In this episode of The Moon in Carolina, host Shelby Bundy explores the night hag — the figure who sits on your chest while you sleep, pins you to the bed, and leaves you certain something was in the room. The experience is one of the most universally reported in human history, and the traditions built around it are remarkably consistent: the Germanic mara, the Newfoundland Old Hag documented by folklorist David Hufford, Queen Mab in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, and the Hmong dab tsog — a tradition that became devastatingly relevant when young Hmong refugee men in the United States began dying in their sleep in the late 1970s and 80s. Shelby also traces the figure into contemporary accounts of the Hat Man, and into the folk remedies across every tradition that share the same underlying logic: name the thing, and it loses some of its power.
You can find Shelby at www.shelbybundy.com
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Production by Julio Montero
Music: Folklore, by Taizo Audio
