FT260 / FT262

I frequently undergo periods of repeatedly waking up during the night at a specific time, something I can’t attribute to external factors. It is hard to believe that there is any noise that could occur with such metronomic regularity (e.g. nobody has a milkman that arrives at precisely 4:24am for a number of consecut­ive nights – approximately 4:25 maybe – but exactly 4:24?). As the example of 4:24 suggests, this would not appear to be from an electronic source (e.g. heating) as that wouldn’t be coming on until about an hour and a half later. Perhaps the oddest part is that though I sometimes check the time as soon as I wake up and at other times don’t look at the clock for 5–10 minutes, the time is always the same.

I can recall being struck by a passage in Colin Wilson’s book Alien Dawn where he comments that, while writing the book, he frequently woke up to find that the clock was a run of identical digits (3:33, 4:44 etc.). Eerily, as I was reading the book, I was encount­ering a run of 4:44s and, as this passage is at the back of the book, it was not until I was about to finish it that I realised that I had been encountering the patt­ern described. Wilson discounts pure coincidence or external agency and suggests that as we live in an “information universe” it is his unconscious mind telling him that we can make greater use of our faculties.

I fail to reach any firm conclus­ion. With my rational hat on I am inclined to suggest that our brains do run such a finely tuned neuro­logical clock, but perhaps only during sleep. Such a clock might have been continuously functional in early humans. As we strove to control our world, we invented devices to measure time. Such devices meant that we no longer had to rely on our internal clock and consequently the facility atrophied.

During sleep, however, there are no devices to keep us up to speed with time. Our internal clock wakes up as our body falls asleep. Nature often provides us with remarkable examples of time-keeping, such as regular migrations – so why should humans be any different? My only problem with this theory is that it fails to explain quite why I would wish to wake up repeatedly at 4:24 (or, indeed, just look at my clock at 4:24) for a number of consecutive nights.

I think it’s an indication of mainly hidden relationships between our internal worlds (conscious and subconscious) and the external world. I’m being told something – but I can’t decipher the message.

Paul Gilham
Winnersh, Berkshire




In the early 1990s, I was driving for Shearings Coach and Bus, a well-known British coach company, and consequently came into contact with many other drivers from depots around the country. One of these drivers, whose name I can’t recall, was profoundly deaf in both ears, requiring him to wear hearing aids. One night we stopped over at the same hotel in Manchester, where he explained to me his system for waking up in time for work.

As he was unable to hear his alarm clock, he would take a minute simply staring at the clock and thinking to himself, for example, “The time now is 1:36 and I will wake up at 6.15.” He would drum this information into his head and then retire. He insisted that this method always worked, no matter the times involved (coach drivers rarely start work at the same time every day), and also claimed an advantage over the rest of us in that, should the electricity supply be interrupted and his clock cease functioning, he would still awaken at the correct time.

I have tried this method myself on occasion, and it does indeed seem to work. Someone who consciously does this every night might never need an alarm clock again.

Mark Howard
Banks, West Lancashire




If, before going to sleep, I repeatedly say to myself “I will wake up at 5am”, then that’s what happ­ens. A similar thing can be done with dreams. If you wish to recall any dreams you have in the night, say to yourself: “If I have a dream, I will wake up and write it down and then go back to sleep”. This is a little harder to pull off. I have always believed this to be some kind of self-hypnosis.

Janna Senior
By email
[See also “Neurological clock” by Joe Sawyer, FT179:71]



 
We live in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia, in a small cabin comprising a “great room” (living room, kitchen, dinning room combo), a master bedroom, a small bedroom, which houses our computer and craft supplies, and a bathroom. My computer room is separated from the great room by the bathroom and a short hallway. About two weeks ago, I was at my computer when I heard a “click” from the breaker box behind me on the opposite wall, indicating that a breaker switch had tripped. I found that the switch for the outlets in the wall shared by the bathroom and kitchen had tripped, so I went into the great room to check. The outlets on the kitchen side of this wall have plugged into them a toaster, oven, microwave, and an electric wall clock. All were functioning. When I checked the bathroom, the wall light and one outlet were not functioning, so I returned to the breaker box, reset the switch and forgot all about it.

Later that day, my husband and I noticed that all three clocks in the great room were 15 minutes slow. What makes this so odd is that, firstly, the microwave digital clock was not “blinking” as it would have been had a power surge or interrupt­ion occurred; and, secondly, the battery-powered wall clock above the main entrance was also 15 minutes slow. The battery-powered wall clock in the bathroom was on time, as was the master bedroom’s digital alarm clock. Can anyone shed any light on this event?

LA Funkhouser
Morgan, West Virginia




I regularly – not every night, but many nights – wake up at a cert­ain time in the night, specific­ally, 3.25am. I dislike it intensely, as I live alone, and have a lurid and highly active imagination. I also often find it difficult to get back to sleep and lie there for over an hour, imagining every creak and bang in the house to be a burglar (or worse, a ghost) climbing the stairs. I have to listen to the radio to drift back to sleep. And it’s 3.25 before and after the clocks go back/forward too, which sugg­ests it’s not an internal body clock – if it were, I’d wake up an hour later or earlier, depending if we’re on GMT or BST time.

I can also “set my internal alarm clock” and have done for years. I say to myself “Must wake up at 6, and go to the gym” and I will be awake and ready for the gym at 6am. It’s very useful. As a matter of fact, James Bond does the same sort of trick in Fleming’s books, which suggest Ian Fleming could do it too.
As for the dreams – I tell myself to remember my dreams, then wake up and write them down, and usually I do.

In Charlotte Brontë’s book Vill­ette, her heroine, Lucy Snowe, accidentally takes too much opium, and spends an evening intensely tripping. When Ms Brontë was asked how she, a parson’s daughter in a remote Yorkshire village, could accurately describe what opium felt like, she said that every night, before she went to bed, she deliberately thought about this particular scene as she fell asleep. On the third night of trying this, she dreamt the entire scene in its entirety, with all the sensations and visions Lucy had.

Of course, this could have been a way of covering up the fact that her brother was an opium addict, and she probably got the facts from him. She did say, however, that she often used this method when she wasn’t sure how to write a scene, or how a character thought or felt. Many creative types use directed dreaming when they’re stuck. I’ve used it myself to overcome writer’s block. Sometimes it works spectacularly and sometimes my subconscious refuses to co-operate at all and I end up with incredibly dull dreams.

And the clock mystery – I have an electronic clock in the living room. A few times I’ve come in to find at some point during the day, it’s reset itself to 12.00, as if there’s been a power cut – but it’s not flashing, as it does when the power’s interrupted. It’s just spont­aneously (seemingly) reset itself.

Michelle Birkby
Hounslow, Middlesex




I am virtually “plagued” by the identical digit problem, usually 333. I will often awake at 3.33am or decide to go to bed at 3.33am (I’m a night owl). I am forever seeing/noticing the digits (sometimes on the cusp) so that the numbers will actually change to three identical digits as I look at the clock. It worr­ies me sometimes. My wife has also witnessed this – being shaken awake at 3.33am to look at a clock.

Gianni-Franco Crovace
West Sussex




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