Hey everyone, Josh here from the Bros. I decided because of the spooky season I would talk about one of the spirits and the lore behind it. Hopefully you find this interesting, I know I did!
So what exactly is a mare? It goes by a lot of names depending on where you are (Old English: mære; Danish and Norwegian: mare; Swedish: mara; Polish: mara or zmora, just to name a few), but the idea is pretty much the same everywhere. In Germanic and Slavic folklore, the mare is a nasty spirit that sits, walks, or "rides" on your chest while you sleep and brings on nightmares. People said that once it settled on you, it felt like you were being smothered, and you could wake up in a cold sweat or find yourself stuck in sleep paralysis. It's usually described as female, and it has some magic up its sleeve for haunting you, including the ability to shapeshift. And here's the fun part: the mare is where we get the word "nightmare."
If you're a word nerd like me, this part is pretty cool. Most scholars trace "mare" back to an ancient Proto-Indo-European root, *mer-, which has to do with crushing, pressing, and oppressing. Some sources say it means "to rub away" or "to harm" instead. Either way, you get the picture. Other languages describe it the same way. In Finnish and Karelian, the creature's name roughly translates to "the presser" (Finnish: painajainen, Karelian: painajaini) or "the rider" (Finnish: ajajainen). In Danish and Norwegian, the word for nightmare literally means "mare ride" (mareridt, mareritt). In Icelandic it's "mare tread" or "mare trample" (martröð), and in Swedish and Finnish it's "mare dream" (mardröm, painajaisuni). So pretty much everybody agreed this thing was sitting on you.
And it wasn't just people she went after. The mare was believed to ride horses all night, so by morning they'd be worn out and covered in sweat. She could also tangle up the hair of a sleeping person or animal, leaving behind what folks called "marelocks." In Swedish those are marflätor ("mare-braids") or martovor ("mare-tangles"), and in Norwegian they're marefletter and marefloker. This belief probably started as a way to explain the Polish plait, a real condition where hair becomes hopelessly matted.
German Folklore :
Over in Germany, the mare goes by Mara, Mare, or Mahr in High German (and it's a masculine noun there, "der Mahr"). In Low German it's mårt or Mahrt, and in Pomerania and Rügen it's called de môr. The German version rides on sleepers so they can barely breathe, or just lies across their chest until they're drenched in sweat. The victim can groan, but that's about it. They can't speak, they're basically under a spell, and they can't wake up unless somebody calls them by their baptismal name. Imagine needing someone to say your full name just to get you out of that.
Here's where it gets weird. The môr gets into your house through a hole the carpenter forgot to plug, and if you plug that hole, you can trap it. In one story, a male môr that had been tormenting a woman got caught this way. He ended up becoming her husband and having kids with her, but once he found out about the hole, he left, and only came back once a year. In another story, someone caught a female môr by putting green paint on their hands, then stuck her on an oak tree for good. The tree withered, but it never stopped shivering. And just like her Scandinavian cousins, the môr rides horses too, leaving their manes so matted you can't untangle them (that one comes from folklore collected on Rügen).
Nordic Folklore :
Up in Scandinavia, the mare is usually female, and she "rides" her victim's chest. That's literally what they call it, "mare riding" (Danish: mareridt, Norwegian: mareritt, Swedish: marritt), and it brings on serious anxiety and that feeling like you can't breathe. She goes after both people and animals. A lot of stories say she looks like a beautiful young woman, but sometimes she shows up as a nasty old lady instead. She can shapeshift, too. She might appear as a man or a furry animal, like a cat or a dog, and in a couple of cases even a bird, usually an owl. As for where mares come from, there are a lot of different answers. Some legends say a mare is actually the soul of a person, living or dead, out wandering in another form. It might be a sinful woman, someone who was wronged, or someone who died without ever getting married.
I could go on and on about the different folklore. What gets me is that no matter where you go, the story changes a little, but it never gets any less terrifying. So let's try something. Imagine this…
You wake up in the middle of the night, and you don't know why. The house is quiet. Too quiet. Then you see it: a shadow in the corner of your room, darker than the dark around it. It doesn't rush you. It just walks, slow and patient, to the side of your bed and stands there, looking down at you. You try to move, but your arms won't listen. When your eyes finally adjust, you can make out a face. It's an old woman. Almost too old, with skin pulled so tight and thin it doesn't look like it belongs on a living thing. She doesn't blink. She doesn't do anything. She just watches you until morning.
The next night, she comes back. But she's different. Younger. You tell yourself you're losing it, so you grab your phone and snap a picture. And there she is, right there on the screen. A young woman with dark brown hair, pretty, smiling at the camera like she knew you'd take it. You need someone to tell you you're not crazy, so the next day you show the photo to a friend. They stare at it for a long time. Then they ask you why you didn't mention she was blonde. Keep in mind, this is a photo. It shouldn't be able to change. But it does, depending on who's looking.
After that, she stops standing beside the bed. Now she climbs on. Every night you feel the weight settle onto your chest, heavier than she should be, pressing the air out of you a little more each time. You wake up soaked in sweat, more exhausted than when you went to sleep. Every day you're a little weaker, a little paler, and she's a little stronger. According to some of these old stories, it doesn't stop until there's nothing left of you.
So the next time you glance out the window in the middle of the night and see someone standing in your backyard, or even out in your front yard, just standing there and looking up at your house, don't wave. Don't go out to see who it is. Just pull the blinds, and hope she hasn't already picked you. Because that face could be the last thing you ever see.
