The Hag and Witch Riding

You wake in the dark and cannot move. Something sits on your chest. You try to call out and nothing comes. In the South, from Maryland down to Florida, this had a name: the hag was riding you.

Hyatt heard about the hag more often than almost anything else on the East Coast. His informants did not treat it as a bad dream. It was a living person, a witch, who left her body at night and came through the keyhole to ride.

What it is

The hag is a witch who travels out of her skin. She strips off, sheds the skin, leaves it lying on the floor, and goes out to torment a sleeper.

The victim is pressed, choked and held down until dawn. One informant described the sign left behind: mucus in the corners of the mouth, “de after effect of de hag ridin’ yo’ through dat night” (Hyatt 437 · Sumter, S. Car. · informant 1344a).

A Hampton informant said the hag would take a horse from the stable, ride it backwards to your house, slip through the keyhole and “ride you to death” (Hyatt 462 · Hampton, Va. · informant 25).

Skin, skin

The oldest story Hyatt recorded is the skin story. Find where the hag leaves her skin, and fill it with salt and pepper.

• In Sumter the witch was a man. When he came back and tried to climb into his skin, it burned him. His chant was “Skin, skin, do yo’ know me?” (Hyatt 442 · Sumter, S. Car. · informant 1381).
• In a story from Orangeburg County, a woman salted the ground around her bed on an old woman’s advice. The rider turned out to be a man she knew, and once his skin was salted he could not put it back on. They caught him and destroyed him (Hyatt 454 · New York City · informant 10).

Making her count

The hag has a weakness. She must count anything small you leave in her path, and she cannot leave until she has finished.

• Nine broom straws at the head, middle and foot of the bed, with a bottle beside them. While the hag counts, you catch her in the bottle (Hyatt 503 · Sumter, S. Car. · informant 1368).
• Flaxseed or mustard seed thrown between her and the door. While she gathers it, you take her (Hyatt 509 · Old Point Comfort, Va. · informant 27).
• Twenty mustard seeds under a sifter. In the morning she is found under it, still counting (Hyatt 519 · St. Petersburg, Fla. · informant 1012).

Keeping her off

• A broom across the door, or across your feet in the bed, every night (Hyatt 500 · Sumter, S. Car. · informant 1346).
• Salt on the floor and a broom across the threshold (Hyatt 501 · St. Petersburg, Fla. · informant 1021).
• An open Bible turned face down under the pillow, with scissors beside it (Hyatt 479 · Jacksonville, Fla. · informant 559).
• The 35th Psalm read for nine nights, the Bible slept on each night (Hyatt 480 · Savannah, Ga. · informant 539).
• Rusty tin cut to the length of the first joint of the left middle finger, sewn in a sack and worn at the neck (Hyatt 515 · Sumter, S. Car. · informant 1359).
• Three new tacks in the bedroom doorsill. A root doctor told one sufferer “they couldn’t cross those tacks” (Hyatt 539 · Norfolk, Va. · informant 445).

Finding out who

The hag is someone you know. Lay broom straws by the bed, and the first person who comes to borrow something the next day is the one who rode you. Do not lend it (Hyatt 499 · Sumter, S. Car. · informant 1384).

A Petersburg informant gave a harder method. Keep a bottle by the bed, and when the rider jumps off, make water in it before he leaves the house. The rider came back next morning unable to pass water himself, begging to be turned loose (Hyatt 536 · Petersburg, Va. · informant 443).

How it’s worked today

Rootworkers still treat night riding as an attack, not a sleep problem. The broom across the door, salt at the threshold, the open Bible under the pillow and the Psalms read before sleep are all in use.

Counting seeds, usually mustard seed or flaxseed, are still scattered at doors and windows to hold anything that comes in. Workers also look for who is behind the riding and send the work back.

Learn the work

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Source: Harry Middleton Hyatt, Hoodoo – Conjuration – Witchcraft – Rootwork, 5 vols., 1970-1978. Numbers refer to Hyatt’s own item numbers; the town and informant number follow. Written by Hoodoo Witch in our own words, with short quotations for reference.