EP 7: The Night Hag: Folklore, Fear, and Sleep Paralysis
Wondering Monsters Podcast |
Wondering Monsters Podcast continues its journey through global folklore, supernatural legends, and cultural monsters with Episode 7, The Hag.
This episode dives deep into one of the most haunting figures found across multiple cultures: the Night Hag. Known for terrifying sleepers, sitting on their chest, and causing feelings of paralysis, the hag bridges folklore, psychology, and lived experience. The hosts unravel her many faces, mythical being, sleep demon, and a reflection of human fears that have persisted for centuries.
Creepy Beginnings: Setting the Stage
The episode opens with the hosts reflecting on the idea of creepy things creeping around in a creepy world.
They point out that while we may imagine the modern age as more technologically advanced and less fearful, in reality, the strange and unsettling still thrive. Just as the internet birthed creepypasta urban legends, older societies had their own bedtime terrors.
The Night Hag belongs to that ancient tradition. Where the modern digital world has Slender Man and other internet horrors, folklore gave us beings like the Boogeyman, the Pisadeira in Brazil, and, of course, the hag that presses on the chests of sleepers.
What Is a Night Hag?
In European folklore, the Night Hag is a sinister old woman who attacks people in their sleep. Victims describe waking in the middle of the night unable to move, often with the sensation of a heavy weight on their chest. Many experience terrifying hallucinations, dark figures, glowing eyes, whispers, or the hag herself crouched upon them.
This phenomenon is not merely a story, it closely matches what modern science calls sleep paralysis. Sleep paralysis occurs when the body remains paralyzed in REM sleep while the brain becomes aware. The sense of dread, the inability to move, and the shadowy hallucinations are well-documented. Yet for centuries, without medical explanation, people turned to folklore to make sense of the terrifying experience.
Global Variations of the Hag
One of the most fascinating parts of this episode is how the hag is not bound to a single culture. Instead, she emerges in legends around the world:
- Scandinavia: Known as the “Mare,” from which the word “nightmare” derives.
- Newfoundland: Tales of the “Old Hag” are widespread, with victims describing the exact same sleep-choking encounters.
- Brazil: The Pisadeira, a thin old woman with long nails, waits on rooftops to press down on those who fall asleep after overeating.
- Japan: Linked to kanashibari, the sense of being bound by invisible forces while sleeping.
- Africa and the Caribbean: Stories involve witches, spirits, or demons attacking the sleeper at night, echoing the same chest-pressure motif.
The hosts highlight how universal this experience is, suggesting a shared human struggle to understand sleep paralysis. Folklore gave names and shapes to an otherwise invisible neurological glitch.
Science Meets Folklore: Sleep Paralysis
Modern science frames the hag through sleep paralysis research:
- Neurological explanation: During REM sleep, the body enters atonia (muscle paralysis). Occasionally, the brain wakes while the body remains frozen.
- Psychological impact: The fear response produces vivid hallucinations. These align with cultural expectations … hags in Europe, Pisadeira in Brazil, shadow men in North America.
- Cultural interpretation: People in the past didn’t have medical knowledge, so they relied on myth to explain the terror.
The overlap between neurology and folklore is one of the most compelling themes of this episode.
The Feminine Archetype: Why a Hag?
A recurring question is: why is the being so often imagined as an old woman? Folklore often demonizes elderly women, casting them as witches, crones, or hags. The Night Hag archetype blends fear of aging, misogyny, and anxieties about vulnerability in sleep.
In some traditions, the hag also has connections to sexuality, appearing in the bedrooms of men, pressing upon them, or stealing their breath. This ties her to a long tradition of succubus myths and the fear of uncontrolled desire.
Personal Stories and Creepy Accounts
The hosts share chilling firsthand accounts of hag encounters, drawing from folklore archives and listener submissions. Many describe:
- Waking up pinned to the bed
- A suffocating weight on their chest
- The appearance of a woman with wild hair, sharp features, or glowing eyes
- The inability to scream or move
- A lingering sense of dread after waking fully
These stories emphasize how real the hag feels to those who suffer from sleep paralysis.
Pop Culture and the Hag Today
The Night Hag has entered pop culture, appearing in horror films, television shows, and internet forums where people share their experiences. Like the Slender Man of creepypasta fame, the hag continues to evolve with the times, showing how folklore is never truly static.
Why We Still Believe in the Hag
The hosts conclude by asking why the hag remains so powerful today. Even with scientific understanding, the visceral terror of waking paralyzed in the night is enough to convince many that something supernatural lurks in the dark. As they argue: monsters like the hag persist because they embody universal fears: vulnerability, loss of control, fear of death, and the terror of the night.
Final Thoughts
Episode 7 of the Wondering Monsters Podcast delivers a fascinating blend of folklore, history, science, and storytelling. The exploration of the Night Hag reveals how one terrifying experience, waking paralyzed in the night, gave rise to legends across the world. From the Pisadeira of Brazil to the Old Hag of Newfoundland, from Fuseli’s artwork to modern horror films, the hag remains one of the most enduring monsters in our shared imagination.
Whether you see her as a witch, a demon, or the byproduct of sleep paralysis, the Night Hag continues to crawl into our collective nightmares, reminding us that sometimes, the scariest monsters are born in our own minds.
Links from the Show
Watch & Listen to the Full Episode
Enjoy where the conversations of silly meet strange at the Wondering Monsters Podcast.
Watch on YouTube Watch on Spotify Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Other Platforms
Licensing Information
- Title: Entry of the Gladiators
- Composer: Julius Fučík
- Library of Congress (Public Domain)
- Podcast theme song version edited/arranged/mixed by Dan Swift
Unless indicated, images appear in their original form.
The following images were generated using AI from MyNinja.ai, NightCafe, or ChatGPT
old hag, airships, archaeologist and fist, Baba Yagas house, banshee, Bloody Mary, boo hag, boogeyman, large butterfly, cartoon alien, cartoon old man, devil, dragon, dreams, float tank, golden apple, hag ready to strangle, hag sitting, haint, hand with apple, hatman, helicopter test, medusa, mothman, old woman, ouija board, pisadeira, sleepwalker, slenderman, cookie, train station, valuable land, vampire ready to attack, witch hunt
Transcription
*Transcription was automatically generated and may contain errors. (Upbeat Music)
Baba: Creepy, creepy things creeping around in our increasingly creepy world. The world's supposed to get less creepy. It's a little more creepy.
Danny C: You think it's gonna get more technologically advanced, less creepiness, but I don't know.
Baba: Yeah, I don't know about it either. In fact, if you think about the notion of the, the creepy pasta, we had a cat that has passed on and one of her nicknames was Noodle. And she used to creep around when she was looking for food, learning her name, the creepy pasta. But creepy pastas are specifically urban legends that originate and deal with the internet. And so, so yes, technology has found its own little thing, but then there's like the old school, you know, the tried and true, I mean, we've talked the boogeyman, you know, but then there's the night hag. And there seems to be the notion of like these night things that come around when kids are sleeping and everyone else is sleeping, presumably, but the night hag and the, there's the slender man talking about creepy pastas. There's the hat man and the night hag. A lot of these are associated with sleep paralysis, but it's kind of like the thing of like, well, does sleep paralysis allow you to experience it? Do they cause the sleep paralysis? Cause there are creepy things that can do that kind of thing. There's, there are tales of this all around the world, all around the world. And remarkably, a lot of them go back to creepy old women, long nailed women that sit on your chest or strangle you or things like that. The story basically goes like this. You've got a person is awakening. Oftentimes for whatever reason, there's this mythical time of 3 a.m. that is associated with this stuff. And they wake up and find themselves unable to move. And there's something in their visual field, a figure. And oftentimes what happens is the figure creeps slowly towards them until it's finally on top of them. And there's a sense of something holding them down, strangling them, otherwise impeding their breath or a weight on the chest. And so if you go back to medieval times, you've got earlier versions of this, the succubus, which is the seductive, okay, so you’ve got the incubus and the succubus. The incubus is like the boy version that kills women. And then the succubus is the girl version that kills, I say boys and girls, because I'm like 12, you know. It's the girl version that kills boys, you know. And specifically, okay, it's like a seductive spirit. It's sometimes associated with a, I mean, I don't know if I should go and call this a demon or not. Lilith, the idea of Lilith, who's this very muddy kind of figure that emerges
MM: from- Mesopotamian and Sumerian, et cetera.
Baba: Yeah, like it's a Mesopotamian, Sumerian, Babylonian, because of course all that smears together too, because of how all the cultural stuff bleeds into the other stuff. It seems to at one point be described as Lilith in the Midrash rabbinical writings that are outside of the actual scripture, but rabbinical writings that have to end. The idea of this was an explanation for why there are two creation stories, one of which includes Eve proper, and the other one doesn't really, like it just says, God created man and woman and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then there's this other story that comes after it that sort of starts again. And it's like, well, why were there two? And one of the explanations from the Midrash is the first wife was disobedient to Adam, and so had to be cast out and she became the mother of demons. Well, okay, and so you've got this figure in Sumerian, Babylonian, Mesopotamian culture. There's some archeology person out there that's shaking their fist at me right now, like, how do you smear all those together? Because I'm uneducated. So this idea though, maybe the succubus moving forward in time here is Lilith seducing the good Christian men out there with her sexual ways. And well, and so it's easy to imagine how this all gets balled up into the witch hunts, the quest for witches and for their valuable land and freeing society from old women with land and men, the witch hunts were not entirely a woman phenomenon. It was largely that. It was largely around the idea of the witch, the popular idea of the witch is the woman who has become a consort of the devil and gets powers from the devil and therefore works for the devil in the world and so on and so forth, often by seducing otherwise good Christian men,
Baba: those evil witches, leading them astray. They wouldn't have been led astray otherwise if it weren't for witches. And so you've got this idea that balls up largely into also Irish culture and hops across the Atlantic to Newfoundland in Canada where we find some cool night hag stories. But now Newfoundland is very Irish, very Irish. It has been described as the second most Irish place outside of Ireland, that there's just a ton of Irish, a ton of Irish settlers there and this story of the night hag, which is still very popular in Newfoundland. But this pops up all over the place and it's often an old woman. So you've got in, I grabbed a couple of them from around the ways. We've got in Brazil, there's a hag type woman known as the Pisadeira or she who steps and she waits on rooftops for somebody that has gone to bed with a full belly and she'll get them and kill them and presumably eat them because they have something good in their belly. There is a figure in the Philippines known as the Batty Bat. Now the Batty Bat from what I understand is actually not usually a skinny, scary old woman. She's a fat, scary old woman, a well-fed, scary old woman that lives in trees. And if you fell that tree and make a house out of that tree, whatever post was made from that tree, the person that sleeps close to it could be gotten that by the Batty Bat who, similar M.O., you know? Crush the life right out of you. (Laughing) And yeah, so winding back because I just can’t go in a straight line apparently, all the way back to around the time of the succubus, we've also got this notion of the nightmare, which is literally a horse. That's why we get the name nightmare. It's a horse that I believe, I'm not sure if that also had the crushing power or if it would just, you know, we don't need to talk about scary horse stories. You and I could talk about some horse stories, M.M., but it's nearly crushing the crushing life out of us, but we’ll keep those for future tales. But yeah, so here we go. I mean, that is the foundational tales of the night hag. And then what the heck is it? Is it just sleep paralysis? Is it a thing? What are these things?
MM: My familiarity with this only really comes out of like fairy tale type stuff, right? You know, it's usually like the, like obviously like the Grimm's fairy tale, like the old woman who wants to eat kids and has in the woods, right? And then like, we're like Snow White. I specifically think of like Snow White, the cartoon, you know, the evil witch who turns herself into an old woman to like trick Snow White, you know, into whatever, eating the apple. I think there's more in the actual fairy tale that she tries a couple of times and then it's finally the apple thing that gets her, you know, in the end. But I can't recall what it was. But they probably made better choices for editing because the apple thing really works out. And plus, you know, I guess again, the apple has that kind of a tricking. Adaminy kind of thing. Adaminy, like I was thinking also like, you know, starting the Trojan War, you know, kind of thing like giving that the-- Golden apple. And then there's like the other parts that were like role-playing games, like pang creatures are often in there. And then that's evolved into various forms, not just like the typical woods one, but there's like the sewer ones that are almost like, look come through, you know, like that kind of, you know, it's like the various like, but they're always kind of that kind of thing. But yeah, it's a, but it does seem like that's, that's most of my from my already. I wasn't really, I didn't really know that much about the whole, they were like supposed to be like, get you in your sleep. I was thinking more, they just like lived in the woods and ate children or they were, or they were, which is kind of thing.
Baba: Yeah, it's cool. South Carolina, there's a notion of the hag, which seems to be conflated in some ways with an entity known as the boo hag, which probably came from a blend of African folklore with other present folklores. And there's this interesting thing in the Carolinas and in Appalachia in general, this concept of the hint and it, there's specifically a type of blue, paint blue. And it's used to paint the underside of porches in largely in the Carolinas, in Appalachia. And the idea is that it is the color of the blue sky and that Haints don't realize that it's not the sky and they just keep going. They just keep going past. They don't hang out on your place kind of thing. (Laughs) But yes, you've got these weird conflation kinds of things. I'll tell you what, when I was looking up stuff on night hags, there are all kinds of weird nighttime games slash rituals for dealing with spirits, kind of getting them to come around, you know, and I want slumber parties or whatever, but it’s not just slumber parties. So there's some really, I mean, this might be a topic for a whole show about night games for summoning spirits. There's such good stuff out there. Some of them were just like, they're just really creepy weird. And I just think to myself, okay, go back to like the idea of like wandering around liminal spaces. Like there's this elevator game. I won't dwell, you know, I'm the king of the freaking unrelated tangent. (Laughs) Increasingly unrelated tangent. There's an elevator game that you go to certain floors in a certain area and if certain people get on, you're not to acknowledge or talk to them. And if it goes to a certain floor before this happens, leave and don't use that building again. But otherwise weird kinds of stuff of going to weird places and things that take you elsewhere. It's just, it's really kind of odd stuff. I apologize. I don't know why I went down that. (Laughs) I'd love to do it. (Laughs)
MM: Whether this is hags in elevators. Oh yeah. It seems like a modern weird version of this.
Baba: I found a thing for if you want to see the hag, if you want to summon the hag, do these things. One of the things is typical, this is involved with witchcraft as well. Saying the Lord's Prayer backwards, right? And we've all heard this. I used to have nightmares about this, it happens. Catholic stuff gives you problems. (Laughs) I'm the poster child for it.
Danny C: And being raised Catholic, we can say that.
Baba: Yeah, that's right. Nothing against Catholics that made it through unscathed.
MM: I will stand aside.
Baba: Yeah, you're the, you don't get to talk about this. I used to have dreams where I was accidentally saying the Lord's Prayer backwards and couldn't get away from it. Here I'm gonna summon the devil, goes back to the Bloody Mary thing. See, it wasn't just Catholicism, it had help. So yet, apparently there are people out there that are interested in seeing the hag. I don't want to cut to the chase on my feelings on this. So I won't, I'll wait till later to let you know. (Laughs)
Danny C: One thing I will say, I think it's interesting that, no, granted, I haven't done a whole, whole lot of research on the topic, but I find it interesting that people see the same general things. And people might just say, well, that’s like, because we all have like, we're all humans, so like our human brain, it's all like fundamentally the same. But I think it's interesting that it's like, you have the hag and variations of the hag. You have the hat man, you have shadow people. It's like these same few things. It's not like a, no one's seeing dragons from what I understand. You know, no one's seeing giant butterflies.
Baba: Yo, yo, yo, but hold on though. You mentioned a dragon, okay. We'll have to talk about the Jersey Devil eventually. Okay, yeah, yeah. And Mothman, is that a giant butterfly? It's Moths and butterflies, you know. Not that he really looks like a-- Mothra, oh man.
Danny C: But you're not seeing them as part of the awakening process, as part of like, if you have sleep paralysis, or if you're in the process of going to sleep or whatever. No one's, as far as I know, no one's seeing those things. It's all like very similar. You know, you get like that, it's this bucket of hag, this bucket of hat man, and this bucket of shadow people. And I think that's generally it. You might see, maybe a ghost or like people might say that or something, but I feel like you don't get a lot of variation when it comes to that aspect. And I find it very interesting.
Baba: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I agree, because it's like, okay, so the idea of, it's just sleep paralysis, right? And therefore, and it's kind of like, you know, like your alarm clock goes off and like, it's something else going on in the dream. It's trying to keep you in the dream, which is its own curious thing. Why would the brain want to keep you in a dream if there’s a weird noise going on in your environment? Dreams are their own little world. Why though, okay, so your brain might, okay, go back to the materials. So yeah, yeah, you were sleeping on your back. So you had more pressure on your chest and therefore it made up a story. Something's on your chest. Maybe there's a primal memory of, I don't know, how would you hold onto a primal memory of a predator on your chest? You're probably not making through that in the, you know, but like this kind of idea, well, maybe it's just your brain making up a story of what that pressure could be, but really it's just the weight of gravity on your chest because you were sleeping on your back and you've got this sleep paralysis because you didn't, okay, fine. Why do all of the, okay, I can't say all because the world is a big place. Why do so many of these stories have a humanoid figure that seems to be the enemy and there’s another weird factor to it. Just give me goosebumps, just say it. The thing seems to take delight in the fact that the person is scared. Like there seems to be something about it. There's this idea whether perpetuated from, because this is largely like Western English speaking accounts of this aspect that I found is this idea of it takes delight. Well, there's a story that kind of perpetuates in our, in the, I'm just gonna say in American culture that they feed off of the energy of your fear, which is like a very like kind of contemporary idea, like that there's this invisible energy out there that invisible energy is not a new idea, right? Okay, this is a very, very old idea, but the idea that these things feed off of your fear, like a vampiric kind of vampiric kind of thing and therefore it delights in you being scared because it gives it power or energy or something like that. Although that does seem to be in the accounts. Is it there because it's part of our common story? Is it part of our common story because it's part of that, you know, of the accounts?
MM: I was gonna say like, maybe there's something like, cause like you were talking just like going back to like, well, it's funny cause like I was thinking like, you were talking about like Lilith and stuff like that. "Isn't it in ""Vampire"", ""The Masquerade"", the game, right?" That it's like Lilith, it's supposed to be like the first vampire or something like that. Yeah. It's that kind of lore. I don't know where that stems from. I'm sure they pulled it from some other book or something because they don't feel like that's an original idea to that kind of thing. But then I was thinking about like the original concept of like the vampiric, like if you're looking at the vampiric, like they're both like, they show up usually when you're kind of asleep, they get you, right? Like vampire literally sucks your blood, right? Like it's like, well, like you're saying, it's like, is that, or is that just like the kind of, like a metaphorical thing for that to kind of, you know, taking your whatever life force or something away. They're doing something to you, right? To like, to, you know, steal something, right? "But isn't that kind of like, but like the modern version of sleep paralysis is like jumping away from" like, you know, this might be jumping too much from like the weird, the hag mythology and stuff like that. The alien abduction, right? That's what they, and that's what they do too. They come over, you while you're sleeping, you're in Sleep paralysis, they're a weird kind of shadowy figure with strange eyes. They do something and they're always there to like, like that take something from you, whether they're probing you or doing stuff or like things like that, you know, it's like, like you can't sleep and you're surrounded by people or doing something to, you know, but it's like, but it's kind of like another variant of that kind of thing.
Baba: Dome things in golden and golden axe.
MM: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you just have to kick them and then they, they throw you off. Drop all your cash.
Baba: But yeah, the alien thing though, yeah, I mean, that's straight on. And I mean, witches and aliens both come from the sky. You know, we're gonna have to do a thing on witches eventually, because witches aren't just women practicing magic or men practicing magic. They're monsters, they're things that have been living here. I mean, they're all kinds of variations on what a witch is from a corrupted human all the way just to some otherworldly beast thing, you know. And of course, what do we call a witch? Cause like, well, if I see something, Alibaba, Alibaba in Japanese culture, is it a witch? Uh, uh, uh, but, well, we have to agree on a definition then, right? We have to come up with some terms of what delineates it and things like that. Right, see, it's like, like Baba Yaga, like- Baba Yaga, she's kind of a cannibal witch.
MM: But isn't she also sometimes helpful? Like she's, she's like helps, like she, or she tests people or something like that? Yeah, I feel like there are- She's kind of like a weird, like, like a, I think I remember something from that, it's like, where it's like somewhere in the hero’s journey, like she, it's like, she helps, you know, there's variations of her that help, you know.
Baba: I feel like there are, yeah, if you've been at her games, a lot of times you have this thing, I'm going back to the night games again, that if you win at their games, you get something, but if you lose, you'll lose big time. And so it's, so, and you know, with Baba Yaga, you’ve got, you've got a similar thing there. And it's, she's similar to the Hansel and Gretel witch,
MM: you know that- Yeah, she has a magical house, that has chicken legs and can walk around.
Baba: Yeah, yeah, she flies around in a, in a basket or a mortar and pestle or what, you know, just floating around in the, and there you go, the herbalism and the weird kinds of association with people doing weird stuff, not in the city, you know. (Laughing) You know, it's interesting, if I was gonna go back unless you want to continue. No, no, no, if I continue, we’re not coming back to the hag.
MM: Yes, you gotta keep jumping back, keep it on track here guys.
Danny C: So Baba, one thing you said that was interesting, you talked about the idea of the hag feeding off of fear, to get the, getting the energy from fear. And then, you know, we talked about vampires to kind of segue back into that. And that made me think of this, you know, you have, you know, what are called energy vampires, where it's like, and I'm sure you guys have experienced this, I know I have experienced this on many occasions, where it's like, you might be in the room with someone and they just like suck the energy out of you. And like before, you know, you're just like, you're just completely drained, you know, to be redundant. So, and I wonder if it's almost like a very similar concept where it's like, they take that fear and they can, in theory, take that fear and it turns it into its own energy. I don't know, just made me think of that, I thought it was an interesting concept.
Baba: It reminds me actually of the conversation, you and I have had, "M.M., the, who has that series, ""Who Lives in the Darker""-- What we do"
MM: in the shadows has an energy vampire in there. It's like bored in the house. It's very boring and corporate guy, like yeah.
Baba: Yeah, we've got energy vampire corporations out there, they just kind of--
MM: They might be sitting on our chests in different ways. Yeah.
Danny C: And then you brought up, M.M., you brought up the aliens. And that's another bucket which I completely forgot about, so I'm glad you mentioned that. And I'd be very curious, I don't know if there's a way to find this, but I'd be very curious, like how far back does that go? Does that pre-date, you know, like the 1940s herein the States, does that pre-date the 1900s? It's like, where does that originate? Or is that, did that come about more as like pop culture, you know, where people started to talk about, like I saw like a three foot tall gray guy, you know, and then it became a thing, you know?
Baba: It's totally weird. I don't know. It's totally weird, because like before you have flying saucers, you've got airships, you've got like Tales of Magonia, and these ideas of this place up in the sky, Magonia and these people that live there, and airships, and people that come down in airships, that are like boats, like they’re not flying saucers. Why do they look like that? That definitely is not very aerodynamic looking, you know? But that blends in, I'm gonna stop myself, but it blends in with tales of the wild man, and people that are associated with coming down from the sky that are like, they look like they're out of time, like they're there and they're dirty, and they’ve got some weird musket that might not work, but they're in a weird time that that shouldn’t, no one should be carrying a musket, you know, like a more contemporary time. Weird tales of Magonia and stuff like that. But yeah, the tales of visitors from the sky, it's like, it's old in that way, but I'm not sure how many of them, going back to probably where you were going with it, how many of them show up in your bedroom at night and are up to something, yeah.
MM: Maybe it's just like, I don't know, I mean, it could just be something as simple as like, you know, we just, it isa little more nondescript, right? Like the thing that attacks you. And so some people conflate it with, you know, okay, the hag, like it's like, oh, well, it must be this evil creature thing. And then we make the stories about it, or some people conflate it with like, well, contemporary things like aliens, and some people conflate it with, you know, a shadow person of some sort, you know? And it's like, really what it is, it's just like, that’s just us throwing whatever iconography we have at the time on top of it, versus what it actually is, you know, and whatever fits our thing, you know, because like when alien stuff made into this, like guys, well, now the thing transforms into an alien. When it was fear of old people living out in the woods, you know, it was like, that's, well, we're scared of them, and they're the aliens of society, you know? It's like, you know, it's like-- Or it's the fairies. Yeah, fairies, I was gonna say, like something like fairies and things, or like, I mean, I guess like, you know, weird stuff, I mean, not quite the same, because it’s not, it doesn't have the same activity, but like something like the, like Banshee, they just show up, usually at night, usually, like they're usually important of some kind of doom or whatever, you know, but it's like, but that falls into the same kind of night creature that shows up, you know, or the, and I guess like, and it weird stuff, maybe it's a lesser degree, but like imps, you know, have a like element of that, like you were talking about the one that’s in the woods, imps are similar kind of thing, because they're like parts of trees, but then imps morph into like familiar, they're usually like, which is familiar, you know, it's like, they start out as these little wood tree creatures and then they become these kind of familiar, you know, but it's like, but they're also like, sneaking, you know, around and like doing things or, or, you know, be like, you know, it's like, so it has that kind of vibe, like maybe it's just like that, like there's like something, and we just keep reassigning the iconography to it every time we kind of move further along the timeline, you know, like, like it’s not any of those, any of those one things, it's, that's just how we're using to describe this weird thing, you know, that seems to keep happening to people.
Baba: There's a prolific writer on UFO stuff named Jacques Vallee, and he's got this kind of idea, which I will now misrepresent, and it goes something like this idea that basically what we’ve been dealing with this whole time has been the same thing, and it's this thing that is beyond our ability to perceive what it actually is yet, and that, yeah, that we just, we cloak it in the most appropriate symbols of the time, and it tends to take the shape we give it. Now, does it take the shape we give it because it knows what shape to take, or does it take the shape we give it because we don't know what the hell itis, and we put the best possible explanation from our consciousness to try to get it, and it's gonna show up like aliens or something like that, you know? But people still see other weird things too, so it's like, I wonder how, what makes a difference between whether it’s a hag or an alien, and is the difference which creature showed up or who it's happening to, or, and who knows, you know?
Danny C: Well, the interesting thing too, and I can't speak from personal experience, but just relaying stories that I've heard, so, you know, and I take the stance, you know, either the people are telling the truth, they're fabricating it, or they are telling the story which they believe is true, but was actually, they misinterpreted what was really going on. Right. Okay. So, you know, it's interesting, I've heard stories where people say that, like, Hat Man, for instance, you know, that's a very common icon associated with sleep paralysis, but I've heard stories where people say, like, no, they saw him, like, in a parking lot, and, you know, he was there under a light, should've been lit up, wasn't lit up, and then, like, you know, was there for a couple minutes, and then just poof, gone, you know? Or the same thing with, like, other shadow people, you know, where it's like, you see them, and then they're walking, and then all of a sudden, they're gone. Or the little greys, you know, that people see them when they're awake. So it's just fascinating that, you know, it's not specifically tied to sleep paralysis only, that there are these stories that these allegedly occur, you know, when people are fully awake as well, which kind of leads to what you're saying about, like, maybe these, if you wanted to believe all this, you know, that maybe these things are out there, and, you know, they show us what we wanna see, or whatever.
Baba: (Laughs) Yeah, or certain states of consciousness allow us to be able to perceive those things, like being in a state of, when you're waking up from sleep, it's known as hypnopompia. It's basically like hypnagogia, but it’s the other, you're coming out of it. It's much more common for people to experience the hag during hypnopompia than hypnagogia, hypnagogia, or however you say that. So what's the difference between those two again? Hypnagogia is when you're falling asleep and you’re between waking consciousness and REM sleep. You're somewhere in there, and that's the space where you experience what's often referred to as reverie, or hypnagogia hallucinations, which would sound like people talking in the room. Oftentimes they're very vivid. They don't lend themselves very well to control, unlike other dream elements. So it's actually a very interesting place to be in terms of consciousness, because you can't, if you're in a dream and you know you're having a dream, there’s some level of control you can often exert. When you're in hypnagogia or hypnopompia, it tends to be more resistant to that, which makes it really interesting that that's the place where these things tend to happen. And so there are attempts to get at this place in consciousness. Okay, so float tanks, sensory deprivation experiments, like the Gansfield experiments and things, which there are versions of these things you can do on YouTube and stuff like that, for experiencing these weird states of consciousness where you might be able to perceive things that you might not have been able to perceive otherwise. So skeptics will say, that's because that stuff wasn't there, or always was there, and you're just making it more significant than it was. And believers or people that aren't skeptics might say, well, hey, it's something you're perceiving because you've altered your ability to perceive what's out there. So are these hags and things always there, and we don't know them? And only when we're in certain states, are we susceptible to being able to interact with them? Or, you know, what's the relationship between this and, we talked about like Bloody Mary, or like a lot of these rituals that have to do with like, you stay up late at night and you do these things. Is it because your brain is wiggly and weird and doesn't work as well? Or is it because you get outside of the frames, the constraints of normal perception, and now you are free to perceive things free from those constraints?
Danny C: I'll tell you what, man, I told you guys this story before, but for the sake of the show, I'll say it again. I'll give it a very brief version of it. But there was that one time when I got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, And I was super, super tired. Normally, like I wake up and I'm like, I'm awake enough, like navigating whatever. And I saw a shadow person, run into the entryway of the doorway. And when you're playing tag as a kid and you're maybe rounding a building, and as you round the building, you see the person that's it, and you quick try to stop and your kind of body does one of these, and that's exactly what happened with this shadow person. It entered the doorway, I saw it, presumably it saw me, like it does this, like momentum carries it forward, and then it darts back the other direction. And it was so cool, either regardless of whether it was real or not. That's moot, okay, that doesn't even matter. The experience was real. The experience was real, and it was awesome. And the physics behind it, how like it actually did. So if it was all in my head, the fact that I could create that, so, so cool. But, and I attributed to exactly what you just said, like this particular night, I got up to use the restroom, and I was like super tired. I don't know if it was like, maybe I was only asleep for an hour, so like getting up then I was groggy or whatever it was, just the part of the cycle I was in. But it was cool though, it was really cool. And I think there's something to be said about that, like when you're in a certain state, whether it's on your head or otherwise, regardless, I thought it was pretty cool.
Baba: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I have the opposite of sleep paralysis. I have, I'm a sleepwalker. And so like I don't, so the hag might be in for a surprise. (Laughing) Gotta get up and walk away.
Danny C: Get her! (Laughing) Yeah! Real quick, I've reminded a week of Weekend at Bernie's in the very beginning when the guy tries to mug one of the main characters, like, hey, get away from me, it's too hot! (Laughing)
Baba: Got me like that this week here. I've often wondered, can I utilize, so okay, so you got lucid dreaming, you got sleepwalking. Now, when I sleepwalk, I manage not to just like trip over things and face plant. So there's something in my system that is aware of the environment. And yet there's something in my system that is keeping the dream going to the point that I do things that don't make sense. You know? What would be the equivalent of lucid dreaming in that place? You know what I mean? Like lucid dreaming in my awake body. Do you sleepwalk?
MM: Well, yeah, I guess you'd still be tackling a sleep ...
Baba: What the heck kind of things can you summon then? Because you know what I mean? Can you call up things at that point? Because you're not in hypnopompia, I don't think. And so it's kind of like, I just kind of wonder.
MM: Do you find yourself when you're sleepwalking, because I don't know how common this is, but like, do you find yourself sometimes doing activities with like things, but in your dream, you thought they were like, you know, something else, like, I don't know, you thought you were like, making like a cup of tea or something, but in your dream, but in your actual thing, you were like just picking up a blanket and messing with it. Yes, 100%.
Baba: Like, like rooting underneath of the bunk bed for the test paper that was under the helicopter. That was a kid, that was a story when I was a kid. Two weeks ago. Damn it, where's that test? I gotta turn it in. So, yeah, but yeah, I will. In fact, I remember specifically, I came out one day, my old brother Pat was in the hallway, he had just come back from some night shift thing, and I was asleep, I had school the next day, he came out, I was totally asleep, he's trying to talk to me, I'm like not making much sense. He gives me one of those Girl Scout cookie things, a Thin Mint, and he hands it to me, I'm like looking at it, I don't know what the heck it is, and he's like, it's a cookie, look. And he eats it, and then he goes downstairs, he gets me milk, he thinks it's hilarious because he's feeding me cookies, and I'm like totally asleep. So I'm like out there, I'm like, okay, well, anyway, I'm gonna go back in here and whatever. I go back into the room, I lift up the page of the story book so I can get back into the book of the story that I'm in. So look, I was totally not with him the whole time, and yeah, I'm carrying on a conversation with people in waking consciousness. So it's like, I've often wondered about that, and is there an equivalent of things that happen to people who are sleepwalking, do they encounter things? I don't remember having had that experience, but.
MM: We should probably like cash that though, in case you do wanna talk about, what you kind of can't do in dreams, as opposed to entities trying to manipulate.
Baba: Yeah, yeah, no, exactly, dreams are their own little, they do several on those, probably will too. Okay, let's wrap it. Let's, so I'll just go first, since people are probably sick of hearing from me now, I'll wrap this up. Recognizable, yes, clearly very recognizable, both throughout history and throughout the world, and oftentimes winds up being an old woman. I'd be interested to see in societies that treasure old women, isn't an old woman.
MM: Yeah, maybe it's more like the alien type thing or something like that.
Baba: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, or yeah, like a beast type thing or whatever. In terms of, is it scary? Yeah, I think pretty much anything creeping around at night when you're half asleep is kind of scary. I'm not as scared of it because I don't experience the sleep paralysis thing, but as we said, it's not necessarily limited to that, some of these phenomena, although it's highly correlated. And then, do I want to encounter this? No, no, I don't think so. There are other things I, but because if I have to be in the, if I have to, no, you know, I don't wanna encounter it anyway. It does not seem like a nice thing. There are instances though of people summoning the night hag on other people.
MM: Well, that's just mean.
Baba: Yeah, and that's just a weird thing. I call it “getting hagged”. Yeah, so it's common enough.
MM: It sounds like a way to like, it sounds like some kind of weird slang for being drunk, like some kind of like, oh, you “got hagged” last night. Yeah. (Laughing) Yeah, so I will give this, what's the top monster count, five?
MM: Yeah.
Baba: Yeah, I feel like a lot of these wind up being four and a fraction.
MM: Don't be afraid until we get to the really scary things, the things that really keep you up at night.
Baba: I'm gonna give it a four, because before I researched it, I didn't really worry about very much. I scared myself with Bloody Mary the other night. I was turning off the lights and moving some curtains around and just had the thought. And I heard the voice in my head, who are you? Which is like from Clash of the Titans, but it scared the hell out of me. I was halfway across the apartment by the time I realized it. Like, I gotta go finish what I was doing. But yeah, so, yeah, four. I'll give it a solid four. Not as scary as Bloody Mary.
Danny C: I'll go next. I wish I remembered how I compared this to Bloody Mary, but I don't remember what I scored it. Recognition, I'm gonna give this a four. I think it's fairly recognizable. I think most people are familiar with the concept of a hag or something similar. Scary, I don't like this thing at all. The idea, so it's very interesting. When I'm awake, it's the middle of the day, or early in the day, like, you know, when I'm out of my bedroom. So now it's super early, not like two in the morning. I think it'd be a really cool experience for something like this. But then like when night falls, and I'm getting ready to fall asleep, it's like, nah, I don't want any part of it. The idea, essentially you bring up Clash of the Titans.
MM: The old ones, specifically.
Danny C: The old ones, obviously. Yeah, the original.
MM: Yeah, not the weird remake. Yeah. Yeah.
Danny C: So it's interesting that you bring up Clash of the Titans because I immediately think of the night hag having like a, minus the snakes, but like a very Medusa face, like very scaly, very like just awful teeth, and like just getting up in my face. Like that's kind of what I'm envisioning if I were to see this thing, and I want no parts of it. That sounds about right. So scary, yeah, terrified, no thank you. When it comes to real, I believe people are really experiencing something. Whether it's, you know, I don't think they're making it up. I don't think they're lying. I think they believe whatever it is, is real, whatever that is. But I'm inclined to think it's probably more likely to sleep paralysis and tied into that. But there's always a possibility. There's always a possibility because we live in a world, we don't know everything. So I'm kind of in between those two. And do I want to encounter it? That kind of goes with scary. I have zero interest in countering this thing. And on a scale of one to five monsters, I'm giving this a four. I think, oh, no thanks.
MM: Yeah, I'm very good at like, yeah, recognition. I'll probably agree with the guys. It's pretty recognizable. So it's like, you know, obviously lots of different cultures have this kind of thing. Scary factor. I'm going to couch this into like two bits right here. Like, so I'll say the first one, like the old woman iconography, the hag thing and all that stuff. I feel like that's just like, it's pretty old, that man misogynistic kind of trope. It's like probably both to our fear of, you know, whatever, like culturally, like fears of, you know, people on the fringes of society or independent women or like that kind of, you know, or just like getting old is this horrible thing. You know, it's like, you know, it's just like, to me that's not scary. And that's kind of like, and it feels a little like, you know, obviously passe or like, like dandy thing. Now they'll bring it into the shadow people kind of thing and like some kind of just general entity creeping on you in the night, whether it's a, you know, however your brain ends up interpreting, but like, let's just say, it's like just like general creepy being that you can't identify and you're just assigning whatever iconography comes to your head as scary. Like that's pretty kind of creepy, you know? So I'll say, so it's like, I think that kind of element is scary, you know, because obviously when you're asleep, you're vulnerable. Like you can't do things, like, you know, something getting at you in your sleep is something that is frightening, you know? It's like, like, because like, that's the time when you are literally most vulnerable, you know, it's like, you can't defend yourself, you can't do anything, you can't hide, you know? It's like, you're, you know, I think it's why we like have the idea of like hiding under your covers, because that's the only thing left to keep you safe, you know, it's like, as if that would help you, you know? And it's, and that kind of thing. So it's like, yeah, and so, yeah, and like, I think like sleep paralysis, I had to process a lot when I was a kid, a lot, less so as an adult, but still when it happens, it does kind of freak you out, but I guess it's also something I've kind of lived with for a long time, so it wasn't, so it's like, I assume it'll be okay, but at the time when it's happening, it doesn't feel okay. It's like, but after you wake up, you're kind of freaked out for a few minutes, and then you kind of like, you're like, okay, well, I guess everything's all right now. It's just like you kind of, it kind of becomes a thing, but yes, I don't think anyone, I wouldn't want anyone else to encounter it, so I'm gonna say, do I want to encounter it? No, even though I'll say like, at least in the street paralysis element, it's something that I have had experiences with. So, but yeah, scary factor. Yeah, like again, like the monsters, I'm just like, I'll probably give it like, if we're talking more specifically about something creepy, sneaking upon you at night and trying to get you, I'll give it a pretty much like a three, that's pretty, pretty of the median level of scary, you know, it's like, but yeah, it's overall and that's the, so that's where I'll stick that, yeah.
Baba: In the event that you have a night hag encounter, any of you listeners out there or any of either YouTube, one of the recommendations seems to be that as soon as you can move, she's gone. So, wiggling your fingers or toes seems to be enough and interestingly enough, wiggling the toes or fingers is one of the things I'll often have, people are emerging from hypnosis because it brings them back into the body, it allegedly activates the vagus nerve, which is a long nerve and it brings you, but brings you back into the body and the senses of the body. So, interestingly enough, when we were talking about states and things earlier, the same trick, quote unquote, I use to encourage people to emerge from the hypnotic state is the same trick that's being used to exit the hypo, hypnopompic, I can't even say that anymore, state, or this hag world place, hag world, there's
MM: a theme park for you. I was gonna say, as a, at least in my experience of sleep paralysis, you really can't move anything. Anything. It's like you can't even get your fingers to move or your arms to move or anything. I guess my thoughts are often the most common thing, it's like I was trying to move my arms before I wouldn't be moving anything else. I don't know why that would be, that usually seems to be the first body instinct that comes out of that, anyone else who has sleep paralysis that's listening, right, you didn't tell me why I'm wrong, I don't know. Pop it in the comments, give me your experience, I'm like, how do you deal with that? It's like, or do you find it less scary now that it's happened to you much more often? Because I don't, it's not something you've, I think it's either something you have or something you don't, it's like, you're just like, so it is like the experience that, that's a kind of keeps, you know, it's like, I've never heard of somebody who's said they've experienced sleep paralysis once, in their life, but kind of like similar to like everything, like sleepwalking, like I think it's like, these are something you kind of do or you don't, usually most people don't like, well, I slept, did one time I was sleepwalking and that was it, you know, it's like.
Danny C: Yeah, I wonder, so it's interesting, I've heard this before too, where it's like people will say they'll try to scream and they can't even do that, like they can't create the necessary pressure with their lungs to like give a scream out.
MM: Or like call for help, like something, or try to get any kind of sound out, yeah.
Danny C: But so this is interesting, I just had this thought, okay, so to an extent, we can control our blinking to an extent, okay, I wonder if you could, so it's interesting that in theory, you could control that, but nothing else, and I wonder like, could you flare your nostrils? Can you open your mouth? Can you move anything, or it's like you can't even control blinking at all, that it's like you're relying on your, whatever part of your brain does that automatically, I don't know, but I just had that thought. And then I had this other thought too, talking about, Baba, you said that when the minute, the second, shortly after, people can move, the hag is gone, and I just thought that was interesting with the state that I was in with my story, that like I was already moving around and I saw this thing, so I thought that was very interesting, or was I still in like a sleepwalking kind of state, but interesting nonetheless, when you pair those two together.
MM: Well, there's a thing you're saying about the blinking, like obviously blinking's like somewhat controlled, somewhat autonomic. I don't know this from my first-hand experience, because I wasn't seeing it, but apparently when I was a kid, there were times where I would be asleep with my eyes open, like, you know, so you can be asleep, like my mom, I guess would come in, and she thought I was awake, but I was asleep, but my eyes were still open. So it's like, so I don't know that the blinking thing probably matters if you're still in that sleep state, you know, like so, yeah. But I don't know, like again, it's not something you can observe. It's like, but I think, it's something to the effect of like, sometimes even in hypnosis, people will have open, you know, their eyes open during it, you know, so it's like, so clearly like, your visual stuff can get also wonky or shut off or something without you just literally closing your eyes, you know, and then obviously REM sleep, your eyes are moving, you know, and often blinking as well, you know, so it's, you know.
Baba: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, in fact, I visualize better with my eyes open. And then I do have my eyes closed. So it is very odd you wouldn't think that, but it's true.
Danny C: It's interesting, very similarly, if I am thinking about something and it is very visual thing that I'm thinking about, so I'm like visualizing doing something, something like that, I will be like doing something in real life and I'll just like stop. And like, my brain is going and I'm thinking about whatever like, the activity that I'm planning on doing and I'm like picturing it in my head. And like, eventually I like, I snap out, I'm like, oh, I was in the middle of taking a shower, I gotta finish my shower.
Baba: Yeah, you've just been staring into space, but that information isn't coming in, the visual information you're experiencing is, whatever itis, you're thinking there. Sorry, any Aphants out there that don't see visual images, but I guess there's a plus side too. I wonder if an aphant, all right, here you go. Are there any people out there that consider themselves to have Aphantasia or Aphantasia that don't see inner images in their mind, but also have experienced the night hag? I would love to hear that because that's really interesting.
Danny C: So what, and I don't know enough about this, what are dreams like for people that have that? Do they still see stuff in their dreams? Is it from people that I've talked to with it?
Baba: Not so much. Wow. Like it's really, or some people, I mean, cause I was trying to get to the bottom of it.
MM: Let me just go quickly explain, give a little, just tell us what AFAN, for people that don't know. Sure. Cause I'm only more recently familiar with this phenomenon myself.
Baba: So the idea of, I say Aphantasia, there are variations on it. And a person that has quote unquote, the experience of Aphantasia is an aphant, somebody that does not, and what it means is, they don't make visual images inside their head when they're talking or thinking about visual things. So oftentimes, like a lot of people don't think that they can visualize and I'll say, okay, well, what's the, what color is your car? Or what color is the front door to your house? And they'll say, well, it's white. And I'll say, how did you know that? And then they'll say, they have some kind of a visual image of it. But when I've talked to Aphants, they don't seem to have any visual information of it at all. They just kind of know it. It's really hard for me to conceive of that, but I'm saying, so when I tell you, you don't picture anything, you don't, how do you know, like, you just know these facts? So it seems to be happening and we don't, it's kind of cognition is weird, you know? There seems to be visual processing going on behind conscious awareness of it, maybe. And then they're aware of it on some kind of kinesthetic level that there's a sense of yes, this is something that they know. And then so they just, something knows it in them. Okay, so these folks don't, I've talked to both people that their dreams don't seem to have any visual content and people that it seems that they do. And I said, well, how do you know? How do you know that? Because you would have to have a memory of having a visual experience in your head. And what does that memory, what is that memory like if you don't have visual things in your head? You just know that you did? And so it's very confusing and hard to wrap your brain around, particularly if that's not how you experience things. However, listeners, if you experience things like that and you've experienced that night hag, please-- Or shadowy. Or shadowy, or the hat man, any of these things where you wake up in …
Danny C: Little gray guys.
Baba: Little gray guys. Let us know, I really wanna know. What is the thing that allows us to perceive this, whatever it is?