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Most of us think of nightmares as dark terrors conjured by the subconscious. But what if it’s more? From getting caught in a lion’s jaw to being chased by mysterious creatures, we experience a house of horrors in our dreams. Still, for centuries, a night “mare” was considered a scary intruder, or even a mare demon of sorts from mythology.

The mare does not refer to a female horse but to the mara demon who sits on a person’s chest and terrorizes them in their sleep. According to old Norse folklore, a Mara was an evil nocturnal demon of terror. The Night-hag or “riding witch” are other names for the Nightmare.

The Mara demons were feminine nightmare spirits in Slavic and Teutonic mare mythology. The Slavic words mora, morava, and zmora have their roots in the Greek word moros, which means death. For the Croats, mora means “nightmare,” but it also refers to a succubus, a demonic entity that visited men in their dreams and tormented them with longing. The concept is that these feminine spirits intentionally tangled men’s hair in their sleep to give them “mare-locks,” “mare-braids,” and “mare-tangles.”

Old Norse legend goes that a mara would slither into a bedroom at night, hover on top of a sleeping person, and inflict nightmares. Usually, the victim would become paralyzed when the mare visited and felt a heavy weight starting at the foot but ending on the chest, leaving the victim feeling suffocated, panicked, and breathless.

The Mara was a dark entity that traveled throughout Europe; she was a demon-induced nightmare known as a martröð in Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic, a mahr in Germany, and so on. The mare mythology was that they entered through knotholes or keyholes. Therefore, closing these gaps would deter them. Capturing the mare required finding a companion, awaiting its arrival, and sealing the entrance.

Often mares were considered to be female. In such folkloric tales, a few men could capture a lovely bride, but she always managed to escape when she found the exit. If a mare sat on you, you could try shoving your thumb into its mouth or offering it a gift to return for the next day.

According to a folktale from Denmark, a mara rode a man each night. One day the man planned a trap to capture her and get rid of her forever. He knew that maras could enter through the smallest openings but could not exit once the entrances got sealed. Thus, when daylight arrived, the chamber contained a woman. But since the man was unaware that once you capture a mara, you cannot get rid of her, he had to marry her.

In another myth in Poland and Germany, a märt was supposedly a female with a problematic foot. In one story, a smith had a daughter with a troubling foot in the village of Bork near Stargard, and at that time, many villagers claimed that they were having nightmares of the mare.

https://www.scarystudies.com/mare-demon-mythology/#The-Urban-Legend-of-The-Mare-Demon