally put out your flame(s) unless you wish to end the ritual. After you bow to him, Michael will ask you if you are entirely certain that you want to perform this ritual. I can’t really describe the voice, but it’s not the sort of voice you’d expect an archangel to have: it’s kind of scratchy and overall not very pleasant to listen to, and he has a faint accent of indeterminable origin.

After you answer yes, Michael will explain the conditions of the ritual: he will ask you seven questions, and if you answer at least four of them right, he will either allow or a conversation with a deceased loved one or give a living one immortality; however, if you answer three or fewer of them correctly, he will slit your throat and you will die right then and there. (I’ll admit that I actually do not remember any of the seven riddles from when my friend did this, but I do remember that they were rather arcane – i.e., not the type of riddles you would find in a riddle book – and he seemed to be fully aware of this. Also, if I remember correctly, each one consisted of seven words.) My friend never did well at riddles, so you can imagine that he didn’t get any right, which seemed to amuse the hell out of Michael, as by the end of the ritual he had this big, terrifying Joker-like smile on his face.

After you are finished answering the riddles (you only get one try at each, but he lets you think), Michael gives you the score. Again, if you answer three or fewer right, he smites you. While he smites you, he says something in the angel language – Enochian, I believe it’s called – and you’re left writhing on the floor in agony. My friend was screaming his head off when the ritual was over, and he started speaking in tongues; it was horrible and I’m currently in therapy for this. Really fucking horrifying.

But I digress. Anyway, the candles all went out, and the lighter he had me hold died at the exact same time. I left the room feeling dizzy, and passed out on my bed in my own vomit. Strange thing is I woke up eight hours later and went into the bathroom I performed the ritual in, and found no trace of my dead friend in there. Strange, I live alone and all my doors and windows were locked, there was no sign of anyone having broken into my apartment, the landlady was on vacation, and no matter how hard I looked in the bathroom I could not find a single trace of my friend’s blood anywhere.

A few days later, I got a call from his roommate, asking about my friend. According to his roommate, my friend disappeared on Halloween night and hadn’t been seen at all since. He had called all around, asking my friend’s parents, siblings, aunt, uncle, people like the guy at the convenient store where my friend bought his cigarettes, and even his old teachers from grade school if they knew anything about his whereabouts, only to get a resounding “no.” He decided to call me because apparently I was the only person out of the people both he and my friend knew that he hadn’t called yet. So I told him exactly what happened, down to my friend’s body mysteriously disappearing. He didn’t believe me, and reported me to the police, but, when the police came to investigate, they did not find any trace of my friend either, not even his DNA. It’s almost like he never came over my house and instead chose to fall off the face of the earth and leave his friends behind.

On a side note, I’ve heard that someone in fact, by some miracle, did get all of the riddles right, and they wished for the immortality of whoever. However, the next day their loved one was not alive. They, much like my friend, were mysteriously spirited away, only this time on the wall of their room there was a message in some mysterious language, written in blood. Perhaps only God and the archangel Michael know what has become of the two of them.

// Credited to M. Collins.