Even though Japanese culture doesn’t have Christian roots, there’s a witching hour in Japan too. Or more accurately, a half-hour witching hour.

It’s called 丑三つ時 (ushi mitsu doki) and literally means “the third time of the ox”. This slightly weird phrasing goes back to how they told the time in ancient Japan. The 24 hours of the day were split into 12 chunks of two hours each. The individual chunks were assigned to the Chinese zodiac signs and then divided again into four parts of 30 minutes each. The time of the ox is the slot from 1 am to 3 am. The Japanese witching hour is in the third part of this slot, so it happens at night between 2 am and 2:30 am.

Just like over here, the witching hour is a spooky time when you can bump into ghosts and summon demons. An old ritual practised during the witching hour is 丑の時参り (ushi no toki mairi), the shrine visit at the time of the ox. This is a curse that’s supposed to bring death to its victim.

The summoner (usually a scorned woman) wears the iron tripod of a fireplace upside down on her head. She has stuck a candle into each of the metal legs. Wearing this crown, she sneaks into a shrine during the witching hour and hammers nails into a sacred tree. If she manages to pull this off for seven days in a row without being seen, an ox appears. To finish the curse, she has to step over it.