Christian Influencers Are Throwing Their Hatch Clocks in the Trash (2025)

Few sunrise alarm clocks have reached the level of popularity set by Hatch, the combination light and sound machine designed to help support natural circadian rhythms. Which is why I was surprised to notice it trending on TikTok, not for its gentle sunrise light feature or recently released Hatch+ programming—but for being a symbol of the occult.

The problem began, innocently enough, with an anti blue light promotional campaign, released by Hatch on October 13 and titled “Goodnight, Phone.” It consists of a one-minute, 30-second Hollywood-esque trailer starring actress Kiernan Shipka, who delivers a convincing scream-queen performance with the theme that blue light exposure after your bedtime can lead to nightmarish sleep. The trailer is, admittedly, a bit PG-13—Shipka pulls a long, bloody phone cord out of her mouth, and is attacked by a zombie version of herself in bed.

“It’s Time to Sleep”

With a Hatch device and a subscription to Hatch+, users are able to change their alarm sounds, from white noise and ocean waves to the “hoa hoa hoa” introduction from the vampire classic Twilight, and Hatch+ is also promoting its library of Halloween-themed bedtime stories, like a narration of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”

For some, the creepy trailer and vampire-themed Hatch+ programming were a bridge too far, and by October 24, according to Hatch, the brand found itself trending on “DemonTok,” the TikTok hashtag for discussions of monsters, demons, and related subjects.

As “Hatch demonic ad” and “Is the Hatch alarm clock demonic?” quickly became top search terms, several users posted videos of themselves throwing their devices into the trash in protest, including TikTok Christian influencer Charity, who goes by the username “CharityIsMe.”

In an over seven minute anti-Hatch video Charity posted, “Hatch Sound Machine and their demonic ties,” she includes a screen recording of another seasonal Hatch promo, the now-deleted “Fallelujah,” depicting a woman getting ready for bed. The Twilight “hoa hoa hoa” alarm sound appears to turn the Hatch device red, while a narrator intones, “It’s here—the season where we dabble in the dark arts. Set the right light vibes. Dress like a small Victorian child for bed. And regulate our circadian rhythm with restorative phone-free sleep. Fallelujah. It’s time to sleep.”

I asked fellow WIRED reviewer Nena Farrell, who tests sunrise alarm clocks, to try the Twilight programming on her Restore 3 to see whether the red hue appeared. It didn’t—turns out the red is the “date night” setting, which you have to go out of your way to select. But it didn’t matter—people use Hatch alarm clocks for their kids, many social media comments pointed out, for whom this kind of programming was both terrifying and inappropriate.

One viral TikTok post was captioned, “My husband said we will anoint our sound machines in the name of Jesus! Hatch for Sleep [Hatch’s social media username], you have some explaining to do.” Another post states, “When you realize the past couple months you and your husband kept saying you heard things at night, you weren’t crazy its [sic] just your evil hatch machine.”

Another post even goes so far as to say in its caption, “I will not support Hatch for Sleep, who is OPENLY BLASPHEMOUS. It’s not just about the creepy ad… it’s the blatant DISRESPECT & evil against the KING OF KINGS. I will be turning these machines into dust so that can’t be used by anyone else.”

Treasure to Trash and Back Again

According to Erin Merani, Hatch’s vice president of marketing, this series of events was not, in fact, a planned marketing stunt, and Hatch is still figuring out the ramifications of the demon discourse. While Merani is glad the ads and programming “caught people’s attention,” she wants to clarify they were all meant for fun, and she’s heartened by how many users have rushed in to defend Hatch.

“We saw a lot of community jumping into the comments and saying, ‘Wait a minute, we missed the plot here!'” she says. “This is a Halloween-themed ad about their adult—not baby—product actually being the thing that will save you from the real evil: your phone. Your phone is actually keeping you up at night.’” To be clear, Hatch makes two devices, one specifically for kids and the other for adults. Any pop culture references, like Twilight, are exclusive to adults only via Hatch’s Restore 2 and 3 devices—they can’t be accessed on the Hatch Baby.

Then, a new trending topic arose about 48 hours later: “If you’re going to throw your Hatch device away, send it to me.”

Hatch took it and ran with it. “We used the cues of the community and sort of rode that wave with this idea of, ‘Hey, we know this is happening, and we wanted to address this while also pointing at having a little bit of fun with it,” Merani says.

Enter Hatch’s new “RePossession Program.” “We saw this overwhelming outreach of people who wanted to be ‘repossessed,'” Merani says, “so we were able to point people to our refurbishment program, to be able to keep those devices out of landfills and send ‘repossessed’ units out.”

So far, Hatch has had more than 10,000 related social media inquiries about receiving “repossessed Hatch devices,” and only 10 requests to send Hatch devices back to the company.

Ultimately, if you have a Hatch device and would like to send it back, you can contact customer service to arrange a return. On the other hand, you can now purchase refurbished machines (from the repossessed campaign and otherwise) here. No matter what side of the conversation you find yourself on, we can all agree on one thing: sleep is important, and you should definitely spend less time on your phone.