Content area
Full Text
Abstract
Witch-trial records, and other early-modern writings on witchcraft, reveal that in various European societies people complained of being physically oppressed at night by witches and other supernatural beings, the victims of these nocturnal assaults describing a similar set of symptoms. Contemporary English authors termed the experience the "mare" or "nightmare." In the twentieth century, it has been identified as a manifestation of "sleep paralysis." Medical studies and surveys of the condition help us make better sense of the historical accounts, while an awareness of the historical evidence illuminates modern reports of sleep paralysis experiences. [1]
Introduction
The historical record shows that experience of bewitchment was multifarious, concerning livestock, goods, chattels, and agricultural processes. However, over the past five centuries the majority of those experiences that were deemed serious enough to lead to the formal accusation, prosecution, or physical assault of supposed witches concerned people suffering from some form of physical or mental disorder. Trying to identify what ailments and bodily experiences people attributed to witchcraft is a speculative task, bearing in mind the sketchy description of symptoms in the records, and the limited diagnostic categories of illness in the past. Yet, behind the descriptions provided by those suffering from supposed witchcraft in early modern and later trial records, a number of modern categories of physical ailment and psychological or neurophysiological condition are recognisable.
This article concerns one such condition, sleep paralysis. Although this has only been properly categorised in the past fifty years, the experience has been a matter of medical discussion for many centuries. In the English language, one manifestation of the sleep paralysis experience was known as the nightmare, and in many European cultures its cause was attributed to witchcraft. This nightmare experience can also be identified in other accounts where people claimed to have been nocturnally oppressed by such supernatural beings as the Devil, animalistic fairies, and spirits of the dead. Combining historical analysis with modern medical knowledge, and comparing modern manifestations of the experience with those described in the historical record, enables us to shed further light on human encounters with the supernatural in both past and present societies.
Sleep paralysis is not rare. Surveys around the world suggest that 20-45% of people experience at least one sleep paralysis...