By Night Overwhelmed

The experience of falling asleep only to be awakened by terror, realizing you cannot move and feeling something pressing on your chest, is surprisingly common in human experience, though the entity that one sees—or not—often depends on cultural expectations. Night-hag, demon, or invisible assailant, in this special Halloween episode and season four finale, I bring you the story of the “Night-Mare.”

Researched, written, and produced by Corinne Wieben, with original music by Purple Planet.


Music

Purple Planet - Fallen Angels

Purple Planet - Possession

Purple Planet - Lost Souls

Ludwig van Beethoven - Piano Sonata no. 14 in C-sharp minor 'Moonlight Sonata', Op. 27 no. 2 performed by Paul Pitman

Purple Planet - Sense of Loss

Purple Planet - Shadowlands


Sources

Primary

Artemidorus. Interpretation of Dreams: Oneirocritica, translated by R. J. White. Park Ridge, NJ: Noyes Press, 1975.

Augustine. De civitate dei (City of God), translated by H. Bettenson. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1972.

Avicenna (Ibn Sina). The Canon of Medicine (al-Qānūn fī’l-ṭibb), vol. 1, edited by Laleh Bakhtiar and translated by Oskar Cameron Gruner and Mazhar H. Shah. Great Books of the Islamic World. Chicago: Kazi Publications, Inc., 1999.

Bond, John. An Essay on the Incubus, or Night-mare. London: D. Wilson and T. Durham, 1753.

Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams, translated by A. A. Brill. New York: MacMillan, 1903.

Jones, Ernest. On the Nightmare. The International Psycho-Analytical Library, No. 20. London: L. & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, and the Institute of Psycho-analysis, 1931.

Rawlinson, H. C. The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia. Vol. 4 (Semitic), edited by Theophilus Pinches. London: British Museum, 1891.

MacNish, Robert. The Philosophy of Sleep. New York: Appleton and Co., 1834.

Maupassant, Guy de. The Horla and Other Stories, translated by A. M. C. McMaster et al. New York: Wildside Press, 2007.

Secondary

Adler, Shelby R. Sleep Paralysis: Night-mares, Nocebos, and the Mind-Body Connection. Studies in Medical Anthropology. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2011.

Batten, Caroline R. “Dark Riders: Disease, Sexual Violence, and Gender Performance in the Old English Mære and Old Norse Mara.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 120, no. 3 (2021): 352–380.

Davies, Owen. “The Nightmare Experience, Sleep Paralysis, and Witchcraft Accusations.” Folklore 114, no. 2 (2003): 181–203.

De Blecourt, Willem. “Bedding the Nightmare: Somatic Experience and Narrative Meaning in Dutch and Flemish Legend Texts.” Folklore 114, no. 2 (2003): 227–245.

Dudley, Margaret and Julian Goodare. “Outside in Or Inside Out: Sleep Paralysis and Scottish Witchcraft.” In Scottish Witches and Witch-Hunters, edited by Julian Goodare, 121–139. United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2013.

Ewen, C. L’Estrange. Witchcraft and Demonism. London: Heath Cranton, 1933.

Galinier, Jacques, Aurore Monod Becquelin, Guy Bordin, Laurent Fontaine, Francine Fourmaux, Juliette Roullet Ponce, Piero Salzarulo, Philippe Simonnot, Michele Therrien, and Iole Zilli. “Anthropology of the Night: Cross-Disciplinary Investigations.” Current Anthropology 51, no. 6 (2010): 819–847.

Gordon, Stephen. “Emotional Practice and Bodily Performance in Early Modern Vampire Literature.” Preternatural: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural 6, no. 1 (2017): 93–124.

Hammond, Charles E. “The Personification of Lust.” Monumenta Serica 57, no. 1 (2009): 141–166.

Hinton, Devon E., David J. Hufford, and Laurence J. Kirmayer. “Culture and Sleep Paralysis.” Transcultural Psychiatry 42, no. 1 (2005): 5–10.

Hufford, David J. “Beings without Bodies: An Experience-Centered Theory of the Belief in Spirits.” In Out of the Ordinary, edited by Barbara Walker, 11–45. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 1995.

Hufford, David J. “Sleep Paralysis as Spiritual Experience.” Transcultural Psychiatry 42, no. 1 (2005): 11–45.

Liddon, S. C. “Sleep Paralysis and Hypnagogic Hallucinations: Their Relationship to the Nightmare.” Archives of General Psychiatry 17, no. 1 (1967): 88–96.

Millar, Charlotte-Rose. “Dangers of the Night: The Witch, the Devil, and the ‘Nightmare’ in Early Modern England.” Preternature 7, no. 2 (2018): 154–181.

Oates, Caroline. “Cheese Gives You Nightmares: Old Hags and Heartburn.” Folklore 114, no. 2 (2003): 205–225.

Raudvere, Catharina. Narratives and Rituals of the Nightmare Hag in Scandinavian Folk Belief. Cham: Springer International Publishing AG, 2021.

Reiner, Erica. “Astral Magic in Babylonia.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 85, no. 4 (1995): i–150.

Rivière, Janine. “Demons of Desire Or Symptoms of Disease?: Medical Theories and Popular Experiences of the ‘Nightmare’ in Premodern England.” In Dreams, Dreamers, and Visions, edited by Ann Marie Plane and Leslie Tuttle, 49–71. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc., 2013.

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