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Sleep Paralysis And The Visit From Hell
Say hello to the old hag as she crawls up the bed towards you
I remember a number of years ago going to London with Laura to see an exhibition of gothic art. In pride of place, as you entered the gallery, was Henry’s Fuseli’s 1871 painting, ‘The Night Mare.’ A young maiden, dressed in white, is splayed on a bed in deep slumber while a night mare, i.e. as in a female horse, with strange demonic eyes, peeps it’s head through some drapes. An incubus squats on the chest of the young woman. An interesting aspect of this incubus is that it stares out of the painting to catch our gaze, drawing us into the scene as voyeurs, also making us complicit in its demonic seduction of the young maiden.
The story I’ve been writing (these past two years!) has a character Dr Cecil Chadwick, veteran of the Napoleonic wars, who is plagued by the nocturnal visits from something called the night hag. She is the precursor to his post traumatic nightmares, as she crawls up the bed towards him and sits on his chest. The night hag, or old hag, holds a similar place in folklore to the incubus/succubus, whose victims are female/male respectively.
When I was on a ‘sleep-in’ at work, Laura, in a hypnogogic state, experienced a visit from the night hag. She said she felt the compressions on the bed as the wizened old…
