Legends Anthology

The Old Hag Legend

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Nearly fifteen percent of the global population has experienced an old hag event. Aspects of the old hag legend are universal and include sensations of chest pressure, strangulation and paralysis. Variations of old hag experiences involve seeing shadow people and balls of light or hearing noises such as footsteps and disembodied voices. Only the vernacular used to describe similar experiences differs. Culture determines how people interpret their experiences to a large degree. For example, sightings of anomalous lights have occurred all over the world for centuries. A priest might interpret these lights as demonic entities while a UFOlogist might interpret them as aliens. Either interpretation provides a lexicon for people to describe their experiences in terms that others will understand. This essay provides examples of lexicons people from different cultures and eras have used to interpret similar experiences.

Folklorists David Hufford and Thomas Bullard noticed similarities between alien encounter or abduction legends and traditional legends like the old hag and shadow people. Many UFOlogists believe that flying saucers, contactees, and alien abductions are authentic and fairly recent phenomena while others believe that old hag, shadow people, and alien encounter experiences originate from a single source meaning that these entities are not separate entities. The contactee and flying saucer legends really expanded in the 1950s with George Van Tassel, Albert Bender, and George Adamski. The alien abduction legend began in 1961 with the alleged abduction of Betty and Barney Hill. Skeptics attribute old hag and alien encounter/abduction events to television, false memories, temporal lobe lability and sleep disorders. Skeptics say that knowledge of aliens and abduction events comes from mass media and popular culture and are not real experiences. However, UFO and anomalous light sightings were recorded in antiquity before mass media existed. Scholars have noticed continuities between UFO legends and traditional folklore legends because similar reports of these events occur regardless of culture.

Old Hag Reports

Joe Ross (PhD candidate, University of Alabama, Birmingham) in his article “Hags out of Their Skins” defines old hags as repulsive old women who practice witchcraft. However, old hags are not only women. There are reports of men being old hags too. People who are victims of old hag experiences are said to be “hagridden” (Ross 183). The legend includes a “heavy feeling” or pressure on the chest as if “being sat on” (Ross 184). People have reported having nightmares, experiencing paralysis, feeling an ominous presence in the room, seeing shadows or balls of light nearby, and having blood sucked from their noses or ears. A bloodsucking old hag is a traditional legend account as is the ability for victims to capture old hags in a bottle next to their beds (like a genie). In some nontraditional accounts, old hags “come out of their skin” so as not to be recognized while terrifying victims (like character Frank Cotton in the movie Hellraiser and Clare Higgins in Hellraiser II). The variant of hags slipping out of their skins originated in Africa (Ross 184). Beliefs surrounding the motivations of old hag visitations include spite, warning, or punishment (Ross 184). While many variations of the legend exist all over the world, some experiences are universal meaning that this is a recurring event in human experience.

David Hufford (PhD, Folklore, University of Pennsylvania) in his book entitled The Terror that Comes in the Night says that old hag events “occur in the absence of tradition” and are not “abnormal or pathological” meaning not a symptom of mental illness (Hufford 58). Hufford states that nearly 15 percent of the general population has experienced an old hag event (Hufford 230). Hufford’s conclusion is that “The contents of this experience cannot be satisfactorily explained on the basis of current knowledge” (Hufford 230). In his book, Hufford recorded many personal experience narratives (PENs) involving old hag experiences to support his claims. In the section entitled “Demons and Other Evil Supernatural Agents,” beginning on page 210, Hufford recorded a PEN in his book involving anomalous lights during an interview with a female schoolteacher that the UFO community would interpret as a UFO.

Sharon, a middle-aged schoolteacher approached Hufford after one of his lectures to tell him that her husband had exactly the same experience Hufford described in his lecture. This is a summary of her husband’s story as told by Sharon.

In 1952, Sharon’s husband lived in a native hut in the town of Tu Tu Illett on one of the Samoan Islands. Native huts are situated atop stilts with thatched roofs and not entirely enclosed with walls. The man fell asleep reading one night when he was awakened by loud scratching noises. The man said that as he looked outside he noticed movement and heard strange noises coming from the pine trees surrounding the hut. Sharon said “And there was a light which would come towards him and back off.” Suddenly, the man felt a “heaviness” press down upon him and he was unable to move or yell for help. Afterwards, the man told people living in the community about his strange experience. They told him that the story is well known because that particular hut is haunted. After hearing that, the man never stayed in that hut again (Hufford 210).

Shadow People Reports

The shadow people legend is another version of the old hag legend. Shadow people are dark, featureless silhouettes that have appeared somewhere in close proximity to a person as they are walking around at night or sleeping. Old hags and shadow people are reported to have appeared right next to a person’s bed and stared down at them. Shadow people behave much like old hags meaning their presence is accompanied with sensations of chest pressure, strangulation, and paralysis. Shadow people can appear individually or in groups. Their attributes vary and have included red or yellow glowing eyes, long fangs, and a stench of rotten meat or sulfur (a Catholic exorcist would interpret this as demonic infestation). Like old hag encounters, shadow people encounters have been reported all over the world although with different names and variations. In the following account, David Hufford recorded a PEN in his book involving shadow people during an interview with a male college student.

Ron, a 22 year old college student in his senior year awoke during a nap one afternoon to the sound of his dorm room door slamming shut. Suddenly, he felt pressure on his chest and was unable to move. He also felt drained of energy. Ron said that a “murky presence” manifested out of nowhere. It just “materialized” in the room. Ron described what he saw as “this grayish, brownish murky presence. And it kind of swept down over the bed. And […] I felt this pressing down all over me. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't move.” Ron said that the presence just “dissipated” on its own (Hufford 67-69).

David Hufford moves from the supernatural to UFOs in The Terror that Comes in the Night and cites John Keel a number of times. John Keel was an author, journalist, and UFOlogist who studied the occult and demonology. He began writing about these phenomena in the 1960s. Hufford states that Keel’s beliefs and experiences with UFOs and Men in Black (MIB) are important for shaping widespread beliefs regarding these phenomena. Keel collected reports from all over America on the MIB (Clark 170-171). Like Thomas Bullard (PhD, Folklore, Indiana University) in his article entitled, “UFO Abduction Reports: The Supernatural Kidnap Narrative Returns in Technological Guise,” Keel compared the similarities of UFO and MIB legends to traditional legends of fairies, witches, and monsters. Like Albert Bender, Keel fits the contactee narrative. Keel included his own memorate of an old hag experience in his book entitled Why UFOs where he states “More than once I woke up in the middle of the night to find myself unable to move, with a huge dark apparition standing over me” (Hufford 30). Hufford said that “Keel notes the connection between the paralysis of these attacks and the paralysis often reported in UFO encounter narratives” (Hufford 220).

Alien Encounter Reports

According to William Dewan (professor of Anthropology, UC Irvine) in “A Saucerful of Secrets, an Interdisciplinary Analysis of UFO Experiences,” many sightings of anomalous lights and crafts have occurred all over the world for centuries. While the variations of these phenomena include different shapes, materials, colors, and lights, the lights and crafts themselves are part of the alien encounter legend (Dewan 187). No matter the culture the experience is derived from, specific elements are the same universally (Dewan 186). Only perception, interpretation and lexicon differ. Culture determines how people interpret their experiences. For example, UFOlogists will claim to have seen a UFO while ghost hunters will claim to have seen supernatural entities (Dewan 188-189).

Thomas Bullard’s research incorporated information from an estimated 300 newspaper reports of UFO abductions. Bullard’s article “UFO Abduction Reports” included the story of the “first” alien abduction reported by Barney and Betty Hill in 1961. It is summarized below.

On September 19th, while driving home through a remote area of New Hampshire, the Hills were followed by a “lighted disc-shaped craft.” When the craft moved directly overhead, it emitted a “series of beeps” and then disappeared. When the Hill’s arrived home, they noticed that two hours had passed that they could not recall. The Hills suffered from severe anxiety and nightmares after that night and sought psychiatric help. They agreed to participate in hypnotic regression therapy. This is when the story of the missing two hours of September 19th emerged. Under regression hypnosis the couple said that the road was blocked by “short beings with large heads and eyes” and gray-white skin. The beings put the couple under a hypnotic trance and made them board the disc-shaped craft where they were physically examined. Then the couple was released and continued the journey home. This story was originally published in 1966 under the title The Interrupted Journey with permission (Bullard 148).

Bullard proposes the idea that alien abduction legends resemble traditional abduction legends perpetrated by fairies, witches, and monsters (Bullard 167) historically. The supernatural element of abduction legends is present in alien abduction stories, except that technology displaces magic (Bullard 168). Alien abduction includes a sequence of events including alien intrusion, supernatural events, time lapse, and physical abduction (Bullard 153). Abductees can be paralyzed and suspended through the air or retracted into a craft through a light beam (Bullard 153). Sometimes alien beings have been observed passing through solid barriers like walls and doors and floating above and across terrain (Bullard 155). Abductees in the company of these beings have reported being able to float and pass through solid barriers (Bullard 155). Once in contact with the beings, a telepathic conversation occurs to calm the abductees. Paralysis and time lapse are common experiences (Bullard 155). Abductees are examined and then scanned “with an eyelike scanning device.” The aliens take bodily fluids and tissue and sometimes implant a metallic device the size of a grain of rice through the nose into the brain or just under the skin somewhere on the body. After the examination, the witness is returned to the place of origin and resumes previous activity. Abductees usually have no memory of the abduction event, but some are wide awake during the event and retain all memories like in the case of Travis Walton (Bullard 153). Once released, witnesses may experience paranormal events and poltergeist activity or develop extrasensory abilities (Bullard 155). Very often, Men in Black visit and subsequent alien encounters occur (Bullard 155). Bullard concludes that “Abductions resemble initiations, narratives of supernatural kidnap and visits to the otherworld in too many aspects of event sequence, content motifs, and thematic clusters for us to expect a full explanation in chance” (Bullard 167). The legends of fairies, witches, and monsters have been displaced by “aliens having the same functions” (Bullard 168).

Men in Black Reports

Abductees often describe aliens as having “oddly jointed limbs” and a “clumsy gait” (Bullard 154). The same has been said of the Men in Black. For this reason, many UFOlogists and abductees believe that the Men in Black are aliens impersonating humans. The Men in Black (MIB) legend began paralleled with the flying saucer legend in the 1950s. The first recorded incident of the MIB phenomena occurred in September 1953 (Clark 170). Jerome Clark (UFOlogist, writer) in his article “Extraordinary Encounters, an Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrials and Otherworldly Beings” and Peter Rojcewicz (PhD, Folklore, University of Pennsylvania) in his article “The Men in Black Experience and Tradition: Analogues with the Traditional Devil Hypothesis” both tell different aspects of Albert Bender’s story.

Albert Bender was a factory clerk living in Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1952. He studied black magic, the occult, and UFOs (Rojcewicz 149). Bender founded the International Flying Saucer Bureau and published a magazine entitled The Space Review. Bender sent a letter to a friend stating that he knew the reason for extraterrestrial visitations and presence on Earth (Rojcewicz 149). Shortly after sending that letter, Bender said that three “dark shadowy” figures with glowing eyes, a sulfur stench, and all wearing hats and overcoats materialized through the wall into his room one night. The entities warned him through telepathy to stop investigating UFOs and to discontinue his UFO organization and magazine publication. These entities warned Bender that they have abducted many people in order to prevent UFO and extraterrestrial investigations (“The Shadow People”).

Bender described the paranormal events that regularly occurred after the visit from the MIB. He said that he would see “strange lights,” smell a “sulfur odor,” and hear “disembodied footsteps” (Clark 141). The message the MIB delivered to Bender made him fearful enough to discontinue all UFO research and publication of his magazine (Rojcewicz 150). One of Bender’s friends, Gray Barker, wrote a book about Bender and others who had these same experiences entitled They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers published in 1956 (Rojcewicz 150). Bender eventually published his own book entitled Flying Saucers and the Three Men in 1962 about his experiences as a contactee. It received poor reviews (Rojcewicz 151).

While Bender’s experiences with the MIB occurred during the 1950s, John Keel was the first to coin the term “Men in Black.” Keel wrote and published several books on MIB, aliens, and other supernatural entities including The Mothman Prophesies. Keel’s personal experience narrative regarding the Men in Black is as follows:

My telephone ran amok first, with mysterious strangers calling day and night to deliver bizarre messages “from the space people.” Then I catapulted into the dream-like fantasy of demonology. I kept rendezvous with black Cadillacs on Long Island, and when I tried to pursue them they would disappear impossibly on dead-end roads. Throughout 1967, I was called out in the middle of the night to go on silly wild-goose chases and try to affect "rescues" of troubled contactees. Luminous aerial objects seemed to know where I was going and where I had been. I would check into a motel at random only to find that someone had made a reservation in my name and had even left a string of nonsense messages for me. I was plagued by impossible coincidences, and some of my closest friends in New York, none of whom were conversant with the phenomenon, began to report strange experiences of their own-poltergeists erupted in their apartments, ugly smells of hydrogen sulfide haunted them (Rojcewicz 153, Keel 1976).

History of UFOlogy and Contactee Movements

Charles Fort wrote about people witnessing spacecraft and strange lights in 1919 in The Book of the Damned (Clark 69). This is the first book ever written on the subject of UFOlogy. The contactee movement officially began in 1952 with meetings in the California desert arranged by George Van Tassel. (Contactees are people who claim to channel messages from otherworldly beings.) George Van Tassel was an aircraft mechanic and channeler. According to Jerome Clark (UFOlogist, writer) who wrote “Extraordinary Encounters," “Van Tassel was the most influential of the first generation of contactees” (Clark 69).

Contactees George and Betty Williamson from Prescott, AZ, claimed to be communicating with aliens via Ouija boards, radios, and telepathy beginning in the 1950s (Clark 71). In 1953 more than ten thousand people attended the Interplanetary Spacecraft Convention signifying immense public interest in UFOs and the contactee movement. Contactees speaking at the event claimed to be channelers, automatic writers, and astral travelers. Some contactees claimed to have dreams and visions that were messages sent from otherworldly beings. Other contactees claimed to have had physical contact with aliens and to have been taken to other worlds in spacecrafts. Most contactees believe aliens are benevolent beings trying to save humankind from self-destruction while UFOlogists have mixed ideas about the motives and origin of aliens (Clark 68). Contactees believe that aliens are hybridizing humanity (which demonologists would interpret as Nephilim) or are impersonating humans on Earth, but are actually aliens waiting for “the time of transition” when Earth will be invaded by spaceships supposedly (Clark 68). The most famous contactee and lecturer on the UFO subject was George Adamski. Adamski began lecturing on flying saucers in the 1930s in California. By the 1950s, he was lecturing all over the world claiming to have met a group of aliens in the desert witnessed by six other people who corroborated his story.

Skeptics

Ayako Yoshimura (PhD, Folklore, University of Wisconsin-Madison) describes pervasive skepticism in “To Believe and Not to Believe: A Native Ethnography of Kanashibari in Japan” and cites a New York Times article entitled, “Alien Abduction? Science Calls It Sleep Paralysis” by Nicholas D. Kristof as confirmation. In his article, Kristof argues that Americans call sleep paralysis alien abductions and encounters because American culture and mass media are saturated in depictions of alien abductions and encounters (Yoshimura 148), not because these events are actually occurring. Likewise, the scientific community believes that old hag experiences occur due to sleep disorders. Psychologists say that the stage of sleep when people dream (REM sleep) paralyzes the body. In REM sleep, motor neurons are disabled even when the person is awake or conscious meaning that people are dreaming or hallucinating while awake (Yoshimura 154-55). In this stage of sleep, the left temporoparietal junction in the brain can make people hallucinate pressure in the chest, perceive shadows, feel dread, and feel like they are being watched.

Susan Blackmore (PhD, Parapsychology, University of Surrey, England) published the article “Abduction by Aliens or Sleep Paralysis?” where she debunks alien abductions and encounters through scientific analysis. Blackmore attributes abduction events to television, false memories, and temporal lobe lability (Blackmore 1). Blackmore believes that knowledge of aliens and abduction events come from popular culture, not real experiences (Blackmore 1). She also believes that psychologists who hypnotize abductees to account for missing time actually implant alien abduction memories in their patients. Blackmore states that those with “relatively labile temporal lobes are more prone to fantasy” and are “more likely to report mystical and out of body experiences, visions and psychic experiences” (Blackmore 2). Blackmore believes that sleep paralysis is responsible for “common myths” such as being “hagged.” Blackmore suggests that being hagged and abducted by aliens are “elaborations of the experience of sleep paralysis.” To prove her theory, Blackmore conducted her own survey of 224 college students and 126 grade school children where she told various classrooms a story devoid of details and then handed out questionnaires to students to determine if they would fill in the details of the story with pop culture themes. Her conclusion is that both groups’ knowledge of aliens and abduction events correlate with the amount of television individuals watched (Blackmore 6). Blackmore included the disclaimer that “These findings do not and cannot prove that no real abductions are occurring on this planet” (Blackmore 6).

Blackmore’s theory does not account for alien encounter events that occurred in antiquity. According to Richard Stothers in “Unidentified Flying Objects in Classical Antiquity,” the Romans used the following terms in 123 BC to describe UFOs and anomalous lights in the sky (Stothers 83-89) as published in Annales Maximi by the Pontifex Maximus of Rome (Stothers 82) .

A beast like a piece of pottery, 100 ft. in size, multicolored, shooting out fiery rays
A spectacle of offensive and defensive weapons ran across the sky
A star emitting smoke copiously
Fiery globes
Fiery red disc
Flaming spears
Gold-colored ball
Mock moons
Mock suns
Oblong shields
Round shields
Sky armaments

Even the Bible, translated from Hebrew and Greek, describes this phenomena in terms such as “chariots of fire” (2 Kings 6:17) and “fire like glowing metal” and "...the appearance and structure of the wheels: They sparkled like topaz..." (Ezekiel 1:4-28) much like the Romans of classical antiquity.

Ultraterrestrials

John Keel considered the MIB to be shape-shifting entities with sinister intentions that have manipulated humankind and its history from the beginning of time (Clark 170-171). Keel said that these entities “sought to confuse, manipulate, and even destroy those who encountered them or sought to uncover the truth about them” (Keel qtd. in Clark 171). Some UFOlogists believe that aliens or extraterrestrials do not exist. They agree with Keel that only demonic entities or supernatural beings exist. According to Keel, these entities are “composed of energy from upper frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum. Somehow they can descend to the narrow range of visible light and can be manipulated into any desirable form” (Keel 1969 qtd. in Clark 142-43). John Keel did not believe these beings were benevolent at all. He defined them as “Ultraterrestrials” inhabiting the “superspectrum” capable of influencing the material world and human perception (Clark 142-143, Keel 1969). These “ultraterrestrials” have the ability to manifest in any supernatural form that suits their purpose. According to Keel, their purpose is to confuse, manipulate, or otherwise enslave and harm humankind (Keel 1969 qtd. in Clark 249). And they do this because they loathe humankind. John Keel’s interpretation of extraterrestrials is based in theology. Keel defined aliens and MIB the same way the Bible describes the “prince of the power of the air” (Eph. 2:2) and principalities (Eph. 6:12). Keel concluded that “The Devil’s emissaries of yesteryear have been replaced by the mysterious ‘men in black.’ The quasi-angels of Biblical times have become magnificent spacemen. The demons, devils, and false angels were recognized as liars and plunderers by early man. These same impostors now appear as longhaired Venusians” (Keel 1970 qtd. in Clark 249).

Conclusion

Legends are disseminated through personal experience narratives. Lexicons provide the means to convey those narratives. John Keel and others created lexicons for people experiencing the same phenomena to describe experiences in terms that others will understand. Whether people experience alien abductions, demonic encounters, sleep disorders, hallucinations or false memories the language acquired to describe and convey these ideas is important and necessary. Otherwise, people would have to use unfamiliar terms that others cannot relate to and that do not make sense.

Works Cited

Blackmore, Susan. "Abduction by Aliens or Sleep Paralysis?" Skeptical Inquirer. Vol. 22, No. 3, pp. 23-28. 1998. https://skepticalinquirer.org/archive/.

Bullard, Thomas. "UFO Abduction Reports: The Supernatural Kidnap Narrative Returns in Technological Guise." The Journal of American Folklore. Vol. 102, No. 404. pp. 147-170. 1989. https://www.jstor.org/stable/540677T. Accessed 26 Mar 2022.

Clark, Jerome. "Extraordinary Encounters, an Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrials and Otherworldly Beings." ABC-CLIO, Inc. 2000.

Dewan, William J. ""A Saucerful of Secrets": An Interdisciplinary Analysis of UFO Experiences." The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 119, No. 472, pp. 184-202. 2006. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4137923. Accessed 06 Apr 2022.

Hufford, David. The Terror that Comes in the Night, an Experience-Centered Study of Supernatural Assault Traditions. American Folklore Society. University of Pennsylvania Press. 1982.

Rojcewicz, Peter M. "The "Men in Black" Experience and Tradition: Analogues with the Traditional Devil Hypothesis." The Journal of American Folklore. Vol. 100, No. 396, pp. 148-160, 1987. https://www.jstor.org/stable/540919. Accessed 06 Apr 2022.

Ross, Joe. "Hags out of Their Skins." The Journal of American Folklore. Vol. 93, No. 368, pp. 183-186, 1980. https://www.jstor.org/stable/541012. Accessed 20 Apr 2022.

"The Shadow People." Ancient Aliens. History Channel. Season 18, Episode 8, Prometheus Entertainment. 2022. https://www.history.com/shows/ancient-aliens/season-18/episode-8.

Yoshimura, Ayako. "To Believe and Not to Believe: A Native Ethnography of Kanashibari in Japan." The Journal of American Folklore. Vol. 128, No. 508, pp. 146-148, 2015. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/jamerfolk.128.508.0146. Accessed 20 Apr 2022.

Stothers, Richard. "Unidentified Flying Objects in Classical Antiquity." The Classical Journal. Vol. 103, No. 1, pp. 79-92, 2007. https://www.jstor.org/stable/30038660. Accessed Apr 2022.