In some rural parts of Italy, especially in Abruzzo, people explained sleep paralysis using the figure of the pandafeche. This creature was said to have a scary face, claws, or other frightening features, and it was believed to sit on a person’s chest at night, especially if they had upset a witch or broken a local rule. The stories are different from village to village, but the idea is the same. People didn’t see the paralysis as random or just in the mind. They believed something real and scary was causing it. Even today, some Italians will joke about the pandafeche when someone feels “held down” while half-asleep, and the story is still passed down as part of local tradition
It’s somewhat astonishing when you consider what sleep paralysis looks like at different points in history and geography. The phenomenon itself hardly varies. People wake up in the middle of the night fully conscious they are awake, but they can’t move. They have a pressure on their chest as if something is lying on it. They feel a presence in the room. Sometimes they even hear or see things that are, to all appearances, completely real. You just turn on the part of the same whether you’re in Europe hundreds of years ago or living in a modern city today, and you’re fine. What differs is the way people describe it.
Different cultures have different narratives, different names, different significances to the experience. Beliefs don’t merely provide a post-hoc label for what is happening. They literally influence what people think they are seeing, how they think they are feeling, and what they think they are remembering later. The contemporary examples are really fascinating too. Even in cultures that we know about REM sleep and the science around it, these beliefs have not disappeared. They have only evolved. Instead of witches and demons, there are now stories of shadow people at the foot of the bed, intruders in the room, or aliens. Movies and TV and stories online give people images to put themselves in line with what they’re feeling. A teenager watching horror movies late at night might wake up and see a dark shape at the room’s corner.
Conclusion