Tag Archives: nightmares

Nightmare

Nationality: Caucasian American
Age: 31
Occupation: Office Technician and Administrator
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/24/12
Primary Language: English

Informant Bio

My informant is an office manager living in Hollywood, California. He grew up in the midwestern United States and moved to Los Angeles to attend USC’s graduate program in film production. He now does media work in an office at USC, and in his spare time stays active with creative endeavors like creating web videos and writing a web comic that updates twice weekly. He completes the daily crossword puzzle at lunch every day, and is the type of person who probably always wins Trivial Pursuit.

The Cauchemar

I was chatting with my informant (my boss) at our office – near the water cooler, yes,  it actually happens – and he told me a strange story about his roommate who had recently attempted astral projection (magical transportation of her consciousness to another place) by putting herself into a meditative state. Though her attempt was not successful, she did descend deep enough into her meditation that she had a dreamlike vision of a small, humanoid creature sitting in darkness. She asked it, “what are you doing?” It replied, “waiting.” Frightened by the image, she quickly snapped herself out of her meditative state.

My boss thought the creature sounded like a cauchemar. The cauchemar, he explained, is a demon-like creature whose name means “nightmare” in French. He had first learned of it from a friend who lived in Louisiana, though he suspected stories about the creature had been brought to Louisiana by the French because the myth “seems European.”

According to my informant, the cauchemar is an evil creature, that chooses its victims at random. It sits on your chest while you sleep and either: rides your sleeping body where ever it likes, or sucks the breath out of you, killing you slowly while you sleep. My informant thought that the cauchemar sounded like an explanation someone might have given for conditions that cause sleepers to wake in the middle of the night feeling pressure on their bodies, like sleep apnea.

Because the cauchemar does not discriminate when it chooses a victim, it seems to me to be a simple personification of nightmares. Its impossible to control whether or not one will have a nightmare, and that lack of control, especially while vulnerable (unconscious), is frightening. Giving them a face makes nightmares easier or us to understand, and even if depicted as a hideous, malicious creature, this is comforting.

Authored Forms

This painting of the creature from the 1700s  by Swiss painter Johann Heinrich Fussili supports my informant’s suspicion that the mythological creature may have been brought to the United States from Europe. It depicts an impish creature with large ears and fur covering its body, sitting on the chest of a woman in white. In spite of its comical appearance, the distressed pose of the sleeping woman, and the alarmed face of her horse suggest that this is indeed a creature to be feared.

Cited

Image found at: “Cauchemar.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 4 Mar. 2012. Web. 24 Apr. 2012. <http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cauchemar>.

Protection Ritual— India

Nationality: American. Ethnicity: Indian
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/21/11
Primary Language: English

The practice as described by Anish:  “So when I was younger and I used to have nightmares and stuff, there’s a concept in India that you have a ‘bad eye,’ or like a negative energy looking down on you.  So what you do is you put a black dot underneath your left ear, and that’s supposed to keep away bad thoughts and bad energy from you.”

Anish told me that he learned this practice from his parents, who would draw a black dot behind his left ear from the time when he was a baby until he was around ten years old.  He said that he did not think this practice had religious origins, as his father is Hindi and his mother is Christian.  Instead, he always considered it a secular practice, more like an Indian/geographical superstition rather than a religious one.

Anish said that he had to walk around in public with a large black dot under his left ear very often when he was growing up, but that he never thought it was unusual even though he didn’t understand the exact reasoning behind the practice.  He said that he sometimes felt strange if other children pointed the black dot out, but for the most part it was a common practice in the part of India in which he grew up.  Others would also have the black dot occasionally, and it didn’t seem unusual.  The fear of the “bad eye” or “negative energy” was common, and there were several other practices to get rid of it.

Although Anish did not specifically use the term “evil eye,” opting instead for “bad eye,” the concept sounds very similar.  This practice is likely just another way for people to ward off evil spirits and feel more comfortable after performing a superstitious act.  The black dot probably acts like another eye staring back, keeping the “bad spirits” from entering into your brain.

This is likely a way for children to feel better about their nightmares and more protected by their parents.  Anish said that only children have the black dot drawn behind their ear, which is likely due to the fact that children have a hard time understanding and dealing with things like nightmares.  Children feel comforted knowing that their children are protected from the “bad eye,” and parents feel comforted knowing that their children feel protected.