Seeing the Number 444 Everywhere? What it Might Mean

Near the beginning of 2001, when my husband (then-fiancé) and I were preparing for our upcoming summer wedding, something bizarre happened. Something so odd you might shake your head and call BS. Or you might cast your doubt aside and accept what I’m about to tell you as the truth. It doesn’t matter whether you believe me or not. I can only tell you the story and let you decide for yourself.

It all started in the wee hours of a chilly January morning.

That’s when I woke up from a deep slumber to see the time 4:44 displayed on my digital clock next to our bed. I didn’t think too much of it at the time, but when I rolled over to see my husband’s eyes flutter open, I felt the need to tell him about it. “Okay, great. Go to sleep,” he replied.

When the same thing happened again the next night, I got the heebie-jeebies.

I gotta say, waking up to the same glowing numbers two nights in a row is…well, unsettling. I glanced over my shoulder at my groggy husband and whispered urgently, “It’s 4:44,” as if it were some kind of top-level government secret. “Hmm. Cool,” he answered, then promptly fell back asleep. 

In the moonlit hours of the third morning, my back was to the clock when my eyes sprang open. This time, my husband was already awake, pre-emptively removing my need to wake him up. “Do I dare look?” I said. “You will anyway,” he replied. Sure enough, when I flipped over, the same three ominous numbers greeted me.

“Oooh, creepy,” he teased. How could he be so indifferent? So calm?

By the fourth night, I was terrified to fall asleep but managed to drift off sometime around midnight. Much to my relief, we both slept until the alarm woke us at seven o’clock the next morning. Just like that, it seemed our 4:44 “haunting” was over. I can’t even describe my relief.

A few nights later, we were both sleeping peacefully when the clock ticked over to 4:44. This time, though, we didn’t wake up spontaneously. Instead, we were jolted awake by our phone ringing. It was a wrong number—a taxi company calling to say our ride had arrived. The thing was…we hadn’t ordered a taxi.

I warned you the story would be hard to believe.

I barely believed it myself when it was happening. Fortunately, our sleep pattern returned to normal, and apart from bringing the story up at parties over the years, we didn’t give it much thought afterward. That being said, I do still wake up at 4:44 in the morning, but fortunately, it’s sporadic now rather than serial. And when it happens, it’s more comforting than frightening, in part because I’ve learned some things in the meantime.

I don’t believe in ghosts or astrology or tarot cards, but I will admit to a longstanding belief in signs from the universe.

Which is why I can’t dismiss these recurring numbers as coincidence. Here’s another reason why…

In 2018, my mother was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer and died within a few weeks. I was devastated, naturally, from having the rug ripped out from under me. But immediately afterward, I started to notice the number 444 flying around everywhere: addresses, phone numbers, game scores, my mom’s last cell phone bill…everywhere. Clocks were the biggest culprit. It seemed every time I picked up my phone, 4:44 would be staring me in the face. I even started a folder to keep screenshots and photos of all the incidences. After a while, the frequency tapered off to a point where I wasn’t adding photos anymore and I thought, “Well, that’s that.”

But that wasn’t that.

As if my mother’s death wasn’t enough to topple my whole world, my father died the following summer. And you guessed it: 444 began appearing again, in all the usual places, right down to the amount owing on his last medication invoice. At that point, I couldn’t ignore the phenomenon any longer and decided to get to the bottom of its meaning.

The first hit on my Google search showed 444 as being an “angel number,” a concept that actually made me laugh at first. It was a hard pill to swallow, even for me, a person who doesn’t ignore when the universe is trying to get her attention.

Just yesterday, for instance, I woke up thinking about Cuddle + Kind.

It’s a company that sells ethically produced hand-knit dolls by women artisans in Peru, and for every doll sold, they provide ten meals to hungry children in the US, Canada, and around the world. Humanitarian angle aside, the dolls are freaking adorable, and I’ve bought quite a few of them for the young kidlets in my life. Anyway, I got to thinking that I’d received lots of marketing emails from them over the past two years, some offering deals and others offering free shipping. But I’d never received an email spotlighting the artisans who knit these dolls, nor had I seen a story about the children who benefit from the meals. This led me to think I’m going to write to the company and see if they’ll consider including this information in one of their future emails.

When I opened my inbox moments later, I found a message from Cuddle + Kind. And—no surprise here—their newsletter featured stories on both subjects.

I’m willing to bet this has happened to you, too, in some capacity. Does it ever give you pause to wonder about things you can neither see nor explain? Or do you tend to ascribe it to simple coincidence?

The concepts I kept stumbling across in my quest to learn more was that seeing the number 444 has foundations in spiritual awakening, big change, and the reassurance that the universe is protecting you. It can also mean you’re on the right path in your life and that you should trust your plan and stick to it unwaveringly, which would have been helpful to a stressed-out bride who was waking up at 4:44 every morning. Was it a sign I was on the right marital path? I like to think so. My husband and I will be celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary this year.

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Fun Fact: Musical artist Jay-Z and his wife, Beyoncé, have a strong connection to the number 444.

During my research, I stumbled upon some surprising facts about this famous couple’s relationship with the number 444. Their most dedicated fans will already know that Jay-Z named his thirteenth album 4:44 and that it’s the name of one of the title tracks (which, as you might have already predicted, runs four minutes and forty-four seconds long). Beyoncé’s fourth album is called 4, and the couple was married on April 4. Want to take a stab at their birthdays? Jay-Z’s is December 4, and Beyoncé’s is September 4. They named their first child Blue Ivy. Look closely at that. Blue has four letters, and Ivy sounds like IV…as in the Roman numeral 4. Is your mind blown yet? Mine is!

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But one meaning resonated with me above all others.

It was the idea that seeing 444 repeatedly after a loved one’s death is a sign from beyond. Indeed, I can’t deny—not even if I wanted to—that the number was showing up regularly after my mom’s passing and then again after my dad’s. It popped up so many times that I was compelled to keep a record of the occurrences. I’m glad I didn’t know about the spiritual aspect until afterward, though, because then I might have been on the lookout for it. Willing it to appear. Forcing it into existence. Or maybe these things can’t be forced.

The thing is, after those four strange nights twenty years ago, I knew 444 would play an important role in my life—so much so that in order to pay homage to it, I incorporated it into my first novel, TimeBlink. If you’ve read the book, you’ll know that rather than shoving it out to center stage, I gave it a quieter, stealthier role. An understudy. It’s there, but only if you peek in the wings.

This time, for my second book in the series, I decided to give that sucker a coat of paint and slap it on the front cover where it can’t be missed. TimeBlink: Flight 444, a time-travel suspense novel, will be out early next year.

So…what’s your angel number? Do you pay attention to messages from the universe? I’d love to hear your story. Comment below or send me an email.

Incidentally…after writing this post, I wasn’t the least bit shocked to notice my word count was 1444.