Old Hag

Old Hag

TYPEFolkloric entity / sleep paralysis tradition

FIELDFolklore, psychology

ALSO KNOWN ASBeing "hagged," being "hag-ridden"

NOTABLE CASE(S)David Hufford's Newfoundland fieldwork (1970s)

STATUSExplained — folkloric interpretation of sleep paralysis

The Old Hag is a Newfoundland folkloric tradition describing a threatening entity said to sit or press on a sleeping person's chest, leaving them paralysed and terrified. It is now understood by researchers to be a specific cultural interpretation of Sleep paralysis, and is one of the most closely studied examples of how the same underlying experience can be given a consistent supernatural explanation across an entire community.

The Newfoundland tradition

In Newfoundland folk belief, being visited by the Old Hag — locally described as being "hagged" or "hag-ridden" — could involve sensing a presence in the doorway or beside the bed, before the figure crawls onto the sleeper and pins them down. The experience gave rise to its own protective folk practices: sufferers reportedly believed the Hag could be summoned by reciting the Lord's Prayer backwards, and that she could be fended off by sleeping on one's back with a knife or a board studded with upright nails placed against the chest, ready to stab her should she settle there. In at least one recorded account, a victim accused a third party of deliberately "hagging" them out of jealousy — treating the experience as an act that could be directed at a specific person, rather than a random misfortune.

David Hufford's research

The tradition became the subject of sustained academic study through folklorist David J. Hufford, who first encountered it while studying at the Memorial University of Newfoundland in the 1970s, having independently experienced sleep paralysis himself as a student in 1963. Hufford initially expected the Old Hag to be a straightforward case of cultural transmission — a story people had heard so often that they came to expect and effectively manufacture the experience for themselves. His research instead led him to the opposite conclusion: people with no exposure to Newfoundland folklore reported the same specific combination of paralysis, chest pressure, a sensed threatening presence, and a distinct quality of dread, regardless of their cultural background.

This led Hufford to develop what he called the "experience-centered approach" in his 1982 book The Terror That Comes in the Night: An Experience-Centered Study of Supernatural Assault Traditions — arguing that the underlying physiological experience comes first, universally, and that each culture then independently constructs its own supernatural narrative to explain it, rather than the folklore itself generating the experience.

Relationship to sleep paralysis

The Old Hag is now recognised as one among many culturally specific names for the same underlying phenomenon — see Sleep paralysis for the full account of the mechanism, prevalence, and its other cultural names, including Thailand's "phi am" and China's "ghost of oppression." What distinguishes the Old Hag as a case study is the sheer consistency Hufford documented across witnesses: unlike ghost sightings, cryptid encounters, or near-death experiences, which vary considerably in their imagery from person to person, Old Hag accounts converge on strikingly similar details regardless of who is describing them.

Continuing belief

According to contemporary Newfoundland folklorist Dale Jarvis, belief in the Old Hag persists in Newfoundland today, even as the scientific explanation of sleep paralysis has become widely known — the folkloric and clinical explanations continuing to coexist rather than one simply replacing the other.

See also

• Sleep paralysis
• Cryptids and Folklore

External links

• Wikipedia — David Hufford
• NUVO — Canadian Urban Legends: Newfoundlanders Can Tell You All About the Old Hag