The Terror That Comes in the Night

by David J. Hufford

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Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982. 278pp OOP

There are reports from people around the world that they have wakened in the night with a sense of terror, unable to move, and aware of the presence of a frightening old hag.

David Hufford brings us a thorough investigation of this fascinating phenomenon. Hufford is Professor in the Department of Humanities at the Penn State College of Medicine (Hershey Medical Center), with joint appointments in Behavioral Science and Family &;Community Medicine. He also is Director of the Doctors Kienle Center for Humanistic Medicine at the Hershey Medical Center, an endowed center devoted to improving doctor-patient communication.  

Hufford has had a long-standing interest in traditional healing and parapsychology, both of which serve him will in his analysis of the old hag reports, which have not been included in much of the literature on psychic and spiritual experiences.

He states the challenges in the starting point in his investigation:

1. No first-person account exists for many such narratives in their present form, the current stories have developed during oral transmission.

2. Others are misinterpretations of ordinary events caused by the action of tradition on the imagination of the one reporting the experience (e.g., marsh gas for Will-o'-the-Wisp).

3. Some are either outright lies or errors of memory in which the one claiming the experience has placed himself in an account he at first heard involving another person.

4. Some are the experiences of those who have been victims of a hoax by someone who has used the tradition as a model (e.g., Ichabod Crane in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow").

5. Some are actual experiences caused, often intentionally, by fasting, use of hallucinogens, or other methods known to produce powerful subjective experiences that vary cross-culturally and are shaped by expectation.

6. Some are the experiences of abnormal individuals whose psychotic episodes are shaped by their cultural repertoire (e.g., the hallucinations and delusions of schizophrenics are known to have changed over time keeping with the culture in which schizophrenics live. (p 13-14)

Hufford gathered 93 reports from students at Memorial University in Newfoundland, clarifying their experiences with a detailed questionnaire.

Hufford investigates and writes with great clarity, coming to the following conclusions:

1. The phenomena associated with what I have been call­ing the Old Hag constitute an experience with a com­plex and stable pattern, which is recognizable and is distinct from other experiences.

2. This experience is found in a variety of cultural set­tings.

3. The -pattern of the experience and its distribution ap­pear independent of the presence of explicit cultural models.

4. The experience itself has played a significant, though not exclusive, role in the development of numerous traditions of supernatural assault.

5. Cultural factors heavily determine the ways in which the experience is described (or withheld) and inter­preted.

6. The distribution of traditions about the experience, such as those involving the Old Hag or the Eskimo augumangia, has frequently been confounded with the distribution of the experience itself.  

7. The frequency with which the experience occurs is surprisingly high, with those who have had at least one recognizable attack representing i 5 percent or more of the general population.  

8. The state in which this experience occurs is probably best described as sleep paralysis with a particular kind of hypnagogic hallucination.

9. Although there may be some connection between the etiology of this experience and narcolepsy, and although certain illnesses could be confused with the experience, the Old Hag experience itself does not indicate the presence of any serious pathology.

10. The contents of this experience cannot be satisfactorily explained on the basis of current know1edge.

This book does much to clarify an interesting element in the spectrum of transpersonal experiences.

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