Book cover of The Terror That Comes in the Night: An Experience-Centered Study of Supernatural Assault Traditions

Book description

David Hufford's work exploring the experiential basis for belief in the supernatural, focusing here on the so-called Old Hag experience, a psychologically disturbing event in which a victim claims to have encountered some form of malign entity while dreaming (or awake). Sufferers report feeling suffocated, held down by some "force,"…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Terror That Comes in the Night as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

How horrible it is to wake up in the night and realise you cannot move. If you try to cry out, only a squeak emerges. This is the common, but disturbing, experience of sleep paralysis, and Hufford’s book is the classic exploration of ‘sleep paralysis myths’ from around the world. I was drawn into this when my own research revealed how many claims of psychic experiences really come down to sleep paralysis, and that OBEs often start from this natural state. On the verges of sleep, I regularly explore this and other states in the weird fringes of altered states…

From Susan's list on The best books on weird experiences.

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