Hag

From the Old English *hægtesse*, an older feminine spirit-figure, narrowed in later usage to the witch and to the figure who visits the sleeper at the threshold of waking. The hag is the original name in English-language folklore for the experience now described in the medical literature as sleep paralysis: the sleeper wakes, finds the body unable to move, and perceives a weight upon the chest, often as a figure crouched there. Cognate names exist across Northern Europe. The Scandinavian *mara* gave the word *nightmare*. The Slavic *mora* and the German *Mahr* describe the same encounter.

The folk record treats the hag as a visitor. The medical record treats the experience as a discrete phase of the sleep cycle. The two records are not in contradiction. The archive observes that the figure reported across centuries and across languages is recognisably the same figure, regardless of which framework is used to explain her arrival.