Legends 82: The Weight of Fear

Summary

Podcast Summary: Lore Legends 82 – "The Weight of Fear"

Host: Aaron Mahnke
Released: June 22, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this chilling episode of Lore Legends, Aaron Mahnke explores the phenomenon of sleep paralysis—unpacking its terrifying folklore, the social and historical conditions that shaped it, and its deadly consequences during Europe’s witch panic. Delving into tales from the Duchy of Lorraine and beyond, Aaron examines the weight fear can hold across cultures and time, especially when the inexplicable becomes fuel for widespread paranoia and tragedy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Lethality of the Unseen – Setting the Stage

• Aaron opens by recounting an incident involving Admiral Richard E. Byrd in Antarctica in 1934, whose near-death from carbon monoxide poisoning in isolation echoes the paralyzing helplessness sleep paralysis brings. ([01:46–02:50])
• “There’s nothing more suffocating than knowing that you're in danger, but unable to breathe, unable to move. Because when you're paralyzed, you're helpless. And that, my friends, is when the real nightmare takes over.” — Aaron Mahnke ([02:50])

Sleep Paralysis: Science and Superstition

• About 8% experience sleep paralysis regularly, and up to 45% have had it at least once.
• Historical explanations ranged from Galen’s “gastric upset” to Artemidorus’s claim that the god Pan was responsible—often with a positive spin! ([04:01–04:38])
• “If your consciousness wakes before your body does, your mind...freaks out. The emotional center of your brain shifts into panic mode, which can sometimes make people see or hear things that aren’t actually there.” — Aaron Mahnke ([04:40–05:17])

Folklore From Around the World

• Female demon Lilith (Babylonians), incubus/succubus (Romans), Jinn (Egyptians/Muslim folklore), ghosts that strangle (Cambodians), and black dogs/cats in Catalonia.
• The term nightmare once referred to an actual supernatural being—a “mare” or “mara”—not just bad dreams. ([06:30–07:11])
• “Old Norse stories claim that the Mara would ride people while they slept. And in a Norwegian folktale, we learn of a queen who summoned a mare to crush her husband in his sleep.” ([07:08–07:20])

Witch Panic and the Weight of Folklore in Lorraine

• Duchy of Lorraine: Site of nearly 3,000 witch trials in just 50 years; a region battered by war, famine, and societal stress.
• Social instability and trauma likely increased stress-induced sleep problems, providing fertile ground for witch accusations, particularly those involving nighttime stranglings or “visitations.”
• “Their struggles had to be the result of witches. Now remember, fear can be a powerful motivator... it can snowball into something new, something worse.” ([09:05–09:40])

From the Mare to the Old Hag to the Witch

• The old hag—“wrinkled and hideous” with “sharp claws and glowing eyes”—became the face of nocturnal terror, crossing from Europe to Newfoundland and Brazil.
• As sleep paralysis merged with accusations of witchcraft, language evolved:
  • Hexendrucken (“witch pressing”; German), witches’ pressure (Hungarian), and Italy’s “pandifeca”—a supernatural black cat culprit. ([11:18–11:54])

Real Lives, Real Tragedies: Witch Trials and Nightmares

• Testimony regarding “midnight stranglings” or being suffocated in sleep was accepted as legal evidence, leading to torture and executions.

• Key stories:

  • Diodeney (1600): Claimed angels and a suffocating entity visited her; after confession under torture, executed. ([13:02–13:59])
  • Cinnel Petter (1594): Accused by neighbors of “riding” others in their sleep; the accusation resulted in paralysis and terror. ([14:17–15:05])
  • Jacot Simon (1601): Testified of being attacked by “big and ugly cats” that turned into accused neighbors; those women confessed under torture and were executed. ([15:11–15:57])
  • Even family members turned on each other amid rampant fear, as with siblings accusing each other of witchcraft-driven suffocation. ([16:16–16:39])

• “Folklore can often have real life consequences. The folk beliefs we carry with us and pass along to others might seem completely removed from reality, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.” — Aaron Mahnke ([17:12–17:43])

Societal Triggers and the Science of Fear

• Trauma, irregular sleep, anxiety, and social unrest—present in 16th-century Lorraine—are recognized triggers for sleep paralysis today.
• Fear “snowballed,” leading to both literal and metaphorical paralysis, with Salem, Massachusetts, provided as another example of fear transforming into witch panic and destructive trials. ([18:09–20:01])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “It was all about witchcraft. And that brings us back to the Duchy of Lorraine. Because it’s there that we can see what happens when entire communities are caught up in the wildfire of fear and panic.” — Aaron Mahnke ([12:10–12:19])

• “Time and time again, stories of midnight stranglings were brought to the court. In almost every instance, these tales were admitted as real evidence against the accused.” ([17:10])

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[27:19–30:18] – The Sandman: Kindlier Myths with a Menacing Edge

Aaron wraps up with the origins of The Sandman, a figure whose menace is masked by his modern portrayal as a bringer of dreams:

• In the 1816 German story “Der Sandman,” the myth is horrifying: the Sandman throws sand in children’s eyes until they bleed and takes the eyes to the moon to feed his children (“They have crooked beaks like owls so they can pick up the eyes of naughty human children.” ([27:49])).
• Hans Christian Andersen’s 1841 Olla Loci presents a softer Sandman—offering good dreams, but a special umbrella for “naughty children” brings sleeplessness and steals their dreams ([29:32–29:49]).
• “Mind your manners and go to sleep. Otherwise you’ll get a nighttime visit from a supernatural creature.” ([30:07])

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[30:18–31:45] – Closing Thoughts

Aaron underscores the recurring lesson: fear, unchecked and unexplained, becomes a powerful force—one that shapes stories, scapegoats, and societies. What begins as attempts to explain the unsettling phenomena of the night can lead to real, tragic consequences.

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Timeline & Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment | Highlights | |----------------|------------------------------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:11–02:50 | Antarctica, Admiral Byrd’s Ordeal | Helplessness in peril—analogous to sleep paralysis | | 03:41–04:38 | What Sleep Paralysis Feels Like | The terror, prevalence, and historical interpretations | | 05:24–07:20 | Folklore Around the World | From Lilith to the Mara; night demons, hags, and cats | | 08:06–09:40 | The Lorraine Witch Panic | Historical context—war, famine, and root causes of fear | | 10:00–11:54 | Language of Nightmares | How words like “mare” shifted meanings; links to witches through language | | 12:15–16:39 | Testimonies and Executions for “Night Stranglings” | True stories: Diodeney, Cinnel Petter, Jacot Simon, and others | | 17:10–20:01 | Folklore’s Real Consequences & Salem’s Parallel | Accepted as evidence, recurring across continents | | 27:19–30:18 | The Sandman Myth Evolves | From nightmare creature to childhood bedtime figure |

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Final Message

Lore Legends 82 masterfully shows the intersections between night terrors, folklore, and history. By tracing sleep paralysis from ancient myth to deadly accusations of witchcraft, Mahnke highlights humanity’s persistent struggle to explain—and control—the unknown.

“Fear can be a powerful motivator...and when that fear is centered around something supernatural and uncontrollable, it can snowball into something new, something worse.” ([09:31])

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For fans of eerie history and folklore, this episode is a must-listen—illuminating how nightmares can become all too real.

Transcript

[A]

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[C]

It Was Once the Most Dangerous Place on Earth Granted, we wouldn't necessarily consider Antarctica a utopia today, but it isn't nearly as deadly as it used to be. Your chances of dying as you cruise through the Drake passage in the 21st century are significantly lower than than they were 100 years before. Back in the day, just about anything could have taken you out. Hypothermia, starvation, scurvy. Heck, there are even reports of explorers dying of cardiac arrest simply because they exerted themselves too much in sub zero temperatures.

[D]

So in a place where you could

[C]

just as easily fall off a glacier as freeze to death, it might be surprising to hear that one of the foremost explorers of the 1900s was was nearly taken out by a stove. In 1934, Admiral Richard E. Byrd was manning a weather station in Antarctica completely solo. It was a seven month assignment, and unbeknownst to him, ice had been slowly building up inside his stovepipes, blocking the ventilation. As a result, five months into his deployment, he collapsed from carbon monoxide poisoning. Suddenly, he was in a fight for his life. For the next two months, breathing was a struggle. In the process, his body became so weak that he could barely crawl across the floor.

[D]

Convinced he was dying, he wrote in

[C]

his journal, I'm afraid it's the end. And then he left instructions for whoever discovered his body to mail the farewell letters he had written for his family. Thankfully, though, he made a full recovery, even going on to lead two more Antarctic expeditions.

[D]

But there's nothing more suffocating than knowing

[C]

that you're in danger, but unable to breathe, unable to move. Because when you're paralyzed, you're helpless. And that, my friends, is when the real nightmare takes over. I'm Aaron make, and this is lore Legends. It was a situation that any of us would dread. Waking in the middle of the night, surrounded by darkness, only to feel the sensation of something sitting on top of your chest. Just the thought of it would make anyone want to scream. But that's where things actually become even more terrifying.

[D]

Despite opening your mouth and willing yourself

[C]

to scream, not a single sound escapes your lips.

[D]

No matter what you do or how

[C]

hard you try, you've lost control over your entire body. You're frozen. One might even say paralyzed.

[D]

If you've never experienced anything like this, consider yourself lucky.

[C]

For a significant portion of the population, though, this isn't just a thought exercise, it's reality. Scientists say about 8% of the general population experiences sleep paralysis on a somewhat regular basis. Beyond that, multiple studies say that somewhere between 20 and 45% of us have undergone sleep paralysis at least once in our lives. Over the years, many people have tried to explain how the phenomenon works. A second century dream interpreter named Artemidorus of Daldas believed that sleep paralysis was simply the God Pan having intimate relations

[D]

with the dreamer, which, according to him,

[C]

was a sign of good fortune. And the acclaimed medical practitioner Galen, considered by most to be the father of medicine, blamed sleep paralysis on gastric upset. While one 10th century Persian scholar said that it was caused by, as he put it, vapors of phlegm traveling from the stomach to the brain, in reality, hallucinations during sleep paralysis are not caused by vapors of any kind. If your consciousness wakes before your body does, then your mind, for lack of a better term, freaks out the emotional center of your brain, shifts into panic

[D]

mode, which can sometimes make people see

[C]

or hear things that aren't actually there. Like, for example, demons perched on top of their paralyzed bodies.

[D]

Back in the day, though, they didn't

[C]

yet have the tools to understand that neurological process. So it may be unsurprising that for thousands of years, those outside the medical profession, and even some within it, believe that sleep paralysis was brought on by some kind of demonic entity. The ancient Babylonians believed that it was caused by the female demon Lilith. The Romans attributed the condition to both an incubus and a Succubus. Egyptians sometimes attribute their sleep paralysis to Jinn which comes from Muslim folklore and gives us the idea of the genie.

[D]

While Cambodians believe in ghosts that quite

[C]

literally strangle their sleeping victims. And in Catalonia, sleep paralysis has long

[D]

been attributed to a creature that takes

[C]

the appearance of a black dog or cat and sits on the person's chest. In 1666, a Dutch physician named Isbrand von Diemerbroeck echoed the popular belief that sleep paralysis was caused by the migration of external vapors into the head. But he also added another interesting piece to the puzzle.

[D]

You see, despite being an educated man,

[C]

he called sleep paralysis, and I quote, incubus, or the night mare.

[D]

Now, when he wrote out nightmare, it

[C]

wasn't all one word. Instead, it was two. Night and mare.

[D]

It seems that he wasn't referring to

[C]

a bad dream, like we might today. He was writing about an actual supernatural being. And he wasn't alone. Across large swathes of Europe, people believed that those who suffered from sleep paralysis were being tormented by a mare, also called the Mar or the Mara. Some people believed that it was a malicious spirit, while others thought that it was a sorcerer who enjoyed using their powers to torment people.

[D]

Old Norse stories claim that the Mara

[C]

would ride people while they slept. And in a Norwegian folktale, we learn of a queen who summoned a mare to crush her husband in his sleep.

[D]

Now, despite the horse like imagery that

[C]

the word mare might evoke for modern audiences, they weren't usually depicted as horses, and instead they were described as women. But no matter what sleep paralysis looks like, for each individual, there's one trait everyone seems to agree with, that it's absolutely terrifying.

[D]

And if you believe everything your sleep

[C]

paralysis tells you, then you just might find yourself face to face with a nightmare of a very different kind. Over the course of just five decades, the Duchy of Lorraine saw nearly 3,000 witch trials.

[D]

Now, to be fair, this 50 year window came right at the height of

[C]

the European witch panic.

[D]

So it might be tempting to cut

[C]

them a little slack.

[D]

After all, 1580-1630 was definitely not a

[C]

good time to get a sideways glance from your neighbor, no matter where in Europe you lived.

[D]

Still, when compared to other regions and

[C]

countries at the time, Lorraine was an anomaly. But to understand why, it's best to back up a bit and look at the context that created that environment.

[D]

Lorraine was a neutral territory caught between

[C]

France and the Holy Roman Empire. And for nearly a century, those two powers were at each other's throats. As a result, the people of Lorraine

[D]

had to put up with a near

[C]

constant stream of foreign troops passing through their borders. And with Those soldiers came death, not just from violence, but also in the form of epidemics and famine. It was a dark and brutal time,

[D]

and as you'd imagine, all of it

[C]

took a heavy toll on the region's people.

[D]

Most of these people lived in small

[C]

villages or on rural farmland. They were simple folk who lacked the necessary skills, whether that was a good education or the political connections to fully understand why all these bad things were happening to them. They just knew that they were and that it sucked. And so they leaned on the only logic they had to make sense of it all their struggles had to be the result of witches. Now remember, fear can be a powerful motivator.

[D]

And when that fear is centered around

[C]

something supernatural and uncontrollable, it can snowball into something new, something worse.

[D]

And for the people of Lorraine, much

[C]

of their fear was rooted in something very, very specific. Their dreams. That folklore I mentioned earlier about the mare that was written down by the Dutch physician in 1666, well, he was writing about an idea that had already been catching on for decades, like a slow moving wildfire.

[D]

So even in the middle of the

[C]

1500s, as the French and the Holy Roman Empire tore each other apart across the landscape of Lorraine, the concept of the mayor was commonly known with a twist. Eventually, some called the mare by a new name, the old hag.

[D]

This creature was described as a wrinkled

[C]

and hideous old woman with sharp claws and glowing eyes. And she wasn't bound to just Europe.

[D]

There were actually versions of the old

[C]

hag talked about in other countries as well.

[D]

People all the way across the Atlantic and Newfoundland sometimes wrote about being, and

[C]

I quote, ridden to death by an old hag.

[D]

While in Brazil, probably thanks to the

[C]

Portuguese, they told stories of a long nailed crone who stomped on people while they slept. Why is the old hag important to our story?

[D]

Well, because for a really long time

[C]

in western history, most bad things were blamed on witches.

[D]

So when this creature from folklore, the

[C]

mare, started to be referred to as an old hag, it took the ancient belief in a creature that sits on your chest while you sleep and merged it with a new face. Sleep paralysis, in other words, became the work of witches. Now, I'm a big believer that we can find a lot of clues about specific moments in culture by looking at their language.

[D]

And wouldn't you know it, the Germans

[C]

came up with the term Hexendrucken, which

[D]

literally translates to witch pressing. Meanwhile, the Hungarians had their own version,

[C]

which when translated meant witches pressure. But there is one curveball to throw into this, and it comes From Italy. One of the bits of folklore they had bouncing around was called the pandifeca. It was essentially a supernatural black cat that would sit on the chests of sleeping people and give them bad dreams. There were all sorts of theories about who or what those black cats really were, but the most common one was that they were actually witches.

[D]

In the end, I think the important thing to take away from all of

[C]

this is pretty simple. Gone were the days when the weight on your chest was caused by nothing more than bad vapors or an ancient demon.

[D]

No, for people in the middle of the 16th century, and especially in Europe,

[C]

it was all about witchcraft. And that brings us back to the Duchy of Lorraine.

[D]

Because it's there that we can see what happens when entire communities are caught

[C]

up in the wildfire of fear and panic. When something as personal and tenuous as a good night's rest becomes the subject of wild accusations and vicious rumors. Families destroyed, relationships broken. And as we're about to learn, far too many lives lost. She knew that angels were watching over her. She knew because she had spoken to them.

[D]

In October of 1600, Dudunis took the

[C]

stand and testified that a woman in white had visited her while she was in prison. Little angels flew around this spectral woman's body like butterflies and told her that she would soon be free and with her children again. The court in Lorraine was of course, skeptical.

[D]

When they asked her if she had

[C]

ever seen any other spirits before this moment. She told them yes.

[D]

But it had been 20 years earlier, while her husband was away on a trip.

[C]

A supernatural entity had lain on top of her body while she was sleeping. It was so heavy that she could hardly breathe. And despite not wanting to be without

[D]

her husband, she decided that having this thing's company was significantly worse than being alone. Unfortunately for her, the court could do

[C]

nothing to protect Diodeney from what was to come. She was tortured on the rack until she confessed to many crimes, including that of witchcraft. And then she was sentenced to death. Sadly, Diodeney's story is not unique.

[D]

Remember, lorraine in the 1500s was a

[C]

hotbed of witchcraft panic, which led to hundreds and hundreds of accusations. So it shouldn't be a surprise that her claim wasn't the only one of its kind. There were, in fact, dozens of similar stories.

[D]

For example, in 1594, a 40 year

[C]

old woman named Cinnel Petter was put on trial for witchcraft in Northeast Lorraine.

[D]

Apparently, there was a real backlog of

[C]

evidence against her too.

[D]

Her neighbors had been collecting proof of

[C]

her witchy tendencies for years. At this point, one of the many

[D]

stories shared at her trial came from a woman named Royna Marshall. This woman claimed that on Christmas the year before, she had awoken to see

[C]

Snel kneeling upon her husband's chest.

[D]

For some reason, instead of pushing Cinnel

[C]

off of him, Royna tried to shake her partner awake.

[D]

But as soon as the witch noticed

[C]

her, she gave the other woman a

[D]

piercing glare, at which point Reuna was

[C]

no longer able to move.

[D]

Frozen and helpless, Royna could only lay

[C]

there and pray for God to protect her child sleeping in the other room.

[D]

When she finally opened her eyes, she

[C]

could move once again, and Cinelle had vanished.

[D]

A few Years later, in 1601, a

[C]

woman named Jacot Simon took to the stand to testify against another accused witch.

[D]

According to her, while she had been

[C]

lying in bed with an illness a few months prior, 2 and I quote, marvelously big and ugly cats entered the room and tried to strangle her. Jakat was unable to move away from the demons as they attempted to choke her with their paws. Somehow, she traced the sign of the cross with her tongue, and it seemed to break the spell over her mouth, allowing her to scream for her husband. At that point, she claimed, one of the cats transformed into her neighbor, a woman named Pentecote Maiat. Then, as her husband ran into the room with an axe, the witch turned back into a cat, and the two cats ra away.

[D]

Sadly, the authorities tortured a confession out

[C]

of both Mayette and her suspected accomplice, Mojayette.

[D]

The two women admitted to working for

[C]

the devil, as well as wanting to strangle Jacquet, who had accused them of witchcraft many times over the years. They were both sentenced to death for their crimes, and several other similar stories were brought to court in 1611.

[D]

In one instance, two brothers accused their

[C]

sister of being a witch. One of the men claimed that she had tried to strangle him and his children while they slept. At another trial during the same year, a man named Jean testified that he had argued with his neighbor Jeannon, who

[D]

had ended their fight with a curse, saying that she hoped he would, and

[C]

I quote, have the bar of a door across his stomach.

[D]

Later that same night, he felt his

[C]

neighbor climb on top of him and attempt to suffocate him. When God finally gave him the use of his limbs, he threw her off, sending her flying into a chest of drawers. As a result of his accusations, Jeanne's neighbor was tortured until she confessed. Then she too was sentenced to death. Time and time again, stories of midnight stranglings were brought to the court. In almost every instance, these tales were admitted as real evidence against the accused.

[D]

And in most of the cases, the

[C]

stories, either directly or indirectly, led to an execution. Folklore can often have real life consequences. The folk beliefs we carry with us and pass along to others might seem completely removed from reality, but that couldn't be further from the truth.

[D]

For most of human history, we've used

[C]

folklore to make real decisions to explain the inexplicable. And until very recently, sleep paralysis fell mostly into that inexplicable category. And it's easy to see why. In an attempt to wrap their minds around what was happening, people created the Mare. The mare eventually became the old hag, and the hag transformed into a witch.

[D]

A witch whose reign of terror led

[C]

to real trials and deadly executions. But the bigger question is, why Lorraine specifically? What was it about this place that inspired so many cases of sleep paralysis? And the answer to that question is actually in the social and political context that I mentioned earlier. The ongoing conflict happening all around them, the deadly wartime diseases and the devastating famine. It was terrible for everyone involved to live through.

[D]

And here's the thing.

[C]

Most psychological conditions don't appear in a vacuum. They are typically brought on by specific causes, like little triggers that lead to bigger pain. Experts today believe that sleep paralysis most commonly, although not exclusively, develops in people who suffer from some kind of trauma like PTSD or abuse.

[D]

It's also been documented amongst those who

[C]

struggle with irregular sleeping patterns, seizures, high blood pressure, anxiety illnesses, and elevated stress levels. And yes, that sounds like it covers most of the human experience, but it definitely covers the people living in 16th century Lorraine. It's no wonder that when they woke up to something suffocating them, their first instinct was to blame it on witchcraft. And they weren't alone in that. A few decades later, another small town experienced similar trauma. War had been raging along its borders for years.

[D]

People were afraid.

[C]

The devil's minions seemed to be all around them and in every corner.

[D]

And so, just like the people of

[C]

Lorraine, they eventually gave in to witch panic.

[D]

In the trials that followed, multiple witnesses

[C]

testified to having been strangled, attacked, or crushed on their bed by a witch. Testimony, by the way, that was yet again accepted as valid legal evidence in a court of law.

[D]

It seems that even across the ocean

[C]

in Salem, Massachusetts, fear could be paralyzing. There's nothing more terrifying than waking up to see an unexpected nighttime visitor leaning over you parents, know what I mean? Speaking from personal experience, if a surprise

[D]

visit from a needy child can get

[C]

you screaming, I can't fathom how terrifying actual sleep paralysis must be. But believe it or not, witches, mares and random demons aren't the only supernatural creatures who like to prey on us in our sleep.

[D]

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[C]

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Additional taxes, fees and restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for details. Nathaniel really shouldn't have asked, but the curiosity had been eating him alive. Who exactly was this Sandman character and why did his parents threaten Nathaniel with a visit from him whenever he didn't want to go to bed? Nobody in his family had been willing to give him a straight answer, though. So determined to get to the bottom

[D]

of things, he marched up to the

[C]

oldest woman in the neighborhood and he asked her. And unlike his parents, the old lady had no qualms about telling Nathaniel the truth.

[D]

The Sandman, she explained, is a wicked

[C]

man who comes to children when they won't go to bed and throws sand into their eyes so that they start bleeding from their heads. He puts their eyes in a bag

[D]

and carries them to the crescent moon

[C]

to feed to his own children who sit in the nest up there. They have crooked beaks like owls so

[D]

that they can pick up the eyes

[C]

of naughty human Children.

[D]

Like I said, he really shouldn't have asked, because that description would haunt him

[C]

every single night for the rest of his life. And it probably doesn't help that after their conversation, the story goes a bit

[D]

off the rails, with an evil alchemist

[C]

trying to stab Nathaniel in the eyes with a red hot poker.

[D]

But the part that I want to

[C]

draw your attention to is that mysterious figure, the Sandman.

[D]

You see, this tale comes from a

[C]

short story published in Germany in 1816 called, very creatively, Der Sandman.

[D]

And it just so happens to be

[C]

the first time that his name ever appeared in print.

[D]

Folklorists are pretty sure that his legend was already old at that point, but it only ever existed in the oral tradition.

[C]

One clue can be found in a popular phrase in the 18th century German, Der Sandmann komt, which literally means the Sandman is coming.

[D]

It was used as a way to

[C]

say that someone looked very, very sleepy.

[D]

Basically, don't worry, you can go to bed soon.

[C]

The Sandman is on his way.

[D]

Of course, I don't think this phrase

[C]

was actually meant to be all that soothing to the tired party in this scenario. In fact, I'm not sure many cultures would have found comfort in the idea

[D]

of a spectral entity who would take

[C]

their eyeballs if they didn't fall asleep fast enough. But hey, it seemed to work for the Germans. Over the years, the Sandman's rough edges have been sanded down, pun definitely intended.

[D]

A great example of this can be

[C]

found in hans Christian Andersen's 1841 tale, Olla Loci.

[D]

In this story, the Sandman is significantly less violent.

[C]

Instead of throwing sand at children until they bled, he simply sent them to dreamland by making their eyes heavy and their heads droop.

[D]

And when they were finally asleep, he

[C]

just told them bedtime stories.

[D]

He then would open his beautiful iridescent

[C]

umbrella over their heads and give them beautiful dreams. But I have to say that this particular variation of the Sandman folklore isn't 100% innocent.

[D]

It seems that he also came equipped

[C]

with a special umbrella for naughty children as well, one that gave them a night of bad sleep and then stole all their dreams from inside their heads. No matter which version of the Sandman story parents told to their children, though,

[D]

I think the overall message was pretty clear.

[C]

Mind your manners and go to sleep. Otherwise you'll get a nighttime visit from a supernatural creature. Neither Sandman sounds like fun, but if

[D]

I had to choose, I think I'd

[C]

pick the drowsy bedtime stories instead of the monster who collects eyeballs. Foreign. This episode of Lore Legends was produced by me, Aaron Manke with writing by Alex Robinson and research by Sam Alberty. Just a reminder folks, I have a

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brand new weird history book that's coming

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out on August 4th. It is called Exhumed and it explores the roots of the New England vampire

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panic through the lens of the story

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of Mercy Brown and centuries of folklore, medical advancements and pseudoscience.

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It's available right now for pre order

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too and if you pre order the

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hardcover, my publisher has a webpage set

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up where you can submit your receipt and get a free gorgeous exhume themed tote bag.

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Head over to aaronmanke.com exhumed I'll put

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the link in the description for this episode and you can lock in your copy today.

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Don't like hearing ads on Lore? Well, there's a paid version of Lore

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on Apple Podcasts and patreon that is 100% AD free.

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Paid subscribers there also get weekly mini bonus episodes called Lore Bytes and Patreon

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members specifically get discounts on Lore Merch and access to my inbox.

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Learn more [e-mail] support follow the show on YouTube threads, bluesky and Instagram. You know the drill. Just search for Lore Podcast all one

[C]

word and then click that follow button. And when you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening.

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