Interpreting Old-Hag syndrome

I'm going to quote some representative statements from the standard academic monograph on Old-Hag syndrome:

David J. Hufford, The Terror That Comes in the Night: An Experience-Centered Study of Supernatural Assault Traditions (University of Pennsylvania Press; 2nd edition, 1989).

I have not found the experiences recounted in this book to be associated with ethnicity religious background, or any either ethnographic variable. Nor have I found any association with those features of medical history that I could elicit using a basic illness checklist (xxi). 

The problem of identity recurs consistently in Old Hag accounts. It is a result of the merging of two distinct possibilities that stand alone in some other traditions. The first is that the hag, or whatever the attacker is called, is a supernatural creature, not a living human, sometimes acting on its own and at other times called upon by a human to carry out an attack, as in demonic assault, vampirism, and ghosts. The second explanation is that the hagging experience is directly caused by a living human who travels as a spirit to carry out attacks or other activities, leaving its physical body behind. Witches, wizards and sorcerers are the primary actors here (8). 

It is good scientific practice to seek the simplest theory possible to account for a set of data, but that should not be accomplished by simplifying the data (168). 

Can we say that sleep research has "explained" the Old Hag? No, we cannot. We cannot because what has been gained has been a description of physiological events that seem to account for the production of the state, that is, paralysis in wakefulness, preceding or following sleep, during which a complex and frightening experience may take place. The specific contents of the experience, however, have not been explained. They seem if anything more odd that they did before. If they are related to ordinary dreams by the presence of REM physiology, why is their content so consistently the same without apparent regard for culture (169)? 

These accounts are rich in secondary features: footsteps, prior dream recall, complex tingling sensations, directly perceived "presences," difficulty in expressing the experience of immobility, unpleasant odor…Finally, in addition to paralysis episodes, these attacks are associated with many of the events traditionally reported in connection with hauntings: furniture being moved; ghostly footsteps; people's names behind called; the unhinged door being heard to open and close, strange smells… (205). 

Again, an apparent Old Hag attack is found in the company of traditional haunting motifs: chairs rocking by themselves, doors opening and closing, spectral footsteps, a history of violent death associated with the house, and the cessation of all these phenomena when the ghost is addressed by name and told to go away (210). 

Given the strong connections in Newfoundland between the Old Hag and traditions of witchcraft, it is not surprising that similar connections are found elsewhere… (212). 

The authors found that of sixteen Eskimos asked about the attacks all knew of them and "some had experienced it."…They state that traditional explanations of the attacks are supernatural and center on belief that "when people are entering sleep, sleeping, or emerging from sleep, they are more susceptible to influences from the spirit world." Specific Eskimo explanations given include spirits in a "certain place [that is haunted] and one patient who felt that "during an attack…she was not in her body, and that she was fighting to get back in (235). 

At this point, a note of caution is necessary. Some readers may be considering whether they wish to elect to "go along with" the paralysis attack if they should have (another) one. I would advise strongly against it. Madge is not the only one who has reported having regretted her "openness" to the experience.  I have spoken with people who had reported years of anguish, some of it involving symptomatology much like some of the features of psychosis, after having intentionally cultivated this experience. On the other hand, I have never encountered anyone who resisted the basic Old Hag experience who seem injured by it even if it returned frequently (243).

My conclusion from reading his study is that Old-Hag syndrome probably has an occult source, given how it often occurs in connection areas where witchcraft and hauntings are prevalent, as well as the deleterious effects when subjects are "open" to the overture. A waking state is a barrier to this experience. During stages of sleep, the threshold is lowered. I'm also reminded of what Vern Poythress has written about territorial spirits.