Just got done wading through all of the "first experiences" thread. Facinating stories, guys. Thanks for sharing them.
I've been a researcher/investigator of paranormal phenomenon for a few years now and wanted to know if any of you ever heard/seen a particular and unusual type of apparition known popularly as the "old hag." A dear friend of mine used to see this when she was in her pre-teen years and describes the sight of a very old, haggard looking female figure in the middle of the night with straw-like grey/white hair (some report even a top-hat) that, when she notices the attention, scurries across the room toward the still abed observer on her tip-toes and kneels or presses down on the chest making breathing very difficult. Her breath is often described as very malodorous, her fingernails long and filthy and there's a distinct air of gleeful mallevolence about the apparition. An altogether unpleasant and frightening experience.
Have any of you heard of this particular phenomenon and/or experienced it yourselves?
I've been a researcher/investigator of paranormal phenomenon for a few years now and wanted to know if any of you ever heard/seen a particular and unusual type of apparition known popularly as the "old hag." A dear friend of mine used to see this when she was in her pre-teen years and describes the sight of a very old, haggard looking female figure in the middle of the night with straw-like grey/white hair (some report even a top-hat) that, when she notices the attention, scurries across the room toward the still abed observer on her tip-toes and kneels or presses down on the chest making breathing very difficult. Her breath is often described as very malodorous, her fingernails long and filthy and there's a distinct air of gleeful mallevolence about the apparition. An altogether unpleasant and frightening experience.
Have any of you heard of this particular phenomenon and/or experienced it yourselves?
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Re: The Old Hag
Mon, August 1, 2005 - 2:58 PMI have. I talked about it in a previous post here.
Pretty terrifying
Chris -
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Unsu...
Re: The Old Hag
Mon, August 1, 2005 - 3:38 PMCould you point me toward that post? I'd really like to read about your experience, if I may.
Thanks very much.
Kuma -
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Unsu...
Re: The Old Hag
Tue, August 2, 2005 - 12:23 PMI'm not sure if this old hag is the same one people I know told me about, but it happens when they're asleep. My ex would be asleep and he'll wake up and find an apparition like the old hag on top of his chest and makin it hard for him to breathe. It happened to his mom too and it was so bad they had to move out of the house. my father claims he has also experienced the same thing.
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Re: The Old Hag
Thu, August 4, 2005 - 5:51 PMIs it possible to experience the difficulty breathing without seeing her? I myself am not sensitive to ghosts, but I had this reoccuring dream as a kid.
I was in my bed sleeping and every time the clock in the hall struck an hour (i.e. 11, 12, 1 , etc) this "ghost" would try to choke me. I repeatedly try to escape my room.... and then when I finally do some menacing muscled man injects both of them with a drug and carries them out (fireman style) one on each shoulder.
I never saw the ghost, but I "knew" it was there. I don't remember associating any gender with the entity. -
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Re: The Old Hag
Fri, August 5, 2005 - 10:15 AMI had an experience very like what you just described, Ninja, not quite a year ago. I was able to repel the presence, but it left me rather shaken. Hence my interest; hence my question. -
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Re: The Old Hag
Sun, August 7, 2005 - 2:07 PMWhat are you suppose to do if you see her coming towards you? can you protect yourself? -
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Unsu...
Defense against The Old Hag
Mon, August 8, 2005 - 7:34 AMI've had many years of martial arts training and found that the discipline of meditation can be very beneficial. The event that happened to me didn't involve the apparition, per se, but the sudden paralysis, the menacing presence and the sudden lack of breath were all too real. The feeling I'd gotten at the time was that such an entity feeds on fear and terror. At first, I controlled my fear and schooled myself to look at the situation with a certain degree of detached curiosity. Then, focusing my intention (my "energies" if you will), I "pushed out" with my chi. It seemed to fly off of me as if burned and I could almost hear a sub-vocal screech. I was able to move at that point so I got up to check the house. All was quiet. Curiously enough, though, my dog was completely comatose. This was very unusual as he's a very alert animal who shares my penchant for being a light sleeper. However, I was able to completely pick up his head and drop it to the ground, but he remained unconscious as though sedated. As I said earlier; an unsettling experience.
For what it's worth.
Kuma
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Re: The Old Hag
Wed, April 9, 2008 - 7:51 PMI have felt the presence of the Hag many times during sleep paralysis episodes. Sometimes I felt suffocated. There was always the feeling of extreme malevolence.
Only once I saw the manifestation of the Hag and it was just as others have described.
It appeared in the form of an emaciated old woman in grey gauzy tatters. Her hair was was white and unkempt. Her cheeks hollow and sunken. Her eyes appeared bright and almost glowing and she slowly approached from the doorway of my room while beckoning to me with a boney finger until she was at the foot of my bed. There was a sort of crazy smirk of an expression. One odd thing - her feet did not seem to touch the floor and she sort-of floated across the room.
I just wrote it off as a dream or hallucination during a sleep paralysis episode but it scared the crap out of me!
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Re: The Old Hag
Sun, August 7, 2005 - 3:46 PMI saw this apparition while driving cross country late one night. I was driving a VW camper van and the wife was in the back taking a rest. It was about 1am on Interstate 40 somewhere in eastern New Mexico. No towns for miles. I was focusing on the road and glanced over to the pasenger seat There was an old woman setting there staring at me. It was 30 years ago but I recal she looked like the classic "witch" in old, tattered clothing and some kind of hat but not a pointed one. I was shocked. I screamed and pulled the van onto the shoulder and to a screeching stop. I jumped out and looked back and the figure was gone. My wife thinks I fell asleep and dreamed it. Maybe so but it matches the Old Hag described by so many others. -
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Re: The Old Hag
Mon, August 8, 2005 - 6:04 AMMy mom used to tell us a story about how when one night when she was a child she woke up and saw an old lady at the end of her bed sitting there, and every time she opened and closed her eyes the old lady would come closer and closer until they were face to face and then disappeared. My cousin now lives in this house and says that she see's the old lady walking from room to room out of the corner of her eye.
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Re: The Old Hag
Fri, April 4, 2008 - 11:56 PMI've experienced the Hag many times and saw it vividly once. It was the most terrifying experience of my life. People think I'm nuts when I talk about it. It's been years since I have had the experience. I just don't sleep deeply enough anymore.
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Re: The Old Hag
Sat, April 5, 2008 - 2:14 PMI saw a tv show called "Ghoslty Encounters" and one of the people on there was talking about her experience with it. I gather it's a common phenomenon. -
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Re: The Old Hag
Sun, April 6, 2008 - 8:18 AMI never knew it was a common phenomenon so I didn't talk about it much. Then one day I was talking with someone who descibed an experience that their partner had described to them and it was similar to what I had experienced. I started doing some research and found that people have been describing the same thing for centuries. I recently saw someting on TV about it too. It seems that seldom does one actually SEE the hag but those that can describe what they saw match perfectly with what I saw as well. I'm generally a skeptic.
What made the exprience so scary is that, as the Hag approached from across the room, I was totally paralyzed. -
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Re: The Old Hag
Sun, April 6, 2008 - 8:22 AMThe people on the show were talking about being paralyzed, as well. I wonder if there is some common denominator?
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Re: The Old Hag
Mon, April 14, 2008 - 4:10 PMI have not experienced any thing like this although I have had my share of experiences with spirits which appear in the form of a crone. My uncle had an experience with an entity when in his early twenty's which sounds very familiar to what you describe. He did not see the presence as a figure but as an energy. He awoke and was being held to his bed. He screamed and no one could hear him. Once he quit fighting it the entity relaxed and he managed to escape from the room. He was very distressed by the ordeal but having many unique experiences in my grandparents home, he did not allow it to scare him for long. He felt it was more curious that harmful.
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Re: The Old Hag
Fri, May 23, 2008 - 1:19 AMHey,
The "Old Hag" phenomenon is actually a cross-cultural experience, commonly believed to be a "night terror." The scientific explanation for that is basically is sleep paralysis. While probably not supernatural, the strange thing I find is that it occurs in multiple cultures, east, west, north south.... -
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Re: The Old Hag
Fri, May 23, 2008 - 9:22 AMi also find it odd that it has the same imagery... -
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Re: The Old Hag
Fri, May 23, 2008 - 11:15 AMIt would seem that it is either a common experience with the same class of entity, or a phenomenon of human biology that seems common because the structures of our headmeat are generally the same from person to person.
The latter could also be behind the near-death experiences of "going into the light" or "falling into the dark pit." It could be that all human brains go through similar experiences when they start to shut down, experiences derived from the structure of the brain and not anything paranormal.
More research, we need more research! :-) -
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Re: The Old Hag
Fri, May 23, 2008 - 12:46 PMand maybe a sketch artist ... : ) -
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Re: The Old Hag
Fri, May 23, 2008 - 2:09 PMYou guys DO see the OP who made the original post left, right? -
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Re: The Old Hag
Fri, May 23, 2008 - 2:25 PMyeah... but the phenomina is still with us... in spirit ...
: )
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Re: The Old Hag
Sat, May 24, 2008 - 8:01 AMThank you shaman sun and sneakyparrot.
So often folks are quick to latch onto the their first impression - if it is sensationally spooky - and not look a little closer with a truly open mind.
As a child and young adult I experienced what I supposed was "sleep paralysis" - frozen with fear and unable to move or cry out.
I've also seen weird scary images out of the corner of my eye - only to turn and look a little closer and realized the source was not paranormal at all (ex: flickering light reflected thru wind blown leaves).
Is your imagination playing tricks on you? Send the "Old Hag" my way; I'm kind of a lonely old hag myself - of the male variety - maybe we can hook up.
I want to believe. -
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Re: The Old Hag
Sun, May 25, 2008 - 3:41 PMhey! that reminds me...
there were a number of occasions that i woke up at night and saw someone standing in my room... or next to my bed...
only to find out later that it was a shirt on the back of a chair... or something like that, that i had forgotten about or my mom put on my chair at night.
then there was the time i thought i heard something moving around in my closet, and i thought i heard heavy breathing... my closet was wide, but was only about one foot deep... then my brother jumps out of the closet screaming... man i was scared!
he had removed most of the clothes and waited for about two hours before springing the trap... wow, he was certainly dedicated...
and then there was the time i woke and saw my grandma sitting next to the bed, she smiled said she said that she was just visiting... we talked a little bit.
she had passed away a couple of years before... but told me she would visit when i needed her. she did visit a few times...
and i think she still does come by every now and then
: )
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