Hag Riding: The Old Hag Folklore Behind Sleep Paralysis
What hag riding means in Southern, Gullah Geechee and Newfoundland folklore, the old remedies, and what sleep science says about sleep paralysis.
You wake in the dark and cannot move. Something heavy sits on your chest, there is a presence in the room, and you cannot even scream. In the American South, in Newfoundland and in much of the English-speaking world, people had a name for this long before doctors did: the hag was riding you. This guide explains the folklore of hag riding, where it comes from, what the old protective customs were and what sleep research knows today. It is not medical advice, and it does not claim that the hag is a spirit.
Contents
Hag riding is the folk name for waking up paralyzed with a crushing weight on the chest and a sense of an evil presence, usually while lying on the back. In Southern and African American folklore a witch or hag was said to ride the sleeper, and in Newfoundland the same attack is called the Old Hag. Sleep researchers identify the experience as sleep paralysis: the mind wakes while the body is still in the muscle paralysis of REM sleep, and dream images spill into waking. It is common, usually harmless and often linked to lack of sleep, but frequent episodes are worth discussing with a doctor.
About 7.6 percent of the general population experience sleep paralysis at least once.
Source/tradition: Sharpless & Barber, Sleep Medicine Reviews, 2011
Traditional Old Hag accounts in Newfoundland match the features of sleep paralysis.
Source/tradition: Hufford, The Terror That Comes in the Night, 1982
Figures and presences during sleep paralysis are hallucinations linked to REM sleep.
Source/tradition: Cheyne et al., Consciousness and Cognition, 1999
A witch or hag leaves her body at night and rides sleepers; the boo hag sheds her skin.
Source/tradition: Southern, African American and Gullah Geechee folklore
A sieve or broom by the bed keeps the hag busy counting until dawn.
Source/tradition: American and English folk remedies
A calm threshold routine at the bedroom door helps some people sleep with less dread.
Source/tradition: Contemporary protection practice
Rituals, charms or sprays prevent sleep paralysis or hag attacks.
Source/tradition: No evidence
VERIFIED = verifiable in scientific or official sources · TRADITIONAL = historically or culturally recorded · LIVED PRACTICE = widely practiced, experiential knowledge · NOT PROVEN = spiritual interpretation, not scientifically established.
Quick answer
“Hag riding” is the folk name for waking up paralyzed with a crushing weight on the chest and a sense of an evil presence, usually while lying on the back. In Southern and African American folklore a witch or hag was said to “ride” the sleeper, and in Newfoundland the same attack is called the Old Hag. Sleep researchers identify the experience as sleep paralysis: the mind wakes while the body is still in the muscle paralysis of REM sleep, and dream images spill into waking. It is common, usually harmless and often linked to lack of sleep, but frequent episodes are worth discussing with a doctor.
What “hag riding” means
To be “hag-ridden” or “witch-ridden” is an old English expression. The picture is literal: a witch or hag climbs onto the sleeper's chest and rides them like a horse through the night. People who were ridden woke exhausted, with an aching chest and sometimes the conviction that they had been taken somewhere while they slept.
The idea is older than English. The word nightmare itself contains it: the Old English mære was a spirit that sat on sleepers and pressed the breath out of them. Henry Fuseli's famous painting The Nightmare (1781), with a demon crouched on a sleeping woman's chest, shows exactly this scene. German folklore called the same creature the Alp or Mahr; Scandinavian, Slavic and Baltic traditions have close relatives.
In the United States the phrase survived best in the South, in African American and Gullah Geechee tradition, in the Appalachians and in the Ozarks, where being “rode by a witch” was an ordinary explanation for a bad night well into the twentieth century.
The experience behind the folklore
What makes hag riding remarkable is how similar the accounts are, across countries and centuries. The folklorist David Hufford, who studied the Old Hag in Newfoundland in the 1970s, found that people who had never heard the tradition described the same core features as those who knew it well:
Waking paralysis. The sleeper is awake, eyes often open, but cannot move or speak.
Pressure on the chest. A weight, a sitting figure, difficulty breathing.
A presence. The certain sense that someone or something is in the room, often evil, often approaching.
Sights and sounds. Footsteps, a shadowy figure, a face, whispering or buzzing.
Fear. Intense terror that fades once movement returns, usually within seconds to a couple of minutes.
Hufford's argument, published in The Terror That Comes in the Night (1982), was that the experience comes first and the folklore second: people did not imagine the hag because they had heard of her, they named her because they had met her.
Where the hag rides: traditions compared
The riding hag across traditions
| Tradition | Name | Who rides | Typical explanation |
|---|---|---|---|
| American South, African American folklore | Hag riding, witch riding | A witch, often a living neighbor | Envy or a grudge; the witch leaves her body at night |
| Gullah Geechee coast | Boo hag | A skinless hag spirit | Draws the sleeper's breath and energy |
| Newfoundland | The Old Hag | An old woman or presence | Sometimes said to be sent by someone who bears ill will |
| England | Hag-ridden, the mare | A night spirit | The origin of the word nightmare |
| Germany and Central Europe | Alp, Mahr, Trud | A night spirit or witch | Pressure spirit that enters through keyholes |
| Scandinavia | Mara | A female spirit | Rides sleepers and horses; tangles hair and manes |
Many traditions share one striking detail: the hag is not a distant demon but a person, someone living nearby who travels out of her body at night. That turns every episode into a social question, “who wants to harm me?”, and explains why the old remedies focus on keeping someone out.
The boo hag of the Gullah Geechee coast
The best-known American version is the boo hag of the Gullah Geechee people, the descendants of enslaved West and Central Africans on the coast and Sea Islands of South Carolina, Georgia and northern Florida. In Gullah tradition the boo hag sheds her skin at night, slips into houses through cracks and rides her sleeping victims, drawing their breath and strength. Before dawn she must return to her skin.
The boo hag belongs to a living culture with its own storytellers, not to a costume shop. The Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, created by Congress in 2006, and Gullah storytellers themselves are the right place to learn these stories. We describe the tradition here because it is the most American form of hag riding, not to borrow it.
Haint blue and the hag
Porch ceilings and window frames painted pale blue, called haint blue, are often linked in Lowcountry lore with keeping spirits, including hags, from crossing into the house. Historians also note more ordinary reasons for the color, such as lime-based paint and the belief that it kept insects away.
Both explanations can be true at once. Folk customs rarely have a single reason.
Old remedies: sieves, brooms and knives
Because the hag was pictured as a person entering the house, the remedies are about thresholds and distraction:
A sieve or colander by the bed. The hag was said to be compelled to count every hole before she could ride, and dawn would catch her before she finished. The same trick appears with a broom: she must count every straw.
A broom across the doorway. A hag, or witch, cannot step over it.
Salt and pepper. In boo hag stories, salt sprinkled on her discarded skin makes it burn so she cannot slip back in.
Iron and blades. A knife, scissors or a horseshoe under the pillow or mattress, iron being a protection against spirits across many European traditions.
A Bible or a written charm under the pillow.
Sleeping on your side. Some families simply told a ridden child not to sleep on the back, a piece of advice sleep researchers would recognize.
Our guide to how to ward your home covers threshold protection in more depth.
Temple Tip
If you want to keep a traditional remedy, choose one that is safe in a bedroom. A small sieve or a broom by the door keeps the folklore without risk. Never put an open blade under a pillow, especially where children sleep, and never leave a candle or smoldering herbs burning while you fall asleep.
What sleep science says
Sleep researchers call the experience isolated sleep paralysis. During REM sleep, the phase in which most vivid dreams happen, the brain switches off most voluntary muscles so that we do not act out our dreams. If you wake partly out of REM, your mind can be alert while that switch is still on. You are awake, but your body is still asleep.
Because the dreaming brain is still active, dream imagery can spill into the waking room: a figure by the bed, footsteps, a weight on the chest. The feeling of breathlessness comes from the fact that the breathing muscles work automatically, while the chest muscles you would use to take a deep, deliberate breath are paralyzed. The terror is the brain's threat system reacting to the paralysis.
A 2011 review by Brian Sharpless and Jacques Barber, covering more than 36,000 people, estimated that about 7.6 percent of the general population experience sleep paralysis at least once, with much higher rates among students and people with some psychiatric conditions. Episodes are more likely after sleep deprivation, with irregular sleep schedules such as shift work or jet lag, during stress and when sleeping on the back.
None of this makes the folklore foolish. It explains why so many cultures independently described the same visitor, and why the old advice about sleeping on your side and keeping calm had some sense in it.
When to talk to a doctor
A single episode, or an occasional one, is usually not a sign of illness. We are not doctors, and this is not medical advice, but these are common reasons people raise sleep paralysis with a physician or sleep specialist:
episodes happen often or are getting more frequent; you are afraid to go to sleep; you also feel overwhelmingly sleepy during the day or fall asleep suddenly, which can point to narcolepsy; you have loud snoring or pauses in breathing; or the experiences come with other symptoms that worry you. A doctor can check for sleep disorders and talk about sleep habits that reduce episodes.
If you are unsure whether what you experienced is a spiritual event, a sleep event or both, our guide is it your ancestor or something else? offers a careful way to sort experiences without jumping to conclusions.
Quiz: what does your hag story need?
Three questions to find the approach that suits your experience.
Voices from practice
People who have been “ridden” often say that learning the name, whether the hag or sleep paralysis, took away much of the fear, because it meant they were not alone and not losing their mind.
Descendants of Southern and Gullah Geechee families frequently describe the hag stories as part of their grandparents' world, told with a mix of seriousness and humor, and passed on together with practical advice about sleep.
Practitioners who work with protection often report that a calm evening routine at the bedroom threshold helps them fall asleep with less dread, and are careful to add that it does not replace medical care.
What we don't promise
We do not promise that any ritual, spray, stone or charm will stop sleep paralysis or keep a hag away. We do not claim that the hag is a spirit, and we do not claim that she is not; we describe what traditions say and what sleep science has found.
Nothing here is medical advice. If episodes are frequent, frightening or come with other symptoms, please speak with a doctor. Folklore can help you make sense of an experience; it cannot diagnose one.
Practically: how to work with this
- Name it. Write down what happened: time, position, what you saw and felt. Naming the experience is the first step out of the fear.
- Protect your sleep. Regular bedtimes, enough hours, less caffeine and alcohol in the evening. Sleep deprivation is the most common trigger.
- Try your side. If episodes happen on your back, a pillow behind you can help you stay on your side, as grandmothers advised.
- Build a threshold routine. A few calm minutes at the bedroom door: a word of protection, a light mist of a ritual spray, a broom or a sieve by the door if you like the old customs.
- During an episode. Many people find it helps to focus on moving one small part, a finger or the toes, and to breathe slowly, knowing it will pass.
- Know when to get help. Frequent episodes, fear of sleeping or strong daytime sleepiness belong in a conversation with a doctor.
For children who are frightened at night, our guide to spiritual protection for kids afraid of the dark offers gentle ideas.
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More in protection and sleep and dreams.
Frequently asked questions
What does it mean when the hag rides you?
In folklore, a witch or hag has sat on your chest in the night. Sleep researchers call the same experience sleep paralysis: waking up unable to move, often with a sense of pressure and a presence.
Is the Old Hag the same as sleep paralysis?
The Old Hag is the Newfoundland folk name for it. Folklorist David Hufford showed that the traditional descriptions match the features of sleep paralysis closely.
What is a boo hag?
A figure from Gullah Geechee folklore of the Southeastern coast: a hag who sheds her skin at night and rides sleepers to take their breath and energy.
How did people stop a hag from riding them?
Traditional remedies include a sieve or broom by the bed, a broom across the door, salt, iron under the mattress and sleeping on the side.
Is sleep paralysis dangerous?
Isolated episodes are generally considered harmless, though frightening. Frequent episodes or strong daytime sleepiness are reasons to talk to a doctor.
Why do I see a figure during sleep paralysis?
Dream imagery from REM sleep can continue while you are partly awake, so the brain produces a figure, sounds or pressure that feel completely real.
Sources & further reading
- Hufford, David J. The Terror That Comes in the Night: An Experience-Centered Study of Supernatural Assault Traditions. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982.
- Sharpless, Brian A., and Jacques P. Barber. “Lifetime prevalence rates of sleep paralysis: A systematic review.” Sleep Medicine Reviews 15, no. 5 (2011): 311–315.
- Cheyne, J. Allan, Steve D. Rueffer, and Ian R. Newby-Clark. “Hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations during sleep paralysis.” Consciousness and Cognition 8, no. 3 (1999): 319–337.
- “Hag-riding.” In A Dictionary of English Folklore, Jacqueline Simpson and Steve Roud. Oxford University Press, 2000 (Oxford Reference).
- Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission. National Heritage Area established 2006, gullahgeecheecorridor.org (accessed 2026).
- “Night hag.” Wikipedia, online (accessed 2026).