“A mare is Tormenting me!” — a Personification of Sleep Paralysis

Mare — being known from the folklore which was first noticed around 16th century, although people’s
night oppression was already described by Saint Augustine. The mare was thought to be a demonic
creature or a deceased person’s soul, hostile towards people and attacking them in their sleep. It was thought
to be able to create any form. It was also described as unpredictable and fighting it was seemingly
futile. When the mare distinguished between male form — an incubi — and a female one — a succubi. Both apparitions would haunt a sleeper to use them sexually. Their attacks relied on crushing, sometimes
chocking the victim, not letting them call for help. The effective countermeasures were thought to be:
prayer, sprinkling the bed with holy water, turning towards God (methods derived from Christian tradition)
or having tools to defend oneself by their bed, for example: knives, axes, whips or needles (beliefs
born in the folklore). Helplessness and terror caused by mare’s presence intrigues many etiologists, anthropologists
and philosophers, but only after neurosciences were developed in XX century the mystery
was able to be solved. The mare’s attack belongs to short-lasting and not dangerouspathology of dream
known as sleep paralysis. It is experienced during REM phase, because that’s mostly when dreams occur.
It is being described as an inability to move or make any sound, a feeling of horror and being crushed or
chocked, also hallucinations, which can take on a form of: an intruder (a feeling of someone’s presence
close by), incubi (a feeling of being weighed down and chocked by a dark creature) or a feeling of falling
or leaving one’s body. It is still unknown where these similar and yet unsettling dream visions come from.
The sleep paralysis occurs either before awakening or right after falling asleep, when the person feels that
they are already (or still) conscious, but their muscles are still (or yet) immobilized. It is believed that
such phenomenon is caused by: not preserving the sleep’s hygiene, stress or consumption of alcohol.
Sleep paralysis occurs mostly during sleeping on one’s back and according to various statistics concerns
between 40 to even 60 percent of the population. Usually it lasts a few minutes. The mare, despite being
known from Slavic mythology, is not made up solely by European culture. Its “equivalents” can be seen
in Japanese, Chinese, Korean compositions. This research indicates, that the sleep paralysis phenomenon
is universal among human cultures.