In this study, among other things, we will be peeling back the layers of meaning associated with expressions linked etymologically to the English compound term nightmare, more specifically those connected to the second element -mare. Here the expression nightmare will be discussed using its earlier meaning, as referring to the ominous “sensed presence” of Sleep Paralysis (SP). And this meaning evokes the menacing spectral being who is said to attack people in their sleep, as it has been described in the literature dedicated to the subject of the SP. This earlier meaning contrasts with the more recent understanding that the term nightmare has acquired, namely, as a way to refer generically to a “bad dream”. This approach will allow us to move back in time to earlier, more elaborated narrative frames of reference that were once part of a complex animist worldview indigenous to Europe. In the process we will investigate the way that the syndrome called Sleep Paralysis (SP) fits into and acted to transmit this overarching animist cosmovision across the centuries.
The older European animist belief system appears to have been grounded in the conviction that humans descended from bears, that bears were ancestors and therefore relatives and kin, an understanding well documented among Native Americans as well as hunter-gatherer peoples of Eurasia (Black, 1998; Hallowell, 1926; Rockwell, 1991; Sarmela, 2006). That belief was kept alive orally among Basque-speakers and was finally documented in a recording made in 1986 by the Basque anthropologist Txomin Peillen when he interviewed the last two bear hunters of Zuberoa, a Basque speaking father and son (1986). The cultural model has its roots in understandings that date far back in time. In the case of Europe, it appears that we are talking about an animist relational ontology and indigenous epistemology that drew on persistent oral traditions and widespread, highly resilient social practices, some of which are still accessible to us today.
Although over time these understandings underwent major changes, some elements from the earlier belief system persisted, firmly entrenched in certain ways of speaking, e.g., about the nightmare, and in related traditional practices. These habits of thought also left a deep imprint in orally transmitted performance art, including the way that certain characters routinely interacted and continue to interact as enforcers of social norms of behaviour, especially when it comes to the behaviour of children. As will become apparent in the pages that follow, the identity of the often fur-clad beings who interrogate children across Europe, threatening to carry them off in a sack or basket if they misbehave, can be traced back to a menacing “sensed presence” linked to the phenomenon of SP.
Furthermore, there is reason to believe that a kind of “vision quest” was integral to the oral traditions and social practices associated with this older European animist ontology. The vision quest experience was elaborated upon in storytelling, more concretely in versions of a pan-European folktale known as “The Bear’s Son” in which the young half-bear, half-human hero acquires his four Guardian Helper Animals (Frank, 2017, 2019b, in press). Moreover, it appears that the onset of puberty may have triggered both the undertaking of the vision quest and the way that the “sensed presence” of SP was first experienced and interpreted, especially by young people.
As we travel the path backwards in time, we will be aided by the fact that the different threads making up the animist worldview form a meshwork of mutually reinforcing and often persistent elements. As a result, a significant number of ethnographically well-documented modern beliefs and traditional performances link back to much older ones. And, as we reattach the threads making up this archaic web of belief, among other things, we will be moving from well documented and highly entrenched instantiations of the nightmare to more speculative reconstructions of it. As we do this, the role that it played as a key agglutinating factor in keeping the animist cosmology alive will become apparent. Indeed, over the centuries the ominous “sensed presence” of SP may well have acted as a kind of powerful psycho-social force as well as providing a neurobiological basis of support for the belief system itself.