by Ron Murdock
This is a subject that people have an opinion on no matter what side of the fence they’re on. On the pro side it’s been said that since the human body is largely water, the full moon will play havoc on it. It’s known that the moon has an effect on tides but does it have that much on human physiology? Myself, I think it says more on the power of suggestion and self-fulfilling prophecy. If one believes something will happen bad enough it will.
I’ve worked 40 or so full moons over a 27 year period and only had 3 of them that could be termed weird or odd. The first one was in 1984 when I was in Saskatoon. I had gotten to work at 11 p.m. and from the moment I took over I dealt with a good number of people that were acting strange. Nothing that warranted calling the police, I just was dealing with odd people. At 1:40 a.m. the full moon went behind some clouds and all activity from the 2 and a half hours ended abruptly. It was as if a light switch was turned off.
The second one was in1988 while I was working at another self serve gas station in Vancouver. I was on the 4 to midnight shift while the full moon travelled across the night sky. The water and air hoses were falling off their attachments all night. But the big thing was the gas pumps were acting up for some strange reason. People as they were gassing up had the pumps stop completely at an amount then surge ahead to twice the previous total for no apparent reason.
The third incident was July 2007. I was working security at a low cost housing complex in Nelson. I remember talking to a Nelson police officer in the middle of Ward Street between Baker and Victoria with total chaos around us. There must have been dozens of young people within a 2 block radius around the cop and I. There seemed to be no rhyme and reason to what was going on other than just hyped up activity fueled by alcohol consumption. The cop told me this kind of going on they had to be prepared for every full moon.
The Nelson Fire Department said the full moon did affect on how they approached the job. They found the nature and volume of calls increased plus there is usually more people out and about when the full moon is out especially on weekends. Acropolis Manor, a seniors complex in Prince Rupert said the aura of the building changed during the full moon and staff have to be prepared to expect the unexpected.
After dealing with the public in a variety of jobs over several years I think effects of the full moon has been overblown by the movie industry. Part of it may be that one person or group starts acting up and others feed off it. For most of the full moons I worked, nothing out of the ordinary happened.