Boo Hag

In the low country of Georgia and South Carolina people used to say goodnight with a warning. “Don’t let de hag ride ya.” It went out of the door with the visitor, half a joke and half an instruction, and everybody who heard it knew exactly what was being wished away.

A man in the Old Fort district of Savannah described the thing itself to interviewers in the 1930s, and he was matter of fact about it. He would be lying down and the window would go up on its own. Then the weight arrived, and the choking with it, and he lay there smothering until somebody in the house shook him loose. He said he got thin and poor from it. Across the street another man’s wife was going through the same thing on the same nights, which is how the two households worked out that one visitor was doing the rounds.

What came through the window was not a ghost. That distinction mattered, and people drew it carefully: ghosts are the spirits of the dead, and witches are living people. The hag had an address. She was an old woman a short walk away, and the neighbours who suspected her shut their doors when they saw her coming and otherwise let her be. Sixty years earlier Jacob Stroyer, born enslaved in South Carolina in 1849, remembered the same arithmetic being done from the cabin doorways of his plantation. After supper the field hands would watch a light far out over the open ground, opening and shutting as it travelled, and somebody would put a name to it. That looks like old Aunt Susan. No, that looks like a man hag. When the light went out the witch had arrived, had turned itself into a person, and would walk about the place talking with everyone quite normally until the household it wanted went to bed.

Stroyer’s neighbours said the witches rode human beings the way a man rides a horse, and that the streak of dried spittle on a sleeper’s cheek in the morning was the bridle they used. Where such a creature comes from depends entirely on who is telling it. Some hold that she is a living woman who sold herself and rides whoever she has taken a grudge against. Some hold that she works to order, sent out by a conjurer against a paying client’s enemies. Some hold that she is a spirit that stayed behind after a bad death. The accounts do not reconcile, and nobody in them seems especially bothered.

The skin is the part everybody remembers. In the printed tellings she is red and raw underneath, and she keeps a human hide the way other people keep a coat: on through the daylight, so that she can walk to the store and be nodded at, off after dark, when she turns invisible and can go in wherever a draught can. The writers who assembled the Georgia interviews in 1940 knew where that idea came from and said so in their own appendix, quoting George W. Ellis on the Vai of Liberia, writing in 1914. Witches come to your house and ride you at night, Ellis reported, and when the witch comes in at the door he takes off his skin and lays it aside in the house. He adds that the witch can be killed by sprinkling salt and pepper about the room, which stops him putting the skin back on, and that just before bed it was a common sight to see Vai households salting their floors. The Caribbean carries the same creature under other names.

The favourite kind of story is the one where somebody gets tired of it. A man in Savannah whose wife was being ridden stopped going to sleep. He sat up in the dark, and when he heard her begin to struggle he took an axe handle and swung it flat through the black air until it hit something solid. There was a screech, and a cat went out of the window and away down the path. In the morning he put the dog on the trail. Half a mile along the road, folded into a fence corner, was old Malinda Edmonds with three ribs broken. That, said the man who told it, broke up the witch riding.

Almost every defence against her was already sitting in the room. A broom laid across the doorway stopped her, because a witch cannot cross a broomstick. A Bible under the pillow did the same, and one Brownville root doctor said flatly that this was the whole of it. Failing those, red pepper and salt pounded together and scattered over the floor, which Stroyer noted worked well enough on the witch and also kept the family coughing until morning. One woman remembered her mother’s rule that nobody went to bed until the pails were filled, since the spirits want water in the night, and she thought that was the entire reason hags ride some people and not others. Later tellings add an open bottle of salt by the bed, which the hag cannot resist entering; salt thrown over the skin she left on the floor, so that it will not take her back; a broom set outside the door, because she is compelled to count every straw in it and will still be counting when the sun comes up; a candle, whose burning smell she will not go near. Doors and window frames got painted a particular pale blue.

The oldest sources are thinner than the modern ones, and worth reading for what they leave out. In the 1879 memoir and the 1930s interviews the word is usually just hag, or witch, or haint, and the weight falls on the riding, the choking and the household remedies rather than on any wardrobe of stolen skin. The full boo hag, compound name and all, is largely a twentieth century settling of that older material, carried in Gullah Geechee families and written down by people from inside the community, among them Cornelia Walker Bailey of Sapelo Island, who set out the salt bottle beside the bed in her own memoir.

Her powers amount to one power applied with patience. She flies, she goes where a draught goes, she takes whatever shape suits the errand, and she draws off breath and strength rather than blood, though at least one scholarly account of the belief has her pummelling a sleeper to exhaustion and then drinking. She is careful. A hag does not generally kill, because a living sleeper can be visited again next week, but the visits wear the body down, the dreams turn worse, and if nobody has her called off the victim is said to lose his mind. If she is caught at work the sleeper wakes mute, unable to make the noise that would bring help.

Every one of those advantages has its cost built into it. Going skinless makes her invisible and quick and also leaves something of hers lying on the floor that any householder with a salt tin can ruin. The compulsion to count makes her thorough and holds her outside the door until daylight, when she becomes visible and cannot dress. Shape changing takes her into the room as a mouse or a rabbit or a roach, and a dog can follow a rabbit home. And she is a living woman with a name and a house at the end of the lane, which is why the axe handle swung blind in the dark connects with something that breaks.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Boo Hag?

A Boo Hag is a witch from Gullah Geechee folklore of coastal South Carolina and Georgia who leaves her own skin behind at night and feeds on sleeping people. She is described as red and raw underneath and as wearing a human hide during the day so that she can move through the community unnoticed. She takes breath and strength rather than blood.

What does it mean to be hag ridden?

Being hag ridden means waking in the night pinned, choking and unable to call out, with the hag’s weight on the chest. People who described it to folklore collectors in the 1930s spoke of the window going up on its own, of smothering until somebody woke them, and of growing thin and weak over repeated visits. The next day’s exhaustion was taken as the sign of what had happened.

How do you keep a Boo Hag away?

The traditional protections are all domestic: a broom laid across the doorway, which a witch cannot cross, a Bible under the pillow, and salt and red pepper pounded together and scattered on the floor. Some households left the water pails full overnight, on the understanding that hags ride people who give the spirits nothing to drink. Later accounts add an open bottle of salt by the bed, salt thrown over the discarded skin so it will not fit again, a broom left outside for her to count, a lit candle, and pale blue paint on doors and window frames.

Is a Boo Hag a ghost?

No. The people interviewed in coastal Georgia in the 1930s drew the line firmly: ghosts are the spirits of the dead, while witches and hags are living people. A hag was often someone the neighbourhood could name and point to, an old woman living a short walk away, which is why stories about trapping her end with a real body found in a fence corner with broken ribs.

Where does the Boo Hag legend come from?

The belief travelled from West Africa and settled in the Gullah Geechee communities of the Carolina and Georgia coast. The Georgia Writers’ Project set its 1930s interviews beside George W. Ellis’s 1914 account of the Vai of Liberia, in which a witch takes off his skin at the door, rides sleepers, and can be stopped by salt and pepper sprinkled about the room. Related figures under other names run right through the Caribbean.

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