This time, I’m sharing “The Story of the Night Mare,” an old piece of folklore about the strange weight that sometimes comes in the middle of the night. Long before people had medical names for sleep paralysis, many believed a spirit called a mare slipped into houses after dark and sat on the chest of the sleeper, pressing the breath out of them while they lay unable to move. It’s one of those stories that shows how people tried to explain the unsettling things that happen between sleep and waking—and why the word nightmare still carries that old belief inside it.
Feral Folktales is where I step aside from the main show and tell a straight folktale—simple, spoken, and exactly as it’s meant to be heard. These bonus episodes are just a little something extra between the full installments of The Feral Folklorist, which is where you’ll find the deeper dives into history, folklore, magic, hauntings, and the stranger corners of human belief.
A new folktale appears between the regular podcast releases—just a short story to keep the world of folklore moving.
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