HAGRIDDEN.
by Rewired
Things were pretty weird already when I was sixteen, and then I talked with a poltergeist through a Ouija board, got on antidepressants, and finally got dry-fucked by a female demon in my sleep. All brought on by the resistance to instincts and the fear of death.
Perhaps that’s jumping a bit ahead, however.
I guess the core of this story really starts in early February, 1995, when I had asked my mother if she’d ever had anything strange occur to her that could be classified as paranormal. I was looking for her maybe having seen a UFO, or evidence of having had abduction experiences. That’s not at all what my question brought to her mind. What she began telling me was her terrifying experience with a Ouija board when she was a teenager, and it was her story that had sort of piqued my interest in it to begin with.
She had used it a few times. She told me how she had once asked the board if she’d ever get married, and what her husband’s name would be. It told her that she would be married twice and gave her the initials of both of them. She laughed at the thought of being married twice, and especially at the initials of her first husband, because they were the same as hers. She also laughed about having three children, one miscarriage. But it all came true, she told me, every bit of it.
That sort of freaked her out, but nothing compared to what happened one night -- the last night she’d ever use the Ouija. She had been in her friend’s attic, and they had been going about the usual routine of asking it questions, recieving answers, and blaming each other for moving the planchette. After awhile, they grew bored with it and stood up to leave the attic. Then they heard a noise. When they looked back at the board, they found the planchette moving erratically on the board at high speed, all by itself. She never used the board again and, having had the subject brought up in her mind, she then stressed her insistence that neither me nor either of my younger sisters ever bring one of them into the house, ever.
So, of course, I purchased a Ouija board.
I bought it from a friend of mine at school, stuck it in my book bag, and had my sisters hold onto it for me. We were all pretty curious. Though the board hadn’t given me much reliable, valuable information the first time I’d used it almost a full year before, I was getting pretty desperate at this time for any source of information beyond my bruised brain and the books I had been reading that might help answer the most fundamental of my questions. The Ouija board sounded as good an idea as anything else.
I knew little about the board back then, but since I’ve done some research. Apparently, the whole thing began in 1848, in a cabin in Hydesville, New York. Kate and Maggie Fox began communicating with what they believed to be the spirit of a deceased peddler, who at first communicated with them through knocks that merely indicated yes and no answers. More detailed conversation was soon desired, however, and an elaborate code system was developed by which certain knocks stood for certain letters of the alphabet. Hearing of this, others tried the same thing, gathering people in there homes to engage in elaborate Morse code with the Other Side. And so the Spiritualist movement began.
The reason this whole thing caught on is pretty obvious, once you think about it. Most cultures select, through their unique means, those who anthropologists call `shamans’ -- people given the role of communicating and interacting with the otherworld. Here in the Western culture, however, we have no such official role in society for such potential individuals. We could say the space has been filled by priests or psychologists, or that our potential shamans have been metaphorically burned at the stake under the categories of mental disorders such as schizophrenia. Regardless, here in the West, inspired by the Fox sisters, many have chosen to take on the role themselves and have direct contact with beings from that otherworld.
Our constant need for things to be better and faster soon took hold, however. The long and elaborate methods of knocks and raps became tiring and frustrating to many, and they sought a more direct and swift -- and less noisy -- means of communication. Many methods then came into fashion. Some fell into a trance and communicated with the entities in that fashion, through their minds. Others allowed themselves to `channel’ the beings; to be possessed by them for a limited amount of time for the purposes of communicating with others in the surrounding area. And then came a small device created, according to stories which cannot be validated, in 1853 by a French Spiritualist by the name of M. Planchette (French for `little plank’). The device, which came to be known as the planchette, was small and heart-shaped with three pencils attached to its legs.
By itself, the planchette seemed pretty useless, so many ditched the planchette for the pen. `Automatic writing’ was born, and has since been revived in the New Age movement as a form of channeling. It works like this: a trance medium would fall into a receptive, altered state of consciousness and allow herself to write spontaneously, without conscious editing. This began with the pen, went to the type-writer, and later even the canvas and keyboard. Most often, these writings were attributed to the works of the spirits. Sometimes, automatic writing was explained as the medium receiving messages from the spirit in her mind, which she then produced on the page. On other occasions, the spirit was said to be working through the medium’s hands. Through this method, many have produced books, novels, poetry, music and artwork that they attribute to the deceased or unearthly -- Ben Franklin, Jesus Christ, and even aliens borrow their hands. Quite often the medium did not even know what was being written, and the handwriting was noticeably different than her own. People who had a hard time drawing a stick figure where suddenly creating artwork that many critics have persisted are inarguably the style of the deceased artist the medium attributed it to.
Eventually, though, many came to interpret the material as having come from a secondary personality (which many attested must have had access to extrasensory perception and psychokinetic abilities) of the medium, usually locked in the unconscious mind, but now awakened and given space to express itself. For this reason, it was adopted later on as a creative tool -- and a therapeutic one. This form of writing was eventually picked up by Beatnicks and came to be known as `stream of consciousness.' Not knowing that it was an official style, I began automatic writing at about age sixteen, when I began seeing `aliens' and having flashbacks from my youth. It continued after my Ouija experience. It really did feel, to me, as if something else was running my fingers. Whatever it was, and is, there is no doubt in my mind it is the same thing `running' all my perceptual anomalies.
The planchette was revived by a coffin and cabinet maker by the name of EC Reiche. He created a small wooden board with the alphabet arranged in two arcs across the top of the board, numbers from one to ten below them, and at each bottom corner a `yes’ and a `no’ a `goodbye’ and a `maybe’. With this board he used the planchette, but he replaced the pencils with wooden pegs so the device was free to roam the surface of the board as two mediums placed their fingers upon it. Allegedly, he named the board the `Ouija’ (`we-ja’) because he received the word from a spirit through the board and had believed -- falsely -- that it was the Egyptian word for luck.
He eventually sold the Ouija to a friend of his, Charles Kennard, who then founded the Kennard Novelty Co. and began producing the boards around 1886. Shortly thereafter, William Fuld, the shop manager, made the decision to go into business for himself, forced Kennard out of the loop and changed its name to Ouija Novelty Co. He became a successful businessman and myth-maker. He claimed to have invented the board himself, started the rumor that the name `Ouija’ was a hybrid of the words for `yes’ in French (oui) and German (ja), and attributed much of his success to the guidance of the board itself. He remained in control of the company for the next 35 years, until 1927, when he plummeted to his death from the top of his Baltimore building. Until 1966 his heirs maintained the company, who then sold out to Parker Brothers, who currently hold all the trademarks and patents to the board and continue to produce it in mass quantities. The boards they manufacture still follow the original style, but now they got nifty ones that glow in the dark, too.
The board is quite easy to use. You just rest the board on the laps between two people and have them put their fingertips on the planchette. They then either wait for it to move or both begin jointly, lightly, swirling the planchette in a circular or figure-eight fashion on the board’s surface. They may state their goals or send an invitation. Through the board, people believe they’ve come into contact with the deceased, angels, demons, aliens -- you name it.
My sisters had not only been hiding it from my mother for me, they had been using it, and they seemed to be enjoying it. They told me how they had been talking to some guardian spirit watching over us who called himself Ed Fred. I had tried the board a few times in solitude and it had kind of scared me, but I decided that I wouldn’t believe it had anything to do with anything beyond my own brain until I had no other choice but to come to that conclusion.
It was on February 9 that my sisters and I gathered in my room to use the board together. For me, it would be the very last time. My sisters worked the board as I asked the questions. At first, I was very serious about it all. I asked the board if what I had seen were really aliens, and the board answered yes; the board also said there would be no new abductions until March. Then, however, my attitude changed. I had asked it a lot of questions, and some of them were questions I’d previously asked, only I asked them in a different fashion, and I received totally different answers. It was disappointing, to find all this to be a crock, and I started getting bitter and sarcastic. In the spirit of fun, no pun, I began asking it really cheesy questions. Then my sisters started laughing, and began asking sarcastic questions of their own. We were all treating it as a joke.
With one last drop of seriousness, I asked if my sister, Eve, was an abductee and if the aliens would be coming for her. It said yes. Then on a whim I asked if Eve’s eye, which she had been complaining had been hurting her earlier, had anything to do with the aliens. Ed Fred said yes.
I was in the process of rolling my eyes when Eve looked to the right, and I caught something that didn’t register right away. Linda caught it at the same time, though, and it registered a lot faster for her. She jumped. I looked back at Eve as it struck me what Linda and I had seen almost simultaneously: the big, bold, straight red cut on the white of Eve’s eye.
Stories of devices implanted into the bodies of abductees rushed through my mind. Had the existence of some intelligence behind the Ouija and the existence of the aliens been validated here in own fowl swoop? Absolutely not, I thought. It could just be coincidence. Or the entity speaking to us could be a poltergeist, and it could have cut Eve's eye itself. All I knew for certain was that Linda and I were entirely amazed and more than a little spooked. We just looked at each other, unable to say anything. Eve, by this point, obviously knew something was wrong and started to freak out. We tried to keep her calm as we told her about the cut on her eye. She was yelling at us and crying, saying that this wasn’t funny anymore. She stood up and said she wouldn’t play with the board ever again. She promised to calm down before leaving the room and not to tell mom, and Linda and I agreed to quit using it without argument. I eventually gave it to my cousin, Maddy. I kept watch on Eve’s room at night for the next week or so, during which time I heard a host of strange noises about the house. I kept a close eye on her room again in March, just to be sure.
By March, I was feeling pretty burned out by everything that had occurred since the dawn of the Winter season. I had by this time collected, on my own, a wide range of what seemed to be previously forgotten memories that stretched from the tragically mundane to the unspeakably bizarre. At first, I had sought clarity through books, then through a Ouija board. That just fed old questions further elaboration and spawned a hoard of new ones. It was around this time that the possibility finally began to sink it that I just might be going entirely insane, so I decided I was ready to go see a mental health professional.
When I approached my mom with this, she was, of course, all for it, and set up an appointment immediately. Though I’d previously seen at least three other social workers in my youth, this was the first psychiatrist I’d ever encountered. She was a skinny, wrinkly woman with a heavy German accent who insisted what I needed to do was to go outside more often to get some fresh air. She also told me to eat more fruit, save for bananas, because they don’t count. Perhaps she considered it cannibalism. Anyway, she threw me on 10 milligrams of this drug called Nortriptyline, and I began taking it on March third.
Considering the increased strangeness that occurred during this period, I did a bit of research on this drug years later. I found that Nortriptyline hydrochloride in the generic name for this drug, but it is also known under the brand names Aventyl and Pamekir. It is a tricyclic antidepressant (TCA), which means that raises the levels of neurotransmitters in the brain tissue that may be at abnormal levels and causing the condition of depression. At the same time, its a sedative that eases anxiety, restlessness, insomnia and chronic pain. The increase in neurochemicals may cause sleep and appetite to improve quickly, but it can take a month or two until the affects of the medication set in completely.
Not just affects, either, but side affects. The more common ones include feeling drowsy, dizzy, having blurred vision, feeling light-headed, having dry mouth, as well as experiencing constipation and the inability to urinate. If a person is already anxious, this drug may increase anxiety. It can amplify a present psychosis or awaken latent symptoms. It can cause symptoms of the manic phase to emerge in bipolar patients. Epileptiform seizures may also occur -- seizures known as idiopathic (medspeak for `I don’t have a fucking clue what’s causing this’) seizures. And if all of that isn’t bad enough, it can also put you at a higher risk for cavities. No joke. Now, life-threatening reactions to this drug include the following: dramatic changes in clear and logical thinking, fainting or dizziness, fever, itching, wheezing, bad coughing, a blue skin color and the swelling of the tongue, throat or face and pressure in the chest. Nowhere, however, does it mention strange dreams, out-of-body experiences or vicious attacks by non-corporeal entities, which is disappointing.
Nortriptyline comes in capsules of 10mg, 25mg, 50mg, and 75mg, and the dosage is specific to the patient. As with me, it is often taken just before bedtime to help you sleep.
The weirdness returned on the evening of March fourteenth, only eleven days after I began taking my happy zombie pills. I had been lying on my back in bed at the time, drifting in and out of sleep. This was rare behavior, I should note, for I’d been afraid to sleep on my back since childhood. I’d always gotten bad dreams when I slept that way. Apparently it still worked that way, though at the beginning it just gave birth to an interesting and unusual sensation. As I was lying there, I kept feeling the sensation of being lifted up out of my body and out of my bedroom window, always ending back up in my body seconds later. I didn’t believe I was actually floating in physical or spirit form, it was just an odd sensation I was curious about. I tried to control the experience, and felt that I could control how I floated somewhat. After awhile I grew bored with that and began to drift off mentally.
Then my attention returned threefold. I suddenly became acutely aware of an odd presence in my room. I found I couldn’t move. Then it got incredibly worse: I felt someone crawling atop my body, putting her knees at the sides of my rib cage. It was straddling me, and soon enough I sensed movement. I still couldn’t move, I couldn’t even open my eyes, but I did my damnedest to struggle and fight the paralysis so I could throw this thing off me. Whatever it was, the entity was pushing something over my face that made it hard for me to breath. I got the sense that it was a tank of some kind. It was then that my consciousness seemed to dislocate, and I got this weird image in my head. I was looking out through a porthole at a swampy area or marsh full of trees and muck. At the same time, I could still feel this thing on top of me, and I struggled to pull out of these images in my head and regain control over my body. I seemed to have some limited success. I no longer had the sensation of the tank being on my face, but the creature was now pushing it’s hands on my chest, making it harder and harder for me to breath. It was suffocating me. Then it put it’s knees on my chest and pushed down harder and harder. I couldn’t move or breathe. I tried to open my eyes to see the thing, to fight it, to try and ask for mercy or something -- but I blacked out for what seemed to have been just a moment and woke up. As suddenly and inexplicably as the experience had begun, it had ended.
I wrote the experience down the best I could, regained my composure, and eventually went to sleep. I was fucking exhausted.
The next morning when I awoke, I looked at my notebook. I was most certainly confused. For one, the entry I’d made from the night before had a peculiar nature about it. After my documentation of the experience, which I remembered writing, I had wrote that this sensation had `also happened at around four in the morning’. So apparently it had happened not once, but twice. That was the first strange thing. The second was that I had written down the time just before beginning that sentence, and the time was 1:31 AM. This presents a problem, as it implies that I had written of the first and second experiences roughly two-and-a-half hours prior to the first experience. Then, another problem presented itself: I had logged out at the bottom of the entry at 1:18 AM. As a rule, you can’t log out of something before you’ve logged in, especially so when you’re documenting two experiences an hour and a half before the first experience occurred. Apparently I had no respect for linear progression.
There was one more strange element in all this, however. In the margin by my entry I found an odd drawing. I knew I must have drawn it during, prior, or after the odd experience, but I didn’t <i>remember</i> drawing it at all. It was a circle with two elongated crescents to the top and bottom. Some of my friends think it looks like an eye.
All that kind of freaked me out. I had thought that medication would make all this weird shit stop, maybe clear up my mind so I could answer some of my questions, but now my problems just had another layer. Now I didn’t know if these new experiences were drug-induced, amplifying the symptoms of a previously-diseased mind, or were simply having no effect whatsoever. Taking them just seemed to add questions, not subtract them, and that was the last thing I wanted. So I wasted no time informing my mother that I was having second thoughts about the medication. She said to just give it a try, and I insisted that I had. She gave me a condescending laugh and told me that it had only been a little over a week since I’d first began taking the meds and that I shouldn’t be getting any effects yet. I wanted to argue, but I knew I’d have to bring up what had happened that night, so I let it drop. I took matters into my own hands and started skipping days in-between taking my medication without her knowledge. I did it slowly so I could minimize any potential side-affects.
So, what exactly was behind all this -- behind the Ouija and this `thing' that had straddled me that evening?
Some claim it has to do with `evil spirits’. It is frequently recommended, even persisted, that you do not use the Ouija board alone as I had. According to some, using it at all put one to great risk, especially if the person in question is already receptive to the world of the strange. For instance, a strong warning came from Edgar Cayce in regards to the Ouija. He had received letters numbering in the thousands from people who had used the board and found it to be a catalyst for the full spectrum of paranormal phenomena, including poltergeist activity, out-of-body experiences, astral projection, psychic vampirism and possession. These people believed that by using the board to communicate with spirits on the `other side’ you establish a link and open a portal that allows them to affect you and perhaps even the world around you. Parents and religious groups claimed that through the medium of the Ouija malevolent spirits have been capable of manipulating the minds and possessing the bodies of teenagers, causing emotional damage and in many cases suicide. I knew none of this when I first used the board, and would have believed none of it, and still don’t buy into it completely. It seems silly to me that a piece of cardboard could be considered to make all that much of a difference, but who am I to say? I knew nothing of these allegations, and sure, strange things had been occurring far before I’d bought the board, but things from then on got incredibly weirder.
Others believe the Ouija is guided by the unconscious, autonomous parts of the mind; that the planchette moved by the combined unconscious force or `synergy’ between the people using the board. In 1952, William B. Carpenter invented the term `ideomotor effect’, which refers to the ability of the unconscious mind to influence or control our muscular movements in an involuntary, autonomous fashion. He believed parts of our minds operating outside our conscious awareness were able to guide our motor actions in order to fulfill our expectations and also to resonate with the movements of other people through subliminally picking up subtle cues in their body language. He used the ideomotor effect to explain the phenomena experienced by those who used dowsing rods, pendulums, and, among other things, Ouija boards. He claimed that these people may find it difficult to accept that the ideomotor responses are reflecting unconscious portions of their personality because what they come into contact with they may find frightening. They therefore find psychological security in attributing it all to evil spirits. Others agree that the unconscious is at the root of it all, but add that there may be a telepathic, precognitive and psychokinetic component to it as well, which would explain some of the stranger stories, including my mother's. Another possible theory is that the joint and focused concentration of those using the board activates an unconscious psychokinetic ability in the users which inspire paranormal phenomena which validate their belief structures or opens a portal to the other side.
One thing was for certain, and it was this: if having sudden flashbacks of encounters I had beginning a decade ago with creatures I felt certain were extraterrestrial didn’t alone prove that I was a head case, being attacked by an evil spirit in my sleep did the trick. Or was that thing really an alien getting it on with me? Or were the aliens I saw really evil spirits? Who the fuck knew? Perhaps it had to do with that fucking Ouija board. Perhaps when I had used it alone, it had gained possession of my body, and the medication had made me more susceptible to it’s influence. Maybe whatever entity was behind the board was the same entity that straddled me that night. Maybe by letting it use my hand to move the planchette, it was able to take control of my hand so it could draw that picture in the margins of my notebook.
I began getting more worried about what I’d been remembering and experiencing, so in order to sort through my fragmented memories, I had eventually typed up the summation of what had been happening to me under an apt title, `Confusion.’ I began passing it around to select people in hopes that someone might understand me, talk about it with me, or perhaps be able to shed some light on whatever the fuck was wrong with me.
I was almost convinced I was alone in this insanity until I walked in the art room on March 19, and saw an illustration hanging on the far wall that totally blew me away. I had frequently seen alien-like images depicted in the art room, and all of them weren’t my own, but what I saw hanging on the wall that day totally blew me away. The drawing was done in pencil and charcoal and depicted very skinny, humanoid beings huddled closely together in the corner of a hallway. All their eyes, large, round and glowing, stared straight ahead, poking out of their oversized craniums and right into you. It sent chills threw me. It was terrifyingly beautiful. The artist was Marty Eston, brother of the beautiful Myra Eston, a girl in my grade who I sat next to in botany class. She was a dark little girl, and had quite a bit of a temper. For that reason, I was glad to find that I had successfully remained on her good side since the dawn of high school. She had a particular interest in vampires -- though obsession is probably a better term -- and a bit of interest in the paranormal in general. One day after I’d seen what her brother had drawn, I mentioned it to her in the subtlest way I could and commented on how eerie it was. She agreed without hesitation, and when I asked her whether she knew his source of inspiration, she sort of let out a nervous laugh and shook her head. Apparently her brother had seen a vision of it while on an acid trip gone wrong one night at home and it had really freaked him out. He was scared as hell when he saw it, and decided to draw it because simply explaining it didn’t cut it.
I thought perhaps she could at least appreciate the paranormal occurrences I'd been experiencing due to her preexisting dark-natured mindset, so I tossed her a copy of my story. A while later, as I was in the library and she was reading it in the far back, she came up to me with a wild look in her eyes, holding my story tightly in her hands. “Tim, do you know what you just described here?”
I didn’t know what she was talking about. “Which part?”
She pointed to the experience I had with the entity on top of me, pushing down on my chest. “That’s the Old Hag.”
I asked her to repeat herself, as I was a bit confused. Then she began to explain. She had some information on it - I believe it was a photocopied passage out of a book - and I nearly shit my pants. What I read fit the details of my experience to a tee. Attacks from the old hag are experienced, according to some modern research, from fifteen percent of the adult population worldwide. The characteristics of the attacks each person experiences can vary, but the general pattern is rather consistent. While in bed, the person finds himself unable to move. He might hear strange noises or sense movement, but he always feels a distinct presence in the room. Oftentimes he sees a figure, such as a shadow or an old woman (hence the label, `old hag’) which one often interprets as `evil’, malevolent or threatening. He find this figure straddling him, pressing on his chest with building pressure and making it ever-more difficult for him to breath. He struggles and tries to scream and move, but all efforts prove to be futile. He fears he might be dying, or might pass out. Before that occurs, however, he usually finds himself awake; shaken but alive, the experience over as soon as it had begun. Sometimes, however, it can lead to an out-of-body experience.
I now knew for certain now that it wasn’t all in my head, or in the least not only in my head, because others had had the same experience as well. The experiences aren’t limited to people with any sort of social status or intelligence and it certainly isn’t limited to Nortriptyline zombies. The phenomenon is apparently quite common, and has occurred cross-culturally for centuries under many different names. I was absolutely amazed at the wealth of material I found on it when I started looking.
Those residing in St. Lucia, West Indies, are haunted by the spirit of a dead infant ghost called Kohma, who leaps on the chests of people as they are just falling asleep or getting up and tries to suffocate them. Thailand has its Phi Um (`ghost covered’) and Phi Kau (`ghost possessed’) in which black beings cover the body and paralyze the victim. In the Far North they have their Ukomiarik (Yupik) and Agumangia (Inupik), spirits who attempt to take over the bodies of immobilized victims. The Czech have their Muera. The Polish have their Zmora. Japan has its Kanashibari (`tied down’ or `tightly bound’). Russia has its Kikimora. France has their Cauchmar (`trampling ogre’). The Old English have their Mare, also known as Mab, Mair, Mare-hag, as well as their Hagge, which is also known as the Hegge, Haegtesse, Haegtisse, or Haegte. The Greek have their Ephialtes (`one who leaps upon’), their Mora (the night-mare or ogre), and their Lamai, as well as the Pnigalion (`the choker’) and the Babrychnas (`the heavy breather’) that attacked people as they slept. Old Norse have their Mara. Newfoundland has their Ag Rog (`old hag’). The Spanish have their Pesadilla. In Mexico they call it subida del muerto, which means `the dead getting on top’. The Hmong of Laos has its Tsog (`evil spirit’), dab (`nightmare’) or Tsog Tsuam, an evil spirit that smothers, crushes, or puts pressure upon its victims. Even in China AD 30 we find the phenomenon, which is there called the Gui Ya (`ghost possession’). The Germans believed in a host of entities, such as elves known as the Alpdruck, the Nachtmahr, and the witches known as the Hexendrucken, all of whom were thought to be responsible for these hag attacks. They also believed in the Mare, which is where our word `nightmare’ derived from, and the Latin word for nightmare is incubo (or incubare), which means `to lie upon’. The most recent manifestation of this, some say, are the aliens or alien-human hybrids some say are doing the dirty deed with supposed abductees.
What explains this phenomenon, however? Many scientists, including Al Cheyne at the University of Waterloo’s Department of Psychology, believe that sleep paralysis -- specifically, Hallucinatory Sleep Paralysis -- explains the Old Hag phenomenon completely. The phenomenon is rather interesting, to say the least: while in a state of REM sleep, the body naturally releases hormones that immobilize the muscles and prevents the individual from harming themselves or others by acting out their dreams. These hormones usually fade off prior to awakening, but it is possible for a person to gain awareness while the hormones still have effect. Often but not always able to open the eyes, the paralyzed individual leis there, unable to speak or move but awake none the less.
Now, why might this kind of thing occur? The fact that Japanese research indicates that sleep paralysis seems to be caused by stress, interrupted sleep patterns, a loss of control in one’s life, and anxiety (and fear of death specifically) all seem to indicate that sleep paralysis may be a form of `tonic immobility’ still latent in us. This is the instinctual reaction some animals have in which they imitate their own death in order to ward off enemies. It’s that automatic response to fear that we often refer to as `playing possum’; the third option we leave out when we talk of fight-or-flight. We all know that sleep and dreaming is often a form of escape from the worries of one’s life; stress may trigger the `tonic immobility’ as a natural means of defense, deepening the sleep. While the body is mimicking the dead as a defense measure, however, the mind suddenly becomes awake -- but unlike it’s waking state out of normal sleep, the body does not switch back on along with it. So then the person panics, trying to breath as he regularly does when the body is still trying to maintain the shallow breathing that is natural from dreaming consciousness -- and as a result, the person would experience this resistance as pressure on the chest and lungs.
A few things may then happen. It is known from studies in sensory deprivation that when a waking individual is deprived from objective stimulus, one does not, as once assumed, slip into a coma. To the contrary, awareness may heighten. And another strange thing occurs: the mind `compensates’ for the lack of sense data. This data can lead to imagery or hallucinations of all the senses which are common to such hynagogic (twilight state just prior to sleep) and hynopompic (twilight state just prior to awakening) states: sensing a presence, seeing visions, hearing noises, seeing lights or shadows. It can even get more extreme, to the point that the individual has the experience of being detached from one’s body and totally within the context of that hallucination. The strange thing about it is that this world that the mind creates for the perceiver has all the qualities of the normal, external reality: we have not only sensations such as noise, taste, touch, sight and smell, but a sense of location, of dimension, of duration. So the assumption here seems to be that the sensation of pressure on the chest, mixed with the perceiver’s need for an explanation for this sensation, mixed with the necessity of the mind to compensate for the lack of sense data with a full-sensory hallucination, results in the mind creating the totally convincing hallucinatory experience of the `old hag’ in order to satisfy the perceiver’s need for an explanation for his circumstances.
A comforting conclusion, considering the crazy and much more deeply disturbing alternatives, but I must admit its not totally satisfying. This `reality’ that mind spins together on a moment’s notice is totally convincing, and if you take some time to ponder about it after such an experience, you begin to wonder just what element makes the `normal’ world so real and this `otherworld’ so fictitious. In the very least, you gain great respect for the parts of your mind you do not consciously govern; approximating the very most, you begin to question your fundamental assumptions on the nature of what you once considered reality. The thing is, the only difference between the real world and this imaginal otherworld seems to be the laws that govern each -- and though the laws between the worlds, after long enough, are revealed to be quite different, they remain consistent within the respective space of the world in question. So eventually you clear the bullshit away and at the core the question comes to be: why could these worlds not simply be different kinds of external reality? Could it not be a matter of reality and fantasy, but of different kinds of real?
You settle on this: until someone else comes up to you one day and describes in detail the experience you and her shared on the other side, outside your physical bodies, you have no real sound reason to believe this is anything more than a construction of your own warped mind. Even then, there is the alternate possibility of telepathy.
Sleep paralysis seems to be the best bet for explanation. I was even the right age. Japanese research has revealed through several studies that sleep paralysis occurs most often for males in late teens, and in the mid-teens for females. The experience can last up to eight minutes, but such an experience will also give you a good idea of how subjective time perception really is -- for an hour of subjective time, when the mind is dissociated from the body to such a degree, can be squeezed into five minutes of real-time. Or, as in my experience, it can fuck up your sense of time completely. But is their any real danger in this experience? Not according to the `experts'. It doesn't imply psychosis, though all my experiences taken together certainly would. And though little is known about sleep paralysis, experts such as Cheyne insist that regardless as to how frightening it is, one cannot die from it -- though how one would go rounding up statistics on people who had died from the experience is beyond me. Interview via Ouija board, perhaps?
What the `experts' tell us, though, still wouldn’t explain the experience that seems to be so universal: being straddled and smothered by a demonic, feminine entity. Whatever it was that rode me that night seemed to be female, but at the same time inhuman, and it inspired a reaction of fear in me, and of suffocation, of death, of the total terror of vulnerability to a force beyond my control. If this was a manifestation of my unconscious and nothing more, why would such a thing manifest in such a way, and in such a similar way to so many people throughout the world, and throughout history?
If we take the perspective of Carl Jung, there would be two major sources of information from which the mind would construct our convincing hallucinatory experience under sleep paralysis. The first is what he calls the personal unconscious, where all of the remaining beliefs, expectations, associations, and emotions we’ve accumulated throughout our life is stored. This does not account for the similarity in subjective and personal experiences over time and space, however. For that, we would have to turn towards his concept of the collective unconscious -- a concept of his which is largely misunderstood. He described the collective unconscious (or `objective psyche’) as the sum of all the archetypes, which he originally defined as the hereditary, instinctual patterning forces that arrange mental contents and to which cultural images are often attached.
Archetypes, he said, are no more miraculous or `spooky’ as instincts which arrange behavior. And the instincts of some species are very elaborate. They take on extremely structured and purposeful activities without ever being taught, do these activities perhaps once in their lives, and die. If such elaborate behaviors can be transmitted through the DNA of species generation of generation, why not solely psychological patterns as well? This was at the core of Jung’s argument, and as evidence for the archetypes of the collective unconscious he cited the many myths, works of art, hallucinations and dreams that occurred to cultures throughout history which had no known way of communication with each other. The Old Hag may certainly be a manifestation of one of these instinctual patterning forces.
The characteristics of my Old Hag experience centered around a common theme: the dominating demon straddling me, the porthole in which I was suffocating, the marsh or swamp I perceived through the porthole -- all these images ring of suffocation, being `swamped’, drowned, immobilized, overwhelmed, overpowered, controlled, dominated.
What links all the phenomena -- the hag attack during sleep paralysis, the drawing I made in my dream diary that I didn’t remember drawing, my stream-of-consciousness `automatic writing’, the use of the Ouija board by my sisters and I, the sleep-walking and out-of-body experiences I would have down the road and a dozen other things -- is the theme of a dissociated, autonomous portions of my mind. There were parts of me that were not conscious, and which would then be sensible to label as `unconscious’, if not for the fact that they acted just as if they were conscious and had a will and personality of their own. In time I would see these split-off portions of myself manifest in my artwork, in my writing, in my dreams, in my hallucinations, and in my projections. If we are at odd against our instincts, and thoughts, feelings and images we associate with those instincts, this may add up to an unconscious personality which compensates for our lack of conscious recognition and actualization of these aspects of ourselves. In dreams, waking dreams, and hallucinations we may meet up with this cut-off portion of ourselves in the most direct manner possible. Our resistance to it would feed its persistence; our fear and sense of weakness would give it more power and courage -- it would be draining our vitality, like a psychic leech, a spiritual parasite. It would take on characteristics of the vampire or werewolf.
So here I’ve come closer to an explanation. It becomes apparent that the physiological sensations of resistance to breathing would result in a feeling of suffocation, the feeling of paralysis would lead to panic, the lack of sense data would lead to the unconscious filling in the blanks -- and this would lead to a convincing hallucinatory experience which, even if terrifying, at least provides an explanation for the sensations: the illusion of a cause. It still does not answer the question as to why I didn’t hallucinate a boulder on my chest, or a huge frog, or a bowling ball, or even a female just sitting on me. It still doesn’t tell me why I hallucinated some female demon dry-fucking me and trying to suffocate me in the process.
The question comes down to: why a <i>woman</i>?
History and myth have certainly helped to evolve this fearful, demonic image of woman. When the image of the pagan mother goddess was demonized by the early Catholic Church, woman became demonized. That may have certainly added an extra layer of association with evil to the female in the minds of men, but it certainly didn’t begin there -- the women as a symbol of temptation away from higher ideals is seen in the myth of Buddha as well as Christ. Woman has been associated with the moon and the night, and therefore the part of our lives enshrouded in darkness. Woman was seen as representing, in many cases, the entirety of the unconscious, as the night is when most people sleep and dream, a time when men and women have sex, which is an act that was also demonized by the church. Femme fatale legends often emphasize the feminine power of sexual temptation and transformation who uses her insatiable sexual appetite to drain the life out of the souls of her lovers.
In the Medieval time period, these experiences were ascribed to evil spirits and demons called the incubus, from the same Latin word for nightmare, and the female counterpart was known as the Succubus. Though the Succubus is female in meaning, in Latin it is the masculine form of the word. The female form of the demon is `succuba’. The rationale for using the word `succubus’ was apparently due to the fact that the demons were supposed to be sexless, which, of course, would raise questions as to how they’d go about doing all their hanky-panky. The answer may come in that the incubus and succubus were believed to be shape-shifters. They were able to take on the appearance of anything from one’s significant other to their favorite pet, and even transform themselves into smoke so they could move through spaces so tight as a crack in the wall. That’s not all, however. They were said to lie on people at night and, as their victims were asleep, have sexual intercourse with them. The theory was that the incubus stole semen from the man and then, shape-shifting itself into its female counterpart, the succubus, it inseminated the sperm in another female. (And this, the story goes, was why certain nuns got pregnant -- the priests had nothing to do with it, really.)
These demons were often thought to be the familiars of a sorcerer or witch, and when they were they were known as magistellus. Oftentimes, however, the demons were even thought to be the witches or sorcerers themselves. And on other occasions, sorcerers or witches were thought to be the result of the vertical hokey-pokey between an incubus and a human. As the stories go in medieval European folklore, if a woman gets pregnant by an incubus, the child she bears will have all the appearances of a normal, human child but will possess supernatural powers and grow into an evil wizard. In fact, this is the supposed origins of the most famous wizards of myth, Merlin, who came into existence as the result of an incubus copulating with a nun. So in Christian eyes, penguin plus demon equals wizard. I can’t understand this math much more than the type they tried to ingrain in my head during high school, but its much more amusing. Also, its interesting to note that the incubus and succubus demons derive from the Bible, and that the word `demon’ itself derives from the Greek `daemon’, which means `intelligent’. Ignorance isn’t only bliss, then, but apparently the only means of achieving the status of good and getting into the Christian heaven.
There are Biblically-based myths based on the origins of the incubi, and they derive from the Hebrew scriptures, which put a nice twist on the tales in King James Bible, exposing this elaborate, sexually-laden soap opera porno. One myth, for instance, offers that the incubi were descendants of Cain, who was himself supposedly the offspring of `special moments’ held between Eve and the serpent of the Genesis fame. Apparently snakey-pooh coerced her into partaking of more than just fruit off a tree, if you catch my meaning.
A much more interesting myth, however, explains the incubi as descendants of Adam and his first wife, before Eve. This is, according to Hebrew scriptures, Lilith, the first succubus. She was purportedly brought into being by their god from the `filth’ and `mud’ for the purposes of giving Adam something to dominate and tinker around with. How nice of the Hebrew god, to give Adam a sex slave. Things went awry, however. Due to her feminist nature, which the all-knowing god could not apparently precognate, she denied Adam, swore vengeance on any future children he might have, and relocated to a cave in the vicinity of the Red Sea, leaving man to think for the very first time, “wow, what a bitch.” There, in her hide-out, is where Lilith supposedly went about getting nookie from hordes of nasty demons, which I must confess I find strangely arousing. The Hebrew god then sent three angels to her by the names of Sanvi, Sansanvi, and Semangelaf. Say that three times fast. When she refused the demands of the angels that she go back with them, a pact was made in which she swore that she would cease attacking any of Adam’s descendants if they had the names of these three angels somewhere in the vicinity. Those ascribing to belief in this story would therefore write the three names in a circle on the ceiling above where their infant’s crib lay as a means of protection. Lilith was said to lurk in the night hours, hungry for the sex of man and for the flesh of children. You've got to admit, that's one hell of a diet.
She apparently favored killing children by means of strangulation, and often left behind one of her own demon babies in place of the one she’d taken; they were known as `lilin’. According to Hebrew mythology, for instance, the lilin has enormous sex appeal and a taste for murder, with the objectives to steal the vitality of people and leave them feeling drained and empty. This theme, tying together sex, death and vampirism, is prominent in many of these old hag stories and experiences. I also got the feeling of being drained by the entity straddling me -- as if it wasn’t only trying to smother me, but leech off my remaining vitality. Common side effects of being a victim of as vampire are supposed to be extreme bouts of exhaustion which have no apparent cause.
Old hag attacks are often associated with the so-called vampire attacks, specifically `psychic’ vampirism, where the disembodied entity feeds off the human energy field rather than blood. In occult and paranormal circles, it is sometimes believed that libido, the sexual energy, is just another manifestation of chi or ka or whatever one wishes to call the energy that supposedly permeates the universe -- or that this energy is primarily sexual in nature. Jung’s concept of the libido differed from Freud’s original concept in that he believed the libido was not sexual energy; he used the term to stand for psychological energy, of which sexual desire is merely one manifestation. However one takes it, it seems the sexual libido is able to manifest in other fashions.
In paranormal circles, some have tied the Old Hag phenomenon to poltergeist activity. Poltergeist (German for `noisy ghost’) is a term used to describe a haunting in which the entity is mischievous in nature and proceeds to move and hide objects, make loud noises. They are basically perceived as mischievous ghosts who seem to `live’ for scaring the hell out of people and fucking with their minds; kind of like disembodied terrorists from the netherworld. A factor that became very important in the minds of some parapsychologists was that the poltergeist activity was usually focused around a small child, usually a young girl, who was going through the emotional-rollercoaster of an experience known as puberty. Rather than the child being the focus of a ghost, many have come to believe that the poltergeist activity may in fact be caused by unconscious and autonomous psychokinetic abilities. She is, in effect, unconsciously `acting out’ through psychokinesis. The libido needs an outlet, and since it is repressed it is out of control of the youngster and guided by his or her unconscious forces. Some believe that unconscious use of psychokinesis is just an extension of our psychosomatic abilities, where the mind can have an effect on the physical body, such as in hysterical blindness. Jung often found psychosomatic illness to be symbolic. The difference is that when you add psychokinesis into the mix, one can explain `stigmata’ and the bruises, bite marks and scratch marks often found on people who are plagued by poltergeist activity. When frustration rises in the child, poltergeist activity rises; when the child has outgrown puberty, the phenomena ceases.
It seems, then, that sexual energy -- libido, Freud would call it -- can manifest as psychokinetic energy. Then when this energy does not have an outlet and is repressed or died, it comes to be in the hands of our often child-like, autonomous unconscious, who finds an outlet for it through psychokinesis.
It is also believed that the sexual libido are manifestations of a force or energy that can be transferred from one person to another. The life force of a person was thought to be transferred by many means. Through this, the old or weak can draw the life force from the young or strong -- and the dead can draw from the living, and the real, perhaps, from the imaginary. One such way was thought to be skin-to-skin contact. So, for instance, you have King David, who, as a geezer, often slept with a young virgin. You have Emperor Barbarossa, who held young boys against his genitals and tummy in the hopes that he might draw in their energy. You have Pope Innocent VIII, who had young and healthy children to touch him for the purposes of giving him the gift of their energy. Another medium for this life force was thought to be blood: drinking or bathing in it would bring one youth and power. Vampiric themes may be prominent because they are manifestations of our desire for power and immortality -- and, consequently, our fear of vulnerability and the inevitability of death. The long-held view that vampirism (and being a werewolf) is contagious may stem from the fact that once a person is deprived of their life force, it creates a sort of psychic vacuum, and the person is forced to draw energy from others in order to sustain existence -- and often the original vampire returns to collect this energy. Perhaps what this tells us is that our desire for power and immorality, and our fear of vulnerability and death, is so intense that we’re willing to pay the price of being a parasite wholly dependent on its host for the purposes of survival.
Or perhaps as humans, our highly-developed psychology and what we have done with it has put sort of a wall between our sense of self and our instincts; we have created self-concepts, values, ideals, and perspectives of the world that put us at odds with our primal drives. This has caused a fundamental split in us -- a split that could give rise to the ego’s antithesis, the Shadow, and the persona’s antithesis, the anima (for men, anyway). And this may be a reason why throughout history and myth, woman has inspired in men -- and often women herself -- a certain fear. The sight of a woman inspires a primal impulse that threatens our sense of self-control and self-sufficiency and, in the meantime, gives us uncomfortable visions of our own mortality.
Jung spoke of the anima: the feminine principal in man. We come to associate certain parts of ourselves -- typically (though times are changing) in our culture things such as compassion, sensitivity, and intimacy with nature -- with the oppsite sex, and fail to identify and actualize these aspects, nessesarily projecting these characteristics away from ourselves and onto certain members of the opposite sex. They may also manifest as charatcers in dreams, stories, artwork, hallucinations. Our relations with the opposite sex, then, illustrates our relation with the unactualized portions of ourselves. We have made an internal situation an external one. Though we may inherit much of the anima, and find this part of her in myths and legends, she is ultimately unique and personalized for each of us.
The truth of the matter is that, at least on a genetic level, men are dependent on woman to survive. Though we cannot be given immortality by any known means, sex is our only hope at achieving some genetic immortality -- genetically, sex is our only defense against death. This could explain quite a bit.
Especially in our current patriarchal culture, the male is conditioned to expect out of himself a certain power and ability to control at all times, for the rule is to conquer or be conquered; to control or be controlled. With sex, then, there comes a certain contradiction in man, for to be sexual (at least in an orgasmic sense) means to relinquish that control, to let go, to trust, to be vulnerable. This sets man’s conditioned persona against man’s instinctual drives; it may inspire a deep fear of the female who, through his desire for her, controls him, has power over him. As a result, he senses a certain evil in her, a suspicion, a fear of being dominated, bound, suffocated and overwhelmed -- and at the same time that these things inspire fear in him, they may... turn him on. And so this fear may be projected in the `old hag’ experience.
In the twilight state on the border of sleeping and waking, were conscious and unconscious have equal footing, the conscious mind meets with the intense desires it has but fears like death, and the female image it needs but demonizes. Perhaps the act that is so common in the meeting throughout time and space symbolizes a certain need for resolution -- for the reconciliation of these opposites.
Or perhaps sometimes even ghosts and aliens need to get laid.
by Rewired
Things were pretty weird already when I was sixteen, and then I talked with a poltergeist through a Ouija board, got on antidepressants, and finally got dry-fucked by a female demon in my sleep. All brought on by the resistance to instincts and the fear of death.
Perhaps that’s jumping a bit ahead, however.
I guess the core of this story really starts in early February, 1995, when I had asked my mother if she’d ever had anything strange occur to her that could be classified as paranormal. I was looking for her maybe having seen a UFO, or evidence of having had abduction experiences. That’s not at all what my question brought to her mind. What she began telling me was her terrifying experience with a Ouija board when she was a teenager, and it was her story that had sort of piqued my interest in it to begin with.
She had used it a few times. She told me how she had once asked the board if she’d ever get married, and what her husband’s name would be. It told her that she would be married twice and gave her the initials of both of them. She laughed at the thought of being married twice, and especially at the initials of her first husband, because they were the same as hers. She also laughed about having three children, one miscarriage. But it all came true, she told me, every bit of it.
That sort of freaked her out, but nothing compared to what happened one night -- the last night she’d ever use the Ouija. She had been in her friend’s attic, and they had been going about the usual routine of asking it questions, recieving answers, and blaming each other for moving the planchette. After awhile, they grew bored with it and stood up to leave the attic. Then they heard a noise. When they looked back at the board, they found the planchette moving erratically on the board at high speed, all by itself. She never used the board again and, having had the subject brought up in her mind, she then stressed her insistence that neither me nor either of my younger sisters ever bring one of them into the house, ever.
So, of course, I purchased a Ouija board.
I bought it from a friend of mine at school, stuck it in my book bag, and had my sisters hold onto it for me. We were all pretty curious. Though the board hadn’t given me much reliable, valuable information the first time I’d used it almost a full year before, I was getting pretty desperate at this time for any source of information beyond my bruised brain and the books I had been reading that might help answer the most fundamental of my questions. The Ouija board sounded as good an idea as anything else.
I knew little about the board back then, but since I’ve done some research. Apparently, the whole thing began in 1848, in a cabin in Hydesville, New York. Kate and Maggie Fox began communicating with what they believed to be the spirit of a deceased peddler, who at first communicated with them through knocks that merely indicated yes and no answers. More detailed conversation was soon desired, however, and an elaborate code system was developed by which certain knocks stood for certain letters of the alphabet. Hearing of this, others tried the same thing, gathering people in there homes to engage in elaborate Morse code with the Other Side. And so the Spiritualist movement began.
The reason this whole thing caught on is pretty obvious, once you think about it. Most cultures select, through their unique means, those who anthropologists call `shamans’ -- people given the role of communicating and interacting with the otherworld. Here in the Western culture, however, we have no such official role in society for such potential individuals. We could say the space has been filled by priests or psychologists, or that our potential shamans have been metaphorically burned at the stake under the categories of mental disorders such as schizophrenia. Regardless, here in the West, inspired by the Fox sisters, many have chosen to take on the role themselves and have direct contact with beings from that otherworld.
Our constant need for things to be better and faster soon took hold, however. The long and elaborate methods of knocks and raps became tiring and frustrating to many, and they sought a more direct and swift -- and less noisy -- means of communication. Many methods then came into fashion. Some fell into a trance and communicated with the entities in that fashion, through their minds. Others allowed themselves to `channel’ the beings; to be possessed by them for a limited amount of time for the purposes of communicating with others in the surrounding area. And then came a small device created, according to stories which cannot be validated, in 1853 by a French Spiritualist by the name of M. Planchette (French for `little plank’). The device, which came to be known as the planchette, was small and heart-shaped with three pencils attached to its legs.
By itself, the planchette seemed pretty useless, so many ditched the planchette for the pen. `Automatic writing’ was born, and has since been revived in the New Age movement as a form of channeling. It works like this: a trance medium would fall into a receptive, altered state of consciousness and allow herself to write spontaneously, without conscious editing. This began with the pen, went to the type-writer, and later even the canvas and keyboard. Most often, these writings were attributed to the works of the spirits. Sometimes, automatic writing was explained as the medium receiving messages from the spirit in her mind, which she then produced on the page. On other occasions, the spirit was said to be working through the medium’s hands. Through this method, many have produced books, novels, poetry, music and artwork that they attribute to the deceased or unearthly -- Ben Franklin, Jesus Christ, and even aliens borrow their hands. Quite often the medium did not even know what was being written, and the handwriting was noticeably different than her own. People who had a hard time drawing a stick figure where suddenly creating artwork that many critics have persisted are inarguably the style of the deceased artist the medium attributed it to.
Eventually, though, many came to interpret the material as having come from a secondary personality (which many attested must have had access to extrasensory perception and psychokinetic abilities) of the medium, usually locked in the unconscious mind, but now awakened and given space to express itself. For this reason, it was adopted later on as a creative tool -- and a therapeutic one. This form of writing was eventually picked up by Beatnicks and came to be known as `stream of consciousness.' Not knowing that it was an official style, I began automatic writing at about age sixteen, when I began seeing `aliens' and having flashbacks from my youth. It continued after my Ouija experience. It really did feel, to me, as if something else was running my fingers. Whatever it was, and is, there is no doubt in my mind it is the same thing `running' all my perceptual anomalies.
The planchette was revived by a coffin and cabinet maker by the name of EC Reiche. He created a small wooden board with the alphabet arranged in two arcs across the top of the board, numbers from one to ten below them, and at each bottom corner a `yes’ and a `no’ a `goodbye’ and a `maybe’. With this board he used the planchette, but he replaced the pencils with wooden pegs so the device was free to roam the surface of the board as two mediums placed their fingers upon it. Allegedly, he named the board the `Ouija’ (`we-ja’) because he received the word from a spirit through the board and had believed -- falsely -- that it was the Egyptian word for luck.
He eventually sold the Ouija to a friend of his, Charles Kennard, who then founded the Kennard Novelty Co. and began producing the boards around 1886. Shortly thereafter, William Fuld, the shop manager, made the decision to go into business for himself, forced Kennard out of the loop and changed its name to Ouija Novelty Co. He became a successful businessman and myth-maker. He claimed to have invented the board himself, started the rumor that the name `Ouija’ was a hybrid of the words for `yes’ in French (oui) and German (ja), and attributed much of his success to the guidance of the board itself. He remained in control of the company for the next 35 years, until 1927, when he plummeted to his death from the top of his Baltimore building. Until 1966 his heirs maintained the company, who then sold out to Parker Brothers, who currently hold all the trademarks and patents to the board and continue to produce it in mass quantities. The boards they manufacture still follow the original style, but now they got nifty ones that glow in the dark, too.
The board is quite easy to use. You just rest the board on the laps between two people and have them put their fingertips on the planchette. They then either wait for it to move or both begin jointly, lightly, swirling the planchette in a circular or figure-eight fashion on the board’s surface. They may state their goals or send an invitation. Through the board, people believe they’ve come into contact with the deceased, angels, demons, aliens -- you name it.
My sisters had not only been hiding it from my mother for me, they had been using it, and they seemed to be enjoying it. They told me how they had been talking to some guardian spirit watching over us who called himself Ed Fred. I had tried the board a few times in solitude and it had kind of scared me, but I decided that I wouldn’t believe it had anything to do with anything beyond my own brain until I had no other choice but to come to that conclusion.
It was on February 9 that my sisters and I gathered in my room to use the board together. For me, it would be the very last time. My sisters worked the board as I asked the questions. At first, I was very serious about it all. I asked the board if what I had seen were really aliens, and the board answered yes; the board also said there would be no new abductions until March. Then, however, my attitude changed. I had asked it a lot of questions, and some of them were questions I’d previously asked, only I asked them in a different fashion, and I received totally different answers. It was disappointing, to find all this to be a crock, and I started getting bitter and sarcastic. In the spirit of fun, no pun, I began asking it really cheesy questions. Then my sisters started laughing, and began asking sarcastic questions of their own. We were all treating it as a joke.
With one last drop of seriousness, I asked if my sister, Eve, was an abductee and if the aliens would be coming for her. It said yes. Then on a whim I asked if Eve’s eye, which she had been complaining had been hurting her earlier, had anything to do with the aliens. Ed Fred said yes.
I was in the process of rolling my eyes when Eve looked to the right, and I caught something that didn’t register right away. Linda caught it at the same time, though, and it registered a lot faster for her. She jumped. I looked back at Eve as it struck me what Linda and I had seen almost simultaneously: the big, bold, straight red cut on the white of Eve’s eye.
Stories of devices implanted into the bodies of abductees rushed through my mind. Had the existence of some intelligence behind the Ouija and the existence of the aliens been validated here in own fowl swoop? Absolutely not, I thought. It could just be coincidence. Or the entity speaking to us could be a poltergeist, and it could have cut Eve's eye itself. All I knew for certain was that Linda and I were entirely amazed and more than a little spooked. We just looked at each other, unable to say anything. Eve, by this point, obviously knew something was wrong and started to freak out. We tried to keep her calm as we told her about the cut on her eye. She was yelling at us and crying, saying that this wasn’t funny anymore. She stood up and said she wouldn’t play with the board ever again. She promised to calm down before leaving the room and not to tell mom, and Linda and I agreed to quit using it without argument. I eventually gave it to my cousin, Maddy. I kept watch on Eve’s room at night for the next week or so, during which time I heard a host of strange noises about the house. I kept a close eye on her room again in March, just to be sure.
By March, I was feeling pretty burned out by everything that had occurred since the dawn of the Winter season. I had by this time collected, on my own, a wide range of what seemed to be previously forgotten memories that stretched from the tragically mundane to the unspeakably bizarre. At first, I had sought clarity through books, then through a Ouija board. That just fed old questions further elaboration and spawned a hoard of new ones. It was around this time that the possibility finally began to sink it that I just might be going entirely insane, so I decided I was ready to go see a mental health professional.
When I approached my mom with this, she was, of course, all for it, and set up an appointment immediately. Though I’d previously seen at least three other social workers in my youth, this was the first psychiatrist I’d ever encountered. She was a skinny, wrinkly woman with a heavy German accent who insisted what I needed to do was to go outside more often to get some fresh air. She also told me to eat more fruit, save for bananas, because they don’t count. Perhaps she considered it cannibalism. Anyway, she threw me on 10 milligrams of this drug called Nortriptyline, and I began taking it on March third.
Considering the increased strangeness that occurred during this period, I did a bit of research on this drug years later. I found that Nortriptyline hydrochloride in the generic name for this drug, but it is also known under the brand names Aventyl and Pamekir. It is a tricyclic antidepressant (TCA), which means that raises the levels of neurotransmitters in the brain tissue that may be at abnormal levels and causing the condition of depression. At the same time, its a sedative that eases anxiety, restlessness, insomnia and chronic pain. The increase in neurochemicals may cause sleep and appetite to improve quickly, but it can take a month or two until the affects of the medication set in completely.
Not just affects, either, but side affects. The more common ones include feeling drowsy, dizzy, having blurred vision, feeling light-headed, having dry mouth, as well as experiencing constipation and the inability to urinate. If a person is already anxious, this drug may increase anxiety. It can amplify a present psychosis or awaken latent symptoms. It can cause symptoms of the manic phase to emerge in bipolar patients. Epileptiform seizures may also occur -- seizures known as idiopathic (medspeak for `I don’t have a fucking clue what’s causing this’) seizures. And if all of that isn’t bad enough, it can also put you at a higher risk for cavities. No joke. Now, life-threatening reactions to this drug include the following: dramatic changes in clear and logical thinking, fainting or dizziness, fever, itching, wheezing, bad coughing, a blue skin color and the swelling of the tongue, throat or face and pressure in the chest. Nowhere, however, does it mention strange dreams, out-of-body experiences or vicious attacks by non-corporeal entities, which is disappointing.
Nortriptyline comes in capsules of 10mg, 25mg, 50mg, and 75mg, and the dosage is specific to the patient. As with me, it is often taken just before bedtime to help you sleep.
The weirdness returned on the evening of March fourteenth, only eleven days after I began taking my happy zombie pills. I had been lying on my back in bed at the time, drifting in and out of sleep. This was rare behavior, I should note, for I’d been afraid to sleep on my back since childhood. I’d always gotten bad dreams when I slept that way. Apparently it still worked that way, though at the beginning it just gave birth to an interesting and unusual sensation. As I was lying there, I kept feeling the sensation of being lifted up out of my body and out of my bedroom window, always ending back up in my body seconds later. I didn’t believe I was actually floating in physical or spirit form, it was just an odd sensation I was curious about. I tried to control the experience, and felt that I could control how I floated somewhat. After awhile I grew bored with that and began to drift off mentally.
Then my attention returned threefold. I suddenly became acutely aware of an odd presence in my room. I found I couldn’t move. Then it got incredibly worse: I felt someone crawling atop my body, putting her knees at the sides of my rib cage. It was straddling me, and soon enough I sensed movement. I still couldn’t move, I couldn’t even open my eyes, but I did my damnedest to struggle and fight the paralysis so I could throw this thing off me. Whatever it was, the entity was pushing something over my face that made it hard for me to breath. I got the sense that it was a tank of some kind. It was then that my consciousness seemed to dislocate, and I got this weird image in my head. I was looking out through a porthole at a swampy area or marsh full of trees and muck. At the same time, I could still feel this thing on top of me, and I struggled to pull out of these images in my head and regain control over my body. I seemed to have some limited success. I no longer had the sensation of the tank being on my face, but the creature was now pushing it’s hands on my chest, making it harder and harder for me to breath. It was suffocating me. Then it put it’s knees on my chest and pushed down harder and harder. I couldn’t move or breathe. I tried to open my eyes to see the thing, to fight it, to try and ask for mercy or something -- but I blacked out for what seemed to have been just a moment and woke up. As suddenly and inexplicably as the experience had begun, it had ended.
I wrote the experience down the best I could, regained my composure, and eventually went to sleep. I was fucking exhausted.
The next morning when I awoke, I looked at my notebook. I was most certainly confused. For one, the entry I’d made from the night before had a peculiar nature about it. After my documentation of the experience, which I remembered writing, I had wrote that this sensation had `also happened at around four in the morning’. So apparently it had happened not once, but twice. That was the first strange thing. The second was that I had written down the time just before beginning that sentence, and the time was 1:31 AM. This presents a problem, as it implies that I had written of the first and second experiences roughly two-and-a-half hours prior to the first experience. Then, another problem presented itself: I had logged out at the bottom of the entry at 1:18 AM. As a rule, you can’t log out of something before you’ve logged in, especially so when you’re documenting two experiences an hour and a half before the first experience occurred. Apparently I had no respect for linear progression.
There was one more strange element in all this, however. In the margin by my entry I found an odd drawing. I knew I must have drawn it during, prior, or after the odd experience, but I didn’t <i>remember</i> drawing it at all. It was a circle with two elongated crescents to the top and bottom. Some of my friends think it looks like an eye.
All that kind of freaked me out. I had thought that medication would make all this weird shit stop, maybe clear up my mind so I could answer some of my questions, but now my problems just had another layer. Now I didn’t know if these new experiences were drug-induced, amplifying the symptoms of a previously-diseased mind, or were simply having no effect whatsoever. Taking them just seemed to add questions, not subtract them, and that was the last thing I wanted. So I wasted no time informing my mother that I was having second thoughts about the medication. She said to just give it a try, and I insisted that I had. She gave me a condescending laugh and told me that it had only been a little over a week since I’d first began taking the meds and that I shouldn’t be getting any effects yet. I wanted to argue, but I knew I’d have to bring up what had happened that night, so I let it drop. I took matters into my own hands and started skipping days in-between taking my medication without her knowledge. I did it slowly so I could minimize any potential side-affects.
So, what exactly was behind all this -- behind the Ouija and this `thing' that had straddled me that evening?
Some claim it has to do with `evil spirits’. It is frequently recommended, even persisted, that you do not use the Ouija board alone as I had. According to some, using it at all put one to great risk, especially if the person in question is already receptive to the world of the strange. For instance, a strong warning came from Edgar Cayce in regards to the Ouija. He had received letters numbering in the thousands from people who had used the board and found it to be a catalyst for the full spectrum of paranormal phenomena, including poltergeist activity, out-of-body experiences, astral projection, psychic vampirism and possession. These people believed that by using the board to communicate with spirits on the `other side’ you establish a link and open a portal that allows them to affect you and perhaps even the world around you. Parents and religious groups claimed that through the medium of the Ouija malevolent spirits have been capable of manipulating the minds and possessing the bodies of teenagers, causing emotional damage and in many cases suicide. I knew none of this when I first used the board, and would have believed none of it, and still don’t buy into it completely. It seems silly to me that a piece of cardboard could be considered to make all that much of a difference, but who am I to say? I knew nothing of these allegations, and sure, strange things had been occurring far before I’d bought the board, but things from then on got incredibly weirder.
Others believe the Ouija is guided by the unconscious, autonomous parts of the mind; that the planchette moved by the combined unconscious force or `synergy’ between the people using the board. In 1952, William B. Carpenter invented the term `ideomotor effect’, which refers to the ability of the unconscious mind to influence or control our muscular movements in an involuntary, autonomous fashion. He believed parts of our minds operating outside our conscious awareness were able to guide our motor actions in order to fulfill our expectations and also to resonate with the movements of other people through subliminally picking up subtle cues in their body language. He used the ideomotor effect to explain the phenomena experienced by those who used dowsing rods, pendulums, and, among other things, Ouija boards. He claimed that these people may find it difficult to accept that the ideomotor responses are reflecting unconscious portions of their personality because what they come into contact with they may find frightening. They therefore find psychological security in attributing it all to evil spirits. Others agree that the unconscious is at the root of it all, but add that there may be a telepathic, precognitive and psychokinetic component to it as well, which would explain some of the stranger stories, including my mother's. Another possible theory is that the joint and focused concentration of those using the board activates an unconscious psychokinetic ability in the users which inspire paranormal phenomena which validate their belief structures or opens a portal to the other side.
One thing was for certain, and it was this: if having sudden flashbacks of encounters I had beginning a decade ago with creatures I felt certain were extraterrestrial didn’t alone prove that I was a head case, being attacked by an evil spirit in my sleep did the trick. Or was that thing really an alien getting it on with me? Or were the aliens I saw really evil spirits? Who the fuck knew? Perhaps it had to do with that fucking Ouija board. Perhaps when I had used it alone, it had gained possession of my body, and the medication had made me more susceptible to it’s influence. Maybe whatever entity was behind the board was the same entity that straddled me that night. Maybe by letting it use my hand to move the planchette, it was able to take control of my hand so it could draw that picture in the margins of my notebook.
I began getting more worried about what I’d been remembering and experiencing, so in order to sort through my fragmented memories, I had eventually typed up the summation of what had been happening to me under an apt title, `Confusion.’ I began passing it around to select people in hopes that someone might understand me, talk about it with me, or perhaps be able to shed some light on whatever the fuck was wrong with me.
I was almost convinced I was alone in this insanity until I walked in the art room on March 19, and saw an illustration hanging on the far wall that totally blew me away. I had frequently seen alien-like images depicted in the art room, and all of them weren’t my own, but what I saw hanging on the wall that day totally blew me away. The drawing was done in pencil and charcoal and depicted very skinny, humanoid beings huddled closely together in the corner of a hallway. All their eyes, large, round and glowing, stared straight ahead, poking out of their oversized craniums and right into you. It sent chills threw me. It was terrifyingly beautiful. The artist was Marty Eston, brother of the beautiful Myra Eston, a girl in my grade who I sat next to in botany class. She was a dark little girl, and had quite a bit of a temper. For that reason, I was glad to find that I had successfully remained on her good side since the dawn of high school. She had a particular interest in vampires -- though obsession is probably a better term -- and a bit of interest in the paranormal in general. One day after I’d seen what her brother had drawn, I mentioned it to her in the subtlest way I could and commented on how eerie it was. She agreed without hesitation, and when I asked her whether she knew his source of inspiration, she sort of let out a nervous laugh and shook her head. Apparently her brother had seen a vision of it while on an acid trip gone wrong one night at home and it had really freaked him out. He was scared as hell when he saw it, and decided to draw it because simply explaining it didn’t cut it.
I thought perhaps she could at least appreciate the paranormal occurrences I'd been experiencing due to her preexisting dark-natured mindset, so I tossed her a copy of my story. A while later, as I was in the library and she was reading it in the far back, she came up to me with a wild look in her eyes, holding my story tightly in her hands. “Tim, do you know what you just described here?”
I didn’t know what she was talking about. “Which part?”
She pointed to the experience I had with the entity on top of me, pushing down on my chest. “That’s the Old Hag.”
I asked her to repeat herself, as I was a bit confused. Then she began to explain. She had some information on it - I believe it was a photocopied passage out of a book - and I nearly shit my pants. What I read fit the details of my experience to a tee. Attacks from the old hag are experienced, according to some modern research, from fifteen percent of the adult population worldwide. The characteristics of the attacks each person experiences can vary, but the general pattern is rather consistent. While in bed, the person finds himself unable to move. He might hear strange noises or sense movement, but he always feels a distinct presence in the room. Oftentimes he sees a figure, such as a shadow or an old woman (hence the label, `old hag’) which one often interprets as `evil’, malevolent or threatening. He find this figure straddling him, pressing on his chest with building pressure and making it ever-more difficult for him to breath. He struggles and tries to scream and move, but all efforts prove to be futile. He fears he might be dying, or might pass out. Before that occurs, however, he usually finds himself awake; shaken but alive, the experience over as soon as it had begun. Sometimes, however, it can lead to an out-of-body experience.
I now knew for certain now that it wasn’t all in my head, or in the least not only in my head, because others had had the same experience as well. The experiences aren’t limited to people with any sort of social status or intelligence and it certainly isn’t limited to Nortriptyline zombies. The phenomenon is apparently quite common, and has occurred cross-culturally for centuries under many different names. I was absolutely amazed at the wealth of material I found on it when I started looking.
Those residing in St. Lucia, West Indies, are haunted by the spirit of a dead infant ghost called Kohma, who leaps on the chests of people as they are just falling asleep or getting up and tries to suffocate them. Thailand has its Phi Um (`ghost covered’) and Phi Kau (`ghost possessed’) in which black beings cover the body and paralyze the victim. In the Far North they have their Ukomiarik (Yupik) and Agumangia (Inupik), spirits who attempt to take over the bodies of immobilized victims. The Czech have their Muera. The Polish have their Zmora. Japan has its Kanashibari (`tied down’ or `tightly bound’). Russia has its Kikimora. France has their Cauchmar (`trampling ogre’). The Old English have their Mare, also known as Mab, Mair, Mare-hag, as well as their Hagge, which is also known as the Hegge, Haegtesse, Haegtisse, or Haegte. The Greek have their Ephialtes (`one who leaps upon’), their Mora (the night-mare or ogre), and their Lamai, as well as the Pnigalion (`the choker’) and the Babrychnas (`the heavy breather’) that attacked people as they slept. Old Norse have their Mara. Newfoundland has their Ag Rog (`old hag’). The Spanish have their Pesadilla. In Mexico they call it subida del muerto, which means `the dead getting on top’. The Hmong of Laos has its Tsog (`evil spirit’), dab (`nightmare’) or Tsog Tsuam, an evil spirit that smothers, crushes, or puts pressure upon its victims. Even in China AD 30 we find the phenomenon, which is there called the Gui Ya (`ghost possession’). The Germans believed in a host of entities, such as elves known as the Alpdruck, the Nachtmahr, and the witches known as the Hexendrucken, all of whom were thought to be responsible for these hag attacks. They also believed in the Mare, which is where our word `nightmare’ derived from, and the Latin word for nightmare is incubo (or incubare), which means `to lie upon’. The most recent manifestation of this, some say, are the aliens or alien-human hybrids some say are doing the dirty deed with supposed abductees.
What explains this phenomenon, however? Many scientists, including Al Cheyne at the University of Waterloo’s Department of Psychology, believe that sleep paralysis -- specifically, Hallucinatory Sleep Paralysis -- explains the Old Hag phenomenon completely. The phenomenon is rather interesting, to say the least: while in a state of REM sleep, the body naturally releases hormones that immobilize the muscles and prevents the individual from harming themselves or others by acting out their dreams. These hormones usually fade off prior to awakening, but it is possible for a person to gain awareness while the hormones still have effect. Often but not always able to open the eyes, the paralyzed individual leis there, unable to speak or move but awake none the less.
Now, why might this kind of thing occur? The fact that Japanese research indicates that sleep paralysis seems to be caused by stress, interrupted sleep patterns, a loss of control in one’s life, and anxiety (and fear of death specifically) all seem to indicate that sleep paralysis may be a form of `tonic immobility’ still latent in us. This is the instinctual reaction some animals have in which they imitate their own death in order to ward off enemies. It’s that automatic response to fear that we often refer to as `playing possum’; the third option we leave out when we talk of fight-or-flight. We all know that sleep and dreaming is often a form of escape from the worries of one’s life; stress may trigger the `tonic immobility’ as a natural means of defense, deepening the sleep. While the body is mimicking the dead as a defense measure, however, the mind suddenly becomes awake -- but unlike it’s waking state out of normal sleep, the body does not switch back on along with it. So then the person panics, trying to breath as he regularly does when the body is still trying to maintain the shallow breathing that is natural from dreaming consciousness -- and as a result, the person would experience this resistance as pressure on the chest and lungs.
A few things may then happen. It is known from studies in sensory deprivation that when a waking individual is deprived from objective stimulus, one does not, as once assumed, slip into a coma. To the contrary, awareness may heighten. And another strange thing occurs: the mind `compensates’ for the lack of sense data. This data can lead to imagery or hallucinations of all the senses which are common to such hynagogic (twilight state just prior to sleep) and hynopompic (twilight state just prior to awakening) states: sensing a presence, seeing visions, hearing noises, seeing lights or shadows. It can even get more extreme, to the point that the individual has the experience of being detached from one’s body and totally within the context of that hallucination. The strange thing about it is that this world that the mind creates for the perceiver has all the qualities of the normal, external reality: we have not only sensations such as noise, taste, touch, sight and smell, but a sense of location, of dimension, of duration. So the assumption here seems to be that the sensation of pressure on the chest, mixed with the perceiver’s need for an explanation for this sensation, mixed with the necessity of the mind to compensate for the lack of sense data with a full-sensory hallucination, results in the mind creating the totally convincing hallucinatory experience of the `old hag’ in order to satisfy the perceiver’s need for an explanation for his circumstances.
A comforting conclusion, considering the crazy and much more deeply disturbing alternatives, but I must admit its not totally satisfying. This `reality’ that mind spins together on a moment’s notice is totally convincing, and if you take some time to ponder about it after such an experience, you begin to wonder just what element makes the `normal’ world so real and this `otherworld’ so fictitious. In the very least, you gain great respect for the parts of your mind you do not consciously govern; approximating the very most, you begin to question your fundamental assumptions on the nature of what you once considered reality. The thing is, the only difference between the real world and this imaginal otherworld seems to be the laws that govern each -- and though the laws between the worlds, after long enough, are revealed to be quite different, they remain consistent within the respective space of the world in question. So eventually you clear the bullshit away and at the core the question comes to be: why could these worlds not simply be different kinds of external reality? Could it not be a matter of reality and fantasy, but of different kinds of real?
You settle on this: until someone else comes up to you one day and describes in detail the experience you and her shared on the other side, outside your physical bodies, you have no real sound reason to believe this is anything more than a construction of your own warped mind. Even then, there is the alternate possibility of telepathy.
Sleep paralysis seems to be the best bet for explanation. I was even the right age. Japanese research has revealed through several studies that sleep paralysis occurs most often for males in late teens, and in the mid-teens for females. The experience can last up to eight minutes, but such an experience will also give you a good idea of how subjective time perception really is -- for an hour of subjective time, when the mind is dissociated from the body to such a degree, can be squeezed into five minutes of real-time. Or, as in my experience, it can fuck up your sense of time completely. But is their any real danger in this experience? Not according to the `experts'. It doesn't imply psychosis, though all my experiences taken together certainly would. And though little is known about sleep paralysis, experts such as Cheyne insist that regardless as to how frightening it is, one cannot die from it -- though how one would go rounding up statistics on people who had died from the experience is beyond me. Interview via Ouija board, perhaps?
What the `experts' tell us, though, still wouldn’t explain the experience that seems to be so universal: being straddled and smothered by a demonic, feminine entity. Whatever it was that rode me that night seemed to be female, but at the same time inhuman, and it inspired a reaction of fear in me, and of suffocation, of death, of the total terror of vulnerability to a force beyond my control. If this was a manifestation of my unconscious and nothing more, why would such a thing manifest in such a way, and in such a similar way to so many people throughout the world, and throughout history?
If we take the perspective of Carl Jung, there would be two major sources of information from which the mind would construct our convincing hallucinatory experience under sleep paralysis. The first is what he calls the personal unconscious, where all of the remaining beliefs, expectations, associations, and emotions we’ve accumulated throughout our life is stored. This does not account for the similarity in subjective and personal experiences over time and space, however. For that, we would have to turn towards his concept of the collective unconscious -- a concept of his which is largely misunderstood. He described the collective unconscious (or `objective psyche’) as the sum of all the archetypes, which he originally defined as the hereditary, instinctual patterning forces that arrange mental contents and to which cultural images are often attached.
Archetypes, he said, are no more miraculous or `spooky’ as instincts which arrange behavior. And the instincts of some species are very elaborate. They take on extremely structured and purposeful activities without ever being taught, do these activities perhaps once in their lives, and die. If such elaborate behaviors can be transmitted through the DNA of species generation of generation, why not solely psychological patterns as well? This was at the core of Jung’s argument, and as evidence for the archetypes of the collective unconscious he cited the many myths, works of art, hallucinations and dreams that occurred to cultures throughout history which had no known way of communication with each other. The Old Hag may certainly be a manifestation of one of these instinctual patterning forces.
The characteristics of my Old Hag experience centered around a common theme: the dominating demon straddling me, the porthole in which I was suffocating, the marsh or swamp I perceived through the porthole -- all these images ring of suffocation, being `swamped’, drowned, immobilized, overwhelmed, overpowered, controlled, dominated.
What links all the phenomena -- the hag attack during sleep paralysis, the drawing I made in my dream diary that I didn’t remember drawing, my stream-of-consciousness `automatic writing’, the use of the Ouija board by my sisters and I, the sleep-walking and out-of-body experiences I would have down the road and a dozen other things -- is the theme of a dissociated, autonomous portions of my mind. There were parts of me that were not conscious, and which would then be sensible to label as `unconscious’, if not for the fact that they acted just as if they were conscious and had a will and personality of their own. In time I would see these split-off portions of myself manifest in my artwork, in my writing, in my dreams, in my hallucinations, and in my projections. If we are at odd against our instincts, and thoughts, feelings and images we associate with those instincts, this may add up to an unconscious personality which compensates for our lack of conscious recognition and actualization of these aspects of ourselves. In dreams, waking dreams, and hallucinations we may meet up with this cut-off portion of ourselves in the most direct manner possible. Our resistance to it would feed its persistence; our fear and sense of weakness would give it more power and courage -- it would be draining our vitality, like a psychic leech, a spiritual parasite. It would take on characteristics of the vampire or werewolf.
So here I’ve come closer to an explanation. It becomes apparent that the physiological sensations of resistance to breathing would result in a feeling of suffocation, the feeling of paralysis would lead to panic, the lack of sense data would lead to the unconscious filling in the blanks -- and this would lead to a convincing hallucinatory experience which, even if terrifying, at least provides an explanation for the sensations: the illusion of a cause. It still does not answer the question as to why I didn’t hallucinate a boulder on my chest, or a huge frog, or a bowling ball, or even a female just sitting on me. It still doesn’t tell me why I hallucinated some female demon dry-fucking me and trying to suffocate me in the process.
The question comes down to: why a <i>woman</i>?
History and myth have certainly helped to evolve this fearful, demonic image of woman. When the image of the pagan mother goddess was demonized by the early Catholic Church, woman became demonized. That may have certainly added an extra layer of association with evil to the female in the minds of men, but it certainly didn’t begin there -- the women as a symbol of temptation away from higher ideals is seen in the myth of Buddha as well as Christ. Woman has been associated with the moon and the night, and therefore the part of our lives enshrouded in darkness. Woman was seen as representing, in many cases, the entirety of the unconscious, as the night is when most people sleep and dream, a time when men and women have sex, which is an act that was also demonized by the church. Femme fatale legends often emphasize the feminine power of sexual temptation and transformation who uses her insatiable sexual appetite to drain the life out of the souls of her lovers.
In the Medieval time period, these experiences were ascribed to evil spirits and demons called the incubus, from the same Latin word for nightmare, and the female counterpart was known as the Succubus. Though the Succubus is female in meaning, in Latin it is the masculine form of the word. The female form of the demon is `succuba’. The rationale for using the word `succubus’ was apparently due to the fact that the demons were supposed to be sexless, which, of course, would raise questions as to how they’d go about doing all their hanky-panky. The answer may come in that the incubus and succubus were believed to be shape-shifters. They were able to take on the appearance of anything from one’s significant other to their favorite pet, and even transform themselves into smoke so they could move through spaces so tight as a crack in the wall. That’s not all, however. They were said to lie on people at night and, as their victims were asleep, have sexual intercourse with them. The theory was that the incubus stole semen from the man and then, shape-shifting itself into its female counterpart, the succubus, it inseminated the sperm in another female. (And this, the story goes, was why certain nuns got pregnant -- the priests had nothing to do with it, really.)
These demons were often thought to be the familiars of a sorcerer or witch, and when they were they were known as magistellus. Oftentimes, however, the demons were even thought to be the witches or sorcerers themselves. And on other occasions, sorcerers or witches were thought to be the result of the vertical hokey-pokey between an incubus and a human. As the stories go in medieval European folklore, if a woman gets pregnant by an incubus, the child she bears will have all the appearances of a normal, human child but will possess supernatural powers and grow into an evil wizard. In fact, this is the supposed origins of the most famous wizards of myth, Merlin, who came into existence as the result of an incubus copulating with a nun. So in Christian eyes, penguin plus demon equals wizard. I can’t understand this math much more than the type they tried to ingrain in my head during high school, but its much more amusing. Also, its interesting to note that the incubus and succubus demons derive from the Bible, and that the word `demon’ itself derives from the Greek `daemon’, which means `intelligent’. Ignorance isn’t only bliss, then, but apparently the only means of achieving the status of good and getting into the Christian heaven.
There are Biblically-based myths based on the origins of the incubi, and they derive from the Hebrew scriptures, which put a nice twist on the tales in King James Bible, exposing this elaborate, sexually-laden soap opera porno. One myth, for instance, offers that the incubi were descendants of Cain, who was himself supposedly the offspring of `special moments’ held between Eve and the serpent of the Genesis fame. Apparently snakey-pooh coerced her into partaking of more than just fruit off a tree, if you catch my meaning.
A much more interesting myth, however, explains the incubi as descendants of Adam and his first wife, before Eve. This is, according to Hebrew scriptures, Lilith, the first succubus. She was purportedly brought into being by their god from the `filth’ and `mud’ for the purposes of giving Adam something to dominate and tinker around with. How nice of the Hebrew god, to give Adam a sex slave. Things went awry, however. Due to her feminist nature, which the all-knowing god could not apparently precognate, she denied Adam, swore vengeance on any future children he might have, and relocated to a cave in the vicinity of the Red Sea, leaving man to think for the very first time, “wow, what a bitch.” There, in her hide-out, is where Lilith supposedly went about getting nookie from hordes of nasty demons, which I must confess I find strangely arousing. The Hebrew god then sent three angels to her by the names of Sanvi, Sansanvi, and Semangelaf. Say that three times fast. When she refused the demands of the angels that she go back with them, a pact was made in which she swore that she would cease attacking any of Adam’s descendants if they had the names of these three angels somewhere in the vicinity. Those ascribing to belief in this story would therefore write the three names in a circle on the ceiling above where their infant’s crib lay as a means of protection. Lilith was said to lurk in the night hours, hungry for the sex of man and for the flesh of children. You've got to admit, that's one hell of a diet.
She apparently favored killing children by means of strangulation, and often left behind one of her own demon babies in place of the one she’d taken; they were known as `lilin’. According to Hebrew mythology, for instance, the lilin has enormous sex appeal and a taste for murder, with the objectives to steal the vitality of people and leave them feeling drained and empty. This theme, tying together sex, death and vampirism, is prominent in many of these old hag stories and experiences. I also got the feeling of being drained by the entity straddling me -- as if it wasn’t only trying to smother me, but leech off my remaining vitality. Common side effects of being a victim of as vampire are supposed to be extreme bouts of exhaustion which have no apparent cause.
Old hag attacks are often associated with the so-called vampire attacks, specifically `psychic’ vampirism, where the disembodied entity feeds off the human energy field rather than blood. In occult and paranormal circles, it is sometimes believed that libido, the sexual energy, is just another manifestation of chi or ka or whatever one wishes to call the energy that supposedly permeates the universe -- or that this energy is primarily sexual in nature. Jung’s concept of the libido differed from Freud’s original concept in that he believed the libido was not sexual energy; he used the term to stand for psychological energy, of which sexual desire is merely one manifestation. However one takes it, it seems the sexual libido is able to manifest in other fashions.
In paranormal circles, some have tied the Old Hag phenomenon to poltergeist activity. Poltergeist (German for `noisy ghost’) is a term used to describe a haunting in which the entity is mischievous in nature and proceeds to move and hide objects, make loud noises. They are basically perceived as mischievous ghosts who seem to `live’ for scaring the hell out of people and fucking with their minds; kind of like disembodied terrorists from the netherworld. A factor that became very important in the minds of some parapsychologists was that the poltergeist activity was usually focused around a small child, usually a young girl, who was going through the emotional-rollercoaster of an experience known as puberty. Rather than the child being the focus of a ghost, many have come to believe that the poltergeist activity may in fact be caused by unconscious and autonomous psychokinetic abilities. She is, in effect, unconsciously `acting out’ through psychokinesis. The libido needs an outlet, and since it is repressed it is out of control of the youngster and guided by his or her unconscious forces. Some believe that unconscious use of psychokinesis is just an extension of our psychosomatic abilities, where the mind can have an effect on the physical body, such as in hysterical blindness. Jung often found psychosomatic illness to be symbolic. The difference is that when you add psychokinesis into the mix, one can explain `stigmata’ and the bruises, bite marks and scratch marks often found on people who are plagued by poltergeist activity. When frustration rises in the child, poltergeist activity rises; when the child has outgrown puberty, the phenomena ceases.
It seems, then, that sexual energy -- libido, Freud would call it -- can manifest as psychokinetic energy. Then when this energy does not have an outlet and is repressed or died, it comes to be in the hands of our often child-like, autonomous unconscious, who finds an outlet for it through psychokinesis.
It is also believed that the sexual libido are manifestations of a force or energy that can be transferred from one person to another. The life force of a person was thought to be transferred by many means. Through this, the old or weak can draw the life force from the young or strong -- and the dead can draw from the living, and the real, perhaps, from the imaginary. One such way was thought to be skin-to-skin contact. So, for instance, you have King David, who, as a geezer, often slept with a young virgin. You have Emperor Barbarossa, who held young boys against his genitals and tummy in the hopes that he might draw in their energy. You have Pope Innocent VIII, who had young and healthy children to touch him for the purposes of giving him the gift of their energy. Another medium for this life force was thought to be blood: drinking or bathing in it would bring one youth and power. Vampiric themes may be prominent because they are manifestations of our desire for power and immortality -- and, consequently, our fear of vulnerability and the inevitability of death. The long-held view that vampirism (and being a werewolf) is contagious may stem from the fact that once a person is deprived of their life force, it creates a sort of psychic vacuum, and the person is forced to draw energy from others in order to sustain existence -- and often the original vampire returns to collect this energy. Perhaps what this tells us is that our desire for power and immorality, and our fear of vulnerability and death, is so intense that we’re willing to pay the price of being a parasite wholly dependent on its host for the purposes of survival.
Or perhaps as humans, our highly-developed psychology and what we have done with it has put sort of a wall between our sense of self and our instincts; we have created self-concepts, values, ideals, and perspectives of the world that put us at odds with our primal drives. This has caused a fundamental split in us -- a split that could give rise to the ego’s antithesis, the Shadow, and the persona’s antithesis, the anima (for men, anyway). And this may be a reason why throughout history and myth, woman has inspired in men -- and often women herself -- a certain fear. The sight of a woman inspires a primal impulse that threatens our sense of self-control and self-sufficiency and, in the meantime, gives us uncomfortable visions of our own mortality.
Jung spoke of the anima: the feminine principal in man. We come to associate certain parts of ourselves -- typically (though times are changing) in our culture things such as compassion, sensitivity, and intimacy with nature -- with the oppsite sex, and fail to identify and actualize these aspects, nessesarily projecting these characteristics away from ourselves and onto certain members of the opposite sex. They may also manifest as charatcers in dreams, stories, artwork, hallucinations. Our relations with the opposite sex, then, illustrates our relation with the unactualized portions of ourselves. We have made an internal situation an external one. Though we may inherit much of the anima, and find this part of her in myths and legends, she is ultimately unique and personalized for each of us.
The truth of the matter is that, at least on a genetic level, men are dependent on woman to survive. Though we cannot be given immortality by any known means, sex is our only hope at achieving some genetic immortality -- genetically, sex is our only defense against death. This could explain quite a bit.
Especially in our current patriarchal culture, the male is conditioned to expect out of himself a certain power and ability to control at all times, for the rule is to conquer or be conquered; to control or be controlled. With sex, then, there comes a certain contradiction in man, for to be sexual (at least in an orgasmic sense) means to relinquish that control, to let go, to trust, to be vulnerable. This sets man’s conditioned persona against man’s instinctual drives; it may inspire a deep fear of the female who, through his desire for her, controls him, has power over him. As a result, he senses a certain evil in her, a suspicion, a fear of being dominated, bound, suffocated and overwhelmed -- and at the same time that these things inspire fear in him, they may... turn him on. And so this fear may be projected in the `old hag’ experience.
In the twilight state on the border of sleeping and waking, were conscious and unconscious have equal footing, the conscious mind meets with the intense desires it has but fears like death, and the female image it needs but demonizes. Perhaps the act that is so common in the meeting throughout time and space symbolizes a certain need for resolution -- for the reconciliation of these opposites.
Or perhaps sometimes even ghosts and aliens need to get laid.
