Old Hag

Tch tch tch.
Okay, so I'm still not sure where things are heading with the Slender Man. He's been seen a few times since I last posted, but nothing out of the ordinary (--wait, the ordinary..?). But I have something interesting to record.
     Ever since I was a very little girl, like six years old, I've been having dreams about this old woman with a distinctly supernatural presence. The first time I can remember she was sitting in the porch of a decaying old house, with grey hair pulled back in a bun, a plain dress, your typical misanthropic-looking spinster with a mangy brown dog beside her, but she had just a sense of otherness and it was creepy. I had that dream for six nights, every night, and on the seventh night I kind of percieved her as not really threatening or an evil entity. So I didn't see her again for a while, until last December, when I saw her. It was the same being, but a different form. She wore some kind of floating black dress and had tentacle-like appendages -- sort of like our friend Slendy -- all around her, and her hair was like that too. She looked younger, maybe my mother's age or so then, not an Old Hag, with olive skin and she was smiling, and just conveyed the word 'nocnitsa', which I didn't understand and thought of as gibberish.

      This summer when I was in the hospital after a surgery (looong long story), I was almost delirious from painkillers and I was on my laptop, and somehow I came to a wikipedia page on 'Nocnitsa', God knows how I came to that. It's a hazy memory, like I said, I was kind of rambling to my mother and really feverish. This is the article:

"The Nocnitsa, or "Night Hag", in Polish mythology, is a nightmare spirit that also goes by the name Krisky or Plaksy. The Nocnitsa is also present in Russian, Serbian and Slovakian folklore. She is known to torment children at night, and a stone with a hole in the center is said to be a protection from the Nocnitsa. Mothers in some regions will place a knife in their children's cradles or draw a circle around the cradles with a knife for protection. This is possibly based on the belief that supernatural beings cannot touch iron.

          [...]

The Night Hag is known to sit on your chest and draw your life energy, drawing it until you can not go on (because of this many refer to Nocnitsa as a type of vampire) and she will continue visiting. To stop the Night Hag, you have to fight back and do not give in to her. Many say she visits when you sleep on your back with your hands on your chest. This is called sleeping with the dead. The night hag is made of shadow but the most noticed part of her is the eerie red glow of her eyes and the horrible screech of her voice, the part below her waist all shadow. Her smell is of moss and dirt from a forest said to be where she lives, and at times her stench can infiltrate your dreams, or linger in the room after her visit. She is also known as a demonic spirit who feeds off your darkness (namely, depression and sadness), this makes the night hag stronger, more powerful and makes her harder to get rid of.
She is known in Bulgaria as Gorska Makua.
The Night Hag is almost certainly linked to the common apparition seen during the hypnagogic state of sleep."

      Afterward I drew this on a computer programme, which may be related:

    
     ...and I started asking my mother if "her face is all distorted for you as well" and saying she was always watching. My mother doesn't really want me to say much at all about it, but she has seen her many times herself her entire life.
     I saw the old hag again in July, when I was asleep in the living room. I saw her, floating with long white hair in a greyish silvery dress, very old, but I couldn't see her face, because she turned away when I saw her and floated into my mother's room, and looked at her face very closely -- I'm not sure how I know that, but I kind of saw it in my "mind's eye" or something. I don't think she had a malicious intent, but she was just watching us.
     Then, just a few nights ago, I dreamt -- it was like dream-walking, so to speak, it felt like I was at our new house. My new room there is very poorly lit, empty, with dark grey walls and the only things in it are a shelf with a record player and old records, a dim lamp, and a mirror on the wall. I was standing in front of the mirror, and behind me in the mirror I saw her. I got a closer look at her this time, and she was petite, about my height, and she wore a pale slip dress thing and had bare wrinkled arms. She looked very old, with messy white hair that was very long, and she had a pinched wrinkled face. She was smiling, but it was really tight-lipped and you could see her gums and all her teeth, and her eyes were bloodshot. She looked angry, but I didn't feel the anger directed at me, I think -- but at whom? I tried to ask her questions, but then she disappeared, and I started running around the house looking for her, and then I woke up and I was really nerve-wracked because I had no idea where she went.
     All I know about her, and I've done extensive research on her, is that she's been around for, well, ever. I think she is or is connected to Lilith, the night hag and whatnot, and I think she's a banshee. I'm sure she's a banshee. She's kind of become like the creepy ancient Lovecraftian vampire aunt in the attic, so to speak. She's always hanging around the family, even when the family was in England, and she just seems to watch us and occasionally make herself noticed.
    
-- Elizabeth de Angelis