Tony Johannot, “Smarra” (1845)
“Many Newfoundlanders are familiar with the Old Hag tradition and define it as did a university student about twenty years of age: “You are dreaming and you feel as if someone is holding you down. You can do nothing only cry out. People believe that you will die if you are not awakened”. […] In the definition, the experience is called “a dream” from which the dreamer must be “awakened”. In the narrative, “being hagged” is equated with “having nightmares” […] being hagged is a bad dream. […] “the Old Hag” and often “the nightmare” are understood to be applicable to both an experience and a feature of that experience, that is, the attacker [witches, demons, vampires, etc.]. The experience is understood by many to be a state that is different from ordinary dreams but for which there is no good alternative word.”
A long-standing tradition of [medical explanations] also exists, usually either indigestion or “stagnation of the blood” […] Galen, the great physician of the second century A.D., first explained this experience as a result of gastric disturbances.”
— David J. Hufford; “The Terror That Comes in the Night: An Experience-Centered Study of Supernatural Assaults Tradition” (1982)
“Beware his shadow. The shadow covers you in nightmare. Awake, but a dream. There is no escape. Pray. Pray.”
