Psychological Roots of Folklore and Fear

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Get up and running in just three weeks and join over ten thousand frontline teams maximizing their uptime with Maintain X. Start your free trial at maintain in the letter X. com It was once the most dangerous place on Earth. Granted, we wouldn't necessarily consider Antarctica a utopia today, but it isn't nearly as deadly as it used to be. Your chances of dying as you cruise through the Drake Passage in the twenty first century are significantly lower than they were one hundred years before. Back in the day, just about anything could have taken you out hypothermia, starvation, scurvy . Heck there are even reports of explorers dying of cardiac arrest simply because they exerted themselves too much in sub zero temperatures. So, in a place where you could just as easily fall off a glacier as freeze to death, it might be surprising to hear that one of the foremost explorers of the nineteen hundreds was nearly taken out by a stove . In nineteen thirty four, Admiral Richard E. Byrd was manning a weather st ation in Antarctica completely solo. It was a seven month assignment, and unbeknownst to him, ice had been slowly building up inside his stove pipes, blocking the ventilation. As a result, five months into his deployment, he collapsed from carbon monoxide poisoning. Suddenly, he was in a fight for his life. For the next two months, breathing was a struggle. In the process, his body became so weak that he could barely crawl across the floor. Convinced he was dying, he wrote in his journal, I'm afraid it's the end. And then he left instructions for whoever discovered his body to mail the farewell letters he had written for his family. Thankfully though, he made a full recovery , even going on to lead two more Antarctic expeditions . But there's nothing more suffocating than knowing that you're in danger but unable to breathe, unable to move , because when you're paralyzed, you're helpless . And that, my friends, is when the real nightmare takes over. I'm Erin Make and this is Lore Legends It was a situation that any of us would dread, waking in the middle of the night surrounded by darkness only to feel the sensation of something sitting on top of your chest. Just the thoughts of it would make anyone want to scream. But that's where things actually become even more terrifying. Despite opening your mouth and willing yourself to scream, not a single sound escapes your lips . No matter what you do or how hard you try, you've lost control over your entire body. You're frozen, one might even say, paralyzed. If you've never experienced anything like this, consider yourself lucky. For a significant portion of the population, though, this isn't just a thought exercise , it's reality . Scientists say about eight percent of the general population experiences sleep paralysis on a somewhat regular basis. Beyond that, multiple studies say that somewhere between twenty and forty five percent of us have undergone sleep paralysis at least once in our lives. Over the years, many people have tried to explain how the phenomenon works. A second century dream interpreter named Artemidorus of Daldus believed that sleep paralysis was simply the god pan , having intimate relations with the Dreamer, which, according to him, was a sign of good fortune. And the acclaimed medical practitioner Galen, considered by most to be the father of medicine, blamed sleep paralysis on gastric upset, while one tenth century Persian scholar said that it was caused by, as he put it, vapors of phlegm traveling from the stomach to the brain. In reality, hallucinations during sleep paralysis are not caused by vapors of any kind. If your consciousness wakes before your body does, then your mind, for lack of a better term, freaks out. The emotional center of your brain shifts into panic mode, which can sometimes make people see or hear things that aren't actually there , like, for example, demons perched on top of their paralyzed bodies. Back in the day, though, they didn't yet have the tools to understand that neurological process . So it may be unsurprising that for thousands of years , those outside the medical profession and even some within it believed that sleep paralysis was brought on by some kind of dem onic entity . The ancient Babylonians believe that it was caused by the female demon Lilith. The Romans attributed the condition to both an incubus and a succubus. Egyptians sometimes attribute their sleep paralys is to Jin, which comes from Muslim folklore and gives us the idea of the genie, while Cambodians believe in ghosts that quite literally strangle their sleeping victims. And in Catalonia, sleep paralysis has long been attribut ed to a creature that takes the appearance of a black dog or cat and sits on the person's chest. In sixteen sixty six, a Dutch physician named Isbrand von Diemerbroke echoed the popular belief that sleep paralysis was caused by the migration of external vapors into the head, but he also added another interesting piece to the puzzle. You see, despite being an educated man, he called sleep paralysis and I quote Incubus or the nightmare . Now when he wrote out nightmare, it wasn't all one word. Instead, it was two night and mare . It seems that he wasn't referring to a bad dream like we might today, he was writing about an actual supernatural being . And he wasn't alone. Across large swaths of Europe believed that those who suffered from sleep paralysis were being tormented by a mare , also called the Mar or the Mara . Some people believe that it was a malicious spirit, while others thought that it was a sorcerer who enjoyed using their powers to torment people. Old Norse stories claim that the Mara would ride people while they slept , and in a Norwegian folk tale we learn of a queen who summoned a mare to crush her husband in his sleep. Now, despite the horse like imagery that the word mare might evoke for modern audiences, they weren't usually depicted as horses. Instead, they were described as women. But no matter what sleep paralysis looks like for each individual, there's one trait everyone seems to agree with that it's absolutely terrifying . And if you believe everything your sleep paralysis tells you, then you just might find yourself face to face with a nightmare of a very different kind. Over the course of just five decades, the Duchy of Lorraine saw nearly three thousand witch trials. To be fair, this fifty year window came right at the height of the European witch panic, so it might be tempting to cut them a little slack. After all, fifteen eighty to sixteen thirty was definitely not a good time to get a sideways glance from your neighbor no matter where in Europe you lived . Still, when compared to other regions and countries at the time, lorraine was an anomaly , but to understand why, it's best to back up a bit and look at the context that created that environment. Lorraine was a neutral territory caught between France and the Holy Roman Empire, and for nearly a century those two powers were at each other's throats. As a result, the people of Lorraine had to put up with a near constant stream of foreign troops passing through their borders, and with those soldiers came death, not just from violence, but also in the form of epidemics and famine. It was a dark and brutal time , and as you'd imagine, all of it took a heavy toll on the region's people. Most of these people lived in small villages or on rural farmland . They were simple folk who lacked the necessary skills, whether that was a good education or the political connections to fully understand why all these bad things were happening to them. They just knew that they were and that it sucked . And so they leaned on the only logic they had to make sense of it all. Their struggles had to be the result of witches. Now, remember, fear can be a powerful motivator, and when that fear is centered around something supernatural and uncontrollable, it can snowball into something new, something worse . And for the people of Lorraine, much of their fear was rooted in something very, very specific , their dreams . That folklore I mentioned earlier about the Mare that was written down by the Dutch physician in sixteen sixty six, while he was writing about an idea that had already been catching on for decades, like a slow moving wildfire . So even in the middle of the fifteen hundreds, as the French and the Holy Roman Empire tore each other apart across the landscape of Lorraine, the concept of the Maire was commonly known with a twist . Eventually, some called the mare by a new name, the old hag. This creature was described as a wrinkled and hideous old woman with sharp claws and glowing eyes, and she wasn't bound to just Europe. There were actually versions of the old hag talked about in other countries as well. People all the way across the Atlantic and Newfoundland sometimes wrote about being and I quote, ridden to de byaf an old hag , while in Brazil, probably thanks to the Portuguese, they told stories of a long nailed crone who stomped on people while they slept. Why is the old hag important to our story? Well, because for a really long time in W estern history, most bad things were blamed on witches. So when this creature from folklore, the Mare started to be referred to as an old hag, it took the ancient belief in a creature that sits on your chest while you sleep and emerged it with a new face. Sleep paralysis, in other words , became the work of witches. Now, I'm a big believer that we can find a lot of clues about specific moments in culture by looking at their language. And wouldn't you know it, the Germans came up with the term Hexendrucken, which literally translates to witch pressing. Meanwhile, the Hungarians had their own version which, when translated , meant witch's pressure. But there is one curveball to throw into this, and it comes from Italy. One of the bits of folklore they had bouncing around was called the Pandafeca. It was essentially a supernatural black cat that would sit on the chests of sleeping people and give them bad dreams. There were all sorts of theories about who or what those black cats really were, but the most common one was that they were actually witches. In the end, I think the important thing to take away from all of this is pretty simple. Gone were the days when the weight on your chest was caused by nothing more than bad vapors or an ancient demon. No for people in the middle of the six teenth century and especially in Europe , it was all about witchcraft . And that brings us back to the Duchy of Lorraine, because it's there that we can see what happens when entire communities are caught up in the wildfire of fear and panic when something as personal and tenuous as a good night's rest becomes the subject of wild accusations and vicious rumors . Families destroyed, relationships broken , and as we're about to learn far too many lives lost. She knew that angels were watching over her, she knew because she had spoken to them. In October of sixteen hundred, Du Duni took the stand and testified that a woman in white had visited her while she was in prison. Little angels flew around the spectral woman's body like butterflies and told her that she would soon be free and with her children again . The courts in Lorraine was of course skeptical . When they asked her if she had ever seen any other spirits before this moment, she told them yes, but it had been twenty years earlier. While her husband was away on a trip, a supernatural entity had lay on top of her body while she was sleeping. It was so heavy that she could hardly breathe, and despite not wanting to be without her husband , she decided that having this thing's company was significantly worse than being alone. Unfortunately for her, the court could do nothing to protect Doudeni from what was to come. She was tortured on the rack until she confessed to many crimes, including that of witchcraft. And then she was sentenced to death. Sadly, Diodenis' story is not unique. Remember, Lorraine in the fifteen hundreds was a hotbed of witchcraft panic , which led to hundreds and hundreds of accusations , so it shouldn't be a surprise that her claim wasn't the only one of its kind . There were, in fact, dozens of similar stories. For example, in fifteen ninety four , a forty year old woman named Sinel Peter was put on trial for witchcraft in northeast Lorraine. Apparently, there was a real backlog of evidence against her too. Her neighbors had been collecting proof of her witchy tendencies for years at this point . One of the many stories shared at her trial came from a woman named Royna Marshall. This woman claimed that on Christmas the year before she had awoken to see Sanel kneeling upon her husband's chest. For some reason, instead of pushing Sinell off of him, Rina tried to shake her partner awake , but as soon as the witch noticed her, she gave the other woman a piercing glare, at which point Royna was no longer able to move. Frozen and helpless, Royna could only lay there and pray for God to protect her child sleeping in the other room. When she finally opened her eyes, she could move once again, and Sinel had vanished . A few years later, in sixteen oh one, a woman named Jacotte Simone took to the stand to testify against another accused witch. According to her, while she had been lying in bed with an illness a few months prior, two, and I quote, marvelously big and ugly cats entered the room and tried to strangle her. Jakot was unable to move away from the demons as they attempted to choke her with their paws. Somehow she traced the sign of the cross with her tongue and it seemed to break the spell over her mouth, allowing her to scream for her husband. At that point, she claimed one of the cats transformed into her neighbor, a woman named Pentaco M ayette. Then as her husband ran into the room with an ax, the witch turned back into a cat and the two cats ran away . Sadly, the authorities tortured a confession out of both Mayette and her suspected acc omplice, Mojayette. The two women admitted to working for the devil as well as wanting to strangle Jacot, who had accused them of witchcraft many times over the years. They were both sentenced to death for their crimes. And several other similar stories were brought to court in sixteen eleven. In one instance, two brothers accused their sister of being a witch. One of the men claimed that she had tried to strangle him and his children while they slept. At another trial during the same year, a man named Jean testified that he had argued with his neighbor Jennon, who had ended their fight with a curse saying that she hoped he would, and I quote, have the bar of a door across his stomach. Later that same night, he felt his neighbor climb on top of him and attempt to suffocate him. When God finally gave him the use of his limbs, he threw her off, sending her flying into a chest of drawers . As a result of his accusations, Jean's neighbor was tortured until she confessed, then she too, was sentenced to death. Time and time again, stories of midnight stranglings were brought to the courts. In almost every instance, these tales were admitted as real evidence against the accused . And in most of the cases, these stories either directly or indirectly led to an execution Folklore can often have real life consequences . The folk beliefs we carry with us and pass along to others might seem completely removed from reality, but that couldn't be further from the truth. For most of human history, we've used folklore to make real decisions, to explain the inexplicable. And until very recently, sleep paralysis fell mostly into that inexplicable category . And it's easy to see why. In an attempt to wrap their minds around what was happening, people created the mayor. The mayor eventually became the old hag and the hag transformed into a witch, a witch whose reign of terror led to real trials and deadly executions. But the bigger question is this why Lorraine specifically? What was it about this place that inspired so many cases of sleep paralys is. And the answer to that question is actually in the social and political context that I mentioned earlier. The ongoing conflict happening all around them, the deadly wartime diseases, and the devastating famine , it was terrible for everyone involved to live through. And here's the thing, most psychological conditions don't appear in a vacuum. They are typically brought on by specific causes like little triggers that lead to bigger pain. Experts today believe that sleep paralysis most commonly, although not exclusively, develops in people who suffer from some kind of trauma, like PTSD or abuse. It's also been documented amongst those who struggle with irregular sleeping patterns, seizures, high blood pressure, anxiety, illnesses, and elevated stress levels. And yes, that sounds like it covers most of the human experience , but it definitely covers the people living in sixteenth century lorraine. It's no wonder that when they woke up to something suffocating them, their first instinct was to blame it on witchcraft , and they weren't alone in that. A few decades later, another small town experienced similar trauma. War had been raging along its borders for years. People were afraid. The devil's minions seemed to be all around them and in every corner . And so, just like the people of Lorraine, they eventually gave in to witch panic. In the trials that followed, multiple witnesses testified to having been strangled, attacked, or crushed on their bed by a witch, testimony, by the way, that was yet again accepted as valid legal evidence in a courts of law. It seems that even across the ocean, in Salem, Massachusetts , fear could be paralyzing There's nothing more terrifying than waking up to see an unexpected nighttime visitor leaning over you. Parents know what I mean. Speaking from personal experience, if a surprise visit from a needy child can get you screaming, I can't fathom how terrifying actual sleep paralysis must be. But believe it or not, witches, mares, and random demons aren't the only supernatural creatures who like to prey on us in our sleep . There's plenty more where they came from, although whether or not they're still friendly is up for debate. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it . This episode was made possible by T ask Rabbit. Like you, I'm a pretty busy person. 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