Hag syndrome, an experience associated with sleep paralysis, is normally identified as a period of consciousness but without the
ability to move the body. Accompanying this is a sensation that someone is in
the room with you or, more alarmingly, that someone is pressing their
bodyweight on you from an angle which you cannot turn to observe. The “hag” in
hag syndrome comes from a feeling that the person in the room is malevolent. It
has been characterised in history and culture and to be honest the rest of what
I want to introduce with is on this Wiki page:
Now that you’re up to speed I
want to present my own personal experience and suggest explore other branches of
this phenomenon than the popularised haunting version. First though I would
like to acknowledge the problem of medicalising such borderline disruptive conditions
as well as the splintering and specialising of conditions. With the former there
is a problem of medicating disorders that do not need drugs to address them and
the latter pertains to muddying the waters by constantly trying to define and
separate ailments. This is not an argument for or against either. This is just
an addition of anecdotal evidence.
Some background information: I
have been through many stages of sleep disruption. Some were general stress and
over-active brain related insomnias that I’m sure many of you have experienced.
Others were the side effects of drugs. Doxycycline, for instance, put me
through some of the most twisted and vivid dreams I have ever experienced. I am
also a chronic sleep-talker but that’s neither here-nor-there (or maybe it is
here-and-there; I don’t know what may be relevant to my experience).
My current phase of sleep
disturbance includes what appears to be a shade of hag syndrome. Roughly 3
times a month I will wake in the night with the conviction that someone is in
or trying to enter the room. Often this will be accompanied by hallucinations
varying from the practical to the outright fanciful. The hallucinations will be
grounded in something real and physical in the room; items on a desk take the
forms of small creatures or a hanging coat will become the clothes of an
apparition. My belief in what I’m seeing will last roughly ten seconds and be broken
either by the rationale that what I’m seeing cannot be real or interaction with
the object when I will realise its true form. If I believe a person is in the
room I will often try to talk to them. Unlike stories of hag syndrome though I
am never scared of what I believe is happening. On the contrary because I sleep
without much clothing on often my first emotion is embarrassment at being found
in a state of undress. Sometimes the feeling is that someone has been in the
room for a long time and has been trying to talk to me and again, from embarrassment,
I will laugh as a way to break the ice and apologise for my rude behaviour of ignoring
them. The lack of fear is probably connected to the fact that I rarely believe
a stranger is in the room and rather it is a friend or a flatmate. A final
critical detail that you may have already picked up on; I do not suffer the
paralysis or indeed any other physiological effects such as experience weight
being pressed on me. If the situation requires it I can get out of bed and move
freely whilst still falsely seeing / hearing. In what could be considered a
reversal of typical hag syndrome my body is perfectly responsive but it is my mind
that is slow to react to reality.
So there’s some new data to add
to the melting pot. Should this area of sleeping issues ever be relevant in
your academic circles or even as a “this guy I know” story then I hope this has
been of some use.
Thanks for reading.
-Norris
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