Cauchemar

Also Known As: French; older and regional forms cauquemare, cauquemaire, quauquemaire, cochemare and cochemar; from caucher or cauquer, “to press or trample”, and mare, “night phantom”
Region/Culture: Western Europe
Mythos: French Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Fairy Folk and Spirit Beings
Mythical Attributes: The Cauchemar is a night spirit that settles on a sleeper’s chest, pins the body and stops the voice.
Role in Mythos: It is the French form of the pressing night-spirit, the being whose name became the ordinary French word for a bad dream.
Relation to Humans: It comes to people in their beds and presses or rides them until they can neither move nor cry out. Households answer it with small domestic defences, from a stool left by the hearth in fifteenth-century Picardy to beans under the mattress in modern Louisiana.

The fire is banked for the night and the house has gone quiet. Before she climbs into bed, the woman of the house drags a wooden stool to the hearth and leaves it there, empty, facing the embers. She is not expecting company. She is setting a trap.

The advice comes from the Évangiles des quenouilles, the Distaff Gospels, a book put together in the Picard and Flemish borderlands in the later fifteenth century. Its conceit is that six old women meet over six evenings to spin and to lay down the law on everything they know, from love charms to sick hens. On the Tuesday the talk turns to the cauquemare. Leave a wooden stool by the fire, one of them says. If the thing comes and sits on it, it will not be able to get up again until broad daylight. Another woman adds that what such creatures fear most is a pot that keeps on boiling after it has been taken off the flames. A third, less interested in remedies, reports what it felt like when it came to her. It was hairy, she says, and the fur was soft.

That is very nearly the whole of the creature’s medieval portrait, and it is typical. The Cauchemar is known by what it does. A sleeper lies on their back. Something arrives without a sound, climbs up, and settles on the breastbone with the full weight of a grown body. The air will not come. The mouth opens and nothing leaves it. Then, at some point before morning, the weight is gone and the room is only a room again.

Its name is its whole biography. The first half comes from an old northern French verb, caucher or cauquer, meaning to tread on or press down, a descendant of the Latin word for trampling underfoot. The second half, mare, was borrowed from Middle Dutch, where it meant a phantom that comes in the night. The same word sits inside the English nightmare and names the Mara of Scandinavia. So a cauchemar is, literally, the phantom that tramples. The word turns up in the fifteenth century in the Picard shape cauquemaire, and it could then mean either the spirit or a witch who behaved like one. Other parts of France built the same idea with a different second half. Around Lyon and the Rhône the creature was the chauche-vieille, the old woman who treads.

No story explains where it came from. There is no first Cauchemar, no curse, no parent, no home it returns to at dawn. It may be the least documented household visitor in France, and one of the most widely met.

By the end of the seventeenth century the learned had other ideas. The first dictionary of the French Academy, printed in 1694, defines the word as an illness, brought on by vapours that weigh on the chest and block the breath, mostly at night. Then it adds, with a faint sniff, that the common people believe the cauchemar to be an incubus spirit. Over the next two hundred years the doctors won the word. In modern French a cauchemar is simply a bad dream, and nobody leaves a stool out for it.

The creature itself crossed the Atlantic and kept working. In the French-speaking parishes of south-west Louisiana, where the word is said more like koosh-ma, it never shrank into a figure of speech. The folklorist Katherine Roberts collected accounts around Lafayette in 1995, mostly from African American, Black Creole and French Indian families. They described the visitor as the devil, an evil spirit, a ghost or a witch, depending on who was asked. It gets on top of a person in bed. The person wakes, knows it is there, and cannot lift a hand or make a sound. People there speak of being ridden, and they mean it in the stable sense. There is a way to tell in the morning: dried lines of spit on the face are the marks of the bridle. The ridden wake worn out, with aching legs and cramps, as a horse would.

Louisiana also gave the visits a moral edge the old French book never mentions. A young woman said it came to her on a night she had gone to bed angry at her mother. Another account tied it to a theft. It comes, in this telling, to those who have done something to deserve it.

Its strength is simple and bodily. It can enter a closed house unseen, pin a full-grown adult flat, shut the throat, and leave no proof behind but tiredness. It works only at night and only on the sleeping.

Its limits are stranger, and they are oddly housebound. In Picardy it could not resist a seat by the fire and could not leave one before day. In Louisiana it cannot pass anything countable without counting. Beans or small stones laid in a ring under the mattress will keep it busy until sunrise, and a wire screen in the window does the same job, since every hole must be reckoned. Salt under the pillow, a broom stood in the corner, a cross on the wall, holy water and prayers before bed all turn it away. So does sleeping face down. It can crush the breath out of a farmhand, and it can be beaten by a handful of dried beans.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Cauchemar?

The Cauchemar is a night spirit of French folklore that sits on a sleeper’s chest and presses down until the person cannot move, breathe easily or cry out. Its name later became the ordinary French word for a nightmare. The belief also survives in French-speaking south-west Louisiana.

What does the word cauchemar mean?

Cauchemar joins an old northern French verb, caucher or cauquer, meaning to press or trample, with mare, a Middle Dutch word for a night phantom. It literally means the phantom that tramples. The second half is the same word found in the English nightmare.

How do you protect yourself from the Cauchemar?

A fifteenth-century French book, the Distaff Gospels, says to leave a wooden stool by the fire, because the Cauchemar that sits on it cannot rise until daylight. In Louisiana, people put beans or stones in a circle under the mattress or a screen in the window, since it must stop to count them. Salt under the pillow, a broom in the corner, prayers, holy water and sleeping on the stomach are also used.

What does the Cauchemar look like?

Most accounts do not describe the Cauchemar at all and speak only of a heavy weight in the dark. One woman quoted in the fifteenth-century Distaff Gospels said it was hairy with soft fur. In Louisiana it has been described as looking like a devil, a ghost or a witch.

What is the Cauchemar in Louisiana folklore?

In south-west Louisiana the Cauchemar is a spirit, devil or witch that climbs onto people in bed and rides them like a horse. Victims wake unable to move or scream, and dried spit at the corners of the mouth is read as bridle marks. Some accounts say it visits people who have done wrong or gone to bed angry.