Please Hold, We’re Experiencing a Full Moon

No, this isn’t a post about werewolves—though if you’ve ever worked emergency services during a full moon, you’ve probably heard the joke more than once. Usually followed by a long sigh and someone checking the call queue.

The idea that people lose their self-control under a full moon sounds like superstition. Something we should have outgrown by now. But ask anyone who’s spent enough time in dispatch, EMS, or law enforcement, and you’ll get the same answer, delivered with varying levels of sarcasm:

Yeah. It’s a thing.

Something about a full moon seems to turn the volume knob up a notch. Calls come in faster. Tempers are shorter. Judgment gets… ambitious. Fights, domestic disturbances, strange accidents, petty crimes that make you stop and ask, “What was the end goal here?”

It’s not that the moon makes people do anything. It just seems to amplify what’s already in play—stress, alcohol, bad ideas that probably should’ve stayed ideas. When you’re working the radio, you can feel it building before the numbers really spike. The night has a rhythm to it, and on full moon nights, it’s rarely a calm one.

Some of the busiest shifts I ever worked lined up neatly with a bright moon hanging over the city. Not every time, of course—but often enough that you stopped arguing about it. From the outside it probably looks like coincidence. From the chair, it starts to feel like pattern recognition.

One call from early in my dispatch career has stuck with me.

It was a full moon, and I took a 911 call from a man who’d been shot during a home invasion. He was in a remote area, far enough out that deputies were going to need time to get there. My job, for the next ten minutes, was to keep him calm and talking while help was on the way.

So we did what dispatchers do. We talked. I gave instructions. I listened to his breathing and kept my own voice steady. Not because I thought the perfect wording would save the day—but because panic definitely wouldn’t help.

When the first units finally arrived on scene, the relief was immediate. I don’t remember the exact words exchanged after that, but I remember the feeling of finally letting my shoulders drop.

It wasn’t a dramatic moment. No big lesson revealed itself under the moonlight. Just a reminder that sometimes your role is to hold things together long enough for someone else to take over.

Emergency services has a way of teaching you patterns most people don’t ever have to think about. Not because they’re secret, but because they’re easy to dismiss when you only encounter them once in a while. When you live inside those moments day after day, coincidence starts to look a lot like consistency.

So when people joke about full moons now, I don’t argue. I just nod and keep working.

And if you know a dispatcher, a medic, a firefighter, or a cop, maybe check on them the next time the moon is full. It’s a nice thing to look at.

But it’s also a pretty good sign that the night might be louder than usual—and someone still has to answer the phone.