Background: The informant (A) is my roommate, the daughter of two Pakistani immigrants. She grew up in the US and frequents Pakistan during breaks from school. She is Muslim and participates in many of the religion’s practices.

A: So the like…background of this is that in Islam there are these other creatures that exist and one is called a Jinn. It’s made of fire and like…exists between our human realm and where angels or heaven and hell are….those are called Jannah and Jannath in Arabic. And Jinns can like…..kind of like possess you, and my mom would always tell me this one blessing to say to get rid of Jin. And then that one night I had sleep paralysis and I saw this like…creepy human man figure next to my bed. And obviously I was scared and like….frozen…or paralyzed so I couldn’t move but I started like…whispering the blessing my mom had told me but the Jinn started getting closer and I just kept saying the blessing. And then eventually it just went away and I fell asleep. But when I told my mom she was like, “There’s definitely something bad around you.”

Me: So where’d you learn about Jinns?

A: I heard about them in the Quran and stories of like…personal experiences with them are passed down a lot. Like my grandma believes that Jinns are really attracted to her and will follow her around, I can’t think of any specific stories she’s told me but I know she’s thought that for a long time.

Context: This was told to me during a recorded in person interview. The informant presumed that the figure she saw during sleep paralysis was a Jinn and that it was visiting her due to some sort of evil energy or happenings near her. The informant was recounting the story she had told me at an earlier date.