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The Dab Tsog, or Sleep Paralysis by the Hag Lady

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The Dab Tsog, or Sleep Paralysis by the Hag Lady

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Recently I transferred schools, leaving a place I had considered a second home. I had been there only a few years, but my impressions and bonds were so strong there that I still feel pangs of missing it every now and then. However, I stopped missing it so much after I had a nightmare about a black figure calling me home, and remained powerless from sleep paralysis. Sleep paralysis is an interesting phenomenon, where you are both awake and asleep, unable to control your body. In the Hmong culture, this is referred to as Dab Tsog, or the night hag who sits on your chest, slowly choking the life out of you. In 1975, Hmong refugees came to the United States to escape a war they were dragged into, and the aftermath of it haunts them still. Soon, many young healthy men started to die in their sleep, struggling to breathe and dying without any explainable symptoms. Those who couldn’t wake up died in their sleep, and those who did claimed that there was a woman in Hmong clothing coming to claim their lives for leaving their homes.

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Doctors were unable to explain the symptoms. They labeled it as SUDS, or Sudden Unexpected Death Syndrome. The most plausible theories were depression and stress, combined with a genetic defect awakened from the rough transition to new homes. These deaths brought a new fear to not only the Hmong people, but the Western culture also, as movies like Nightmare on Elm Street were made based on these deaths. The debate between a cultural demon terrorizing the Hmong population or a logical explanation of depression and stress is still argued today, and still showcased in many experiences and movies. Although science believes there should be a logical explanation for everything, perhaps there are some things which transcend reality, such as death by the Dab Tsog.

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In the Hmong culture, Shamanism is the belief, and spirits are everywhere. When the body is sick, their spirit is being attacked by evil forces, and requires a shaman to do cleansing rituals. What the Hmong believe is that the Dab Tsog is taking the spirits of these men because they long for their homes they have left behind. Hmong people have strong connections to their origins and places they have called home. When they are born, the placenta is buried, and they believe that when they die, their spirits will travel back to their place of birth. This is why leaving their homes has angered the Dab Tsog, and why she is claiming so many lives. She preys on the susceptible souls of the men who long for a place to belong, and tempts them to “return home with her.” The Hmong are superstitious people, and came to this conclusion when shamans entered the spirit world to see what the issue was. Although many years has passed since the last death, these encounters with the Dab Tsog still occur. Recently, this was portrayed in a short film called Spirits Dawn, showcasing the cultural side to these deaths. In the movie, we are able to see the representation of the Dab Tsog, how she lures her victims, and how the Hmong try to fight back against it with the knowledge that they know. In the popular Facebook group, Hmong Ghost Stories, people post their own supernatural experiences, with their encounters of the Dab Tsog still being shared every now and then.

"When dab tsog tormented sleepers in Laos, it
did so in a sociocultural context that sustained a
fundamental structure of support. Hmong shamans
conducted prescribed rituals designed to ascertain the
nature of the individual’s transgression and sought to
appease the angry spirits in order to prevent the
possibility of the sleeper’s death during a subsequent
nocturnal encounter. In the United States, while the
majority of Hmong retain many of their traditional
beliefs, in many instances they have lost their religious leaders and ritual responses" (Adler 1627). From this quote, we can see that a lot of the common belief during this time stemmed from a lack of familiarization within the United States. A lot of the cultural practices and traditions could not be upheld, and much of the blame was put on this lack of practice.

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Merced, CA - The Haunted House: A Sleep Paralysis Experience

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Merced, CA - The Haunted House: A Sleep Paralysis Experience

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In 2013, my family and I moved into an old house in the countryside of Merced, California. Before we moved in, the previous owner told us that their grandpa died in the house and even showed us the room that he died in, but they assured us that everything was okay and that they had not experienced anything since his passing. Going by their word, my parents willingly rented the house for our family.

The house was old but sat on an acre of land which made it perfect for my parents to start their farming business. (One of the reasons why my parents wanted the house.)

When we first moved in, my parents agreed to take the room where the grandpa died in and let me and my siblings sleep in the other rooms. However, that didn’t work out because my father was a shaman and would always see things and get paranoid, so he refused to sleep in the room that the grandpa died in. My older sister and I were brave enough to take over that room and told my parents that they could take the master bedroom instead.

(A little detail about the room: The room where the grandpa died in wasn’t by the other bedrooms. It was located at the end of the house/opposite end from all the other bedrooms. To get there from the other bedrooms, you had to walk past the living room, dining room, and kitchen. Across the room was a bathroom, and next to it, the door which led to the garage.)

The first few weeks in the house was quiet and peaceful. We didn’t experience anything and were having the best time of our lives. It wasn’t long after until things began to make a turn...

My sister’s boyfriend was visiting her for the weekend and would spend the nights at our house. My sister and I would sleep in the living room and allow him to sleep in our room. He only slept one night in our room when he asked if he could sleep in the living room instead the next day. My sister agreed, so she and I went back to sleep and in our room the next day while he slept in the living room.

A few weeks later, my sister finally asked him why he wanted to sleep in the living room instead. He finally told her and admitted that he saw something in the room that night and didn’t want to tell us because he didn’t want us to be scared. He told us that as he was sleeping, he heard something rocking the bed and looked up to see what it was. He looked at the mirror that hung straight across the bed and saw what looked like a boy or a man rocking the bed. He was too afraid to run out the room and also didn’t want to frighten us, so he decided to stay in the room until morning.

Soon after, my mother and father started seeing things. One night around 8PM after my father had just finished feeding the chickens, he decided to relax out in the patio on a bed he placed there. He was starting to fall asleep when he heard a voice talking to him in Hmong, “Look, their grandma is right there.” He quickly got up and looked over at his chicken coops. There he saw a figure by the entrance. The chickens seemed frightened also were flying around like crazy making lots of noise. My father got scared and went inside. He told my mom about it the next day.

One of my mother’s favorite hobby back then was making packaged fresh sticky rice and meat for the Hmong stores. It was a casual morning for my mom as she got up around 4-5AM to begin prepping. She was going on with her normal routine and began marinating the meat. She was facing my bedroom (the haunted room) door as she was working. She then heard someone running from my door to the bathroom door. She ignored it because she thought it was just me or my sister who needed to use the bathroom. Then she heard it again and looked up and saw a little girl/boy running from the bathroom back to my room. She knew it wasn’t human because it looked like a “poj ntxoog” and ran faster than a human kid, and we had no kids sleeping over that day also.

Following that, my father began having nightmares. He would always wake my mom up in the middle of the night and tell her that he was scared. My father told us that one time, he woke up in the middle of the night and saw a man and a lady in the closet dressed up in dead clothes. After that, he would always leave the lights on and refused to turn them off when he goes to sleep.

As time went on, my sisters began experiencing things. My sister who slept the room next door to my parents (Let’s call her Pa) started getting sleep paralysis. One night I was sleeping alone in my room because my sister’s boyfriend visited again, so they slept in the living room watching movies that night. It was around 1AM when Pa ran to my room and begged me to go sleep with her. She looked so scared and tears were streaming down her face. I was too tired, so I just kept questioning why she wanted me to sleep with her, but she was too scared to tell me. My sister and her boyfriend were still up watching movies when they heard Pa crying and came to check. Pa finally told us that she got sat on but didn’t tell us the full story. We all walked her over to my parents’ room, and my mom opened the door. Pa was still crying and told my mom that she heard someone walking to her door. Then it opened her door when she finally saw it. It was a black figure which looked like a man slowly walking over to her, and before she knew it, she couldn’t move. The figure was on sitting on her and whispered something to her ear in Hmong, “Don’t think I will ever leave you alone.” Pa refused to sleep in her room for a few weeks and slept with my parents. My dad also made her put on a Hmong rattle (txiab neeb) around her neck which he made and hung a foot of a crow, red strings, and other stuff believed to scare away spirits on it.

My sister who slept with me started getting sleep paralysis also. She would tell me that she would get sat on every now and then with me sleeping next to her. She would try waking me up and try calling me but wasn’t able to move. One evening as she was taking a nap alone in the room, she heard something walk over to her, crawl on the bed, sleep next to her, and put its arms on her. She then heard it whisper the name of her friend that recently passed away.

My mom was starting to get worried about everything, so she asked one of our aunts to come do jingle bells. After my aunt finished, she told us that there are spirits in our house that refused to leave. One including the grandpa that died in my room. Also for my sisters, their friend who recently passed away has been visiting them for some time. We burnt some paper money for all the spirits wishing for them to leave us alone.

A few months passed, the owner told us that he was gonna sell the house and asked if we wanted to buy it. My mom refused to because of all the experiences we had there so we moved out. We didn’t know how many people died in that house, but we’re sure there was more than just the grandpa that died in the room. We also don’t know who bought the house, but what I’m curious about is if they’re also experienced things.

I consider myself a lucky one because I never experienced anything in that house. Although to this day, I still have dreams about that house all the time. I mean unpleasant dreams. And whenever someone speaks of that house or the experiences there, it still gives me chills.

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Analysis: Merced, CA - The Haunted House: A Sleep Paralysis Experience

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Analysis: Merced, CA - The Haunted House: A Sleep Paralysis Experience

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In this story, we see a true experience of someone who has encountered a dab tsog. What this story begins to imply is that there are much more reasons than science to prove the existence of these ghosts. Perhaps something to consider is that maybe ghosts have unfinished work still here in the world, and cannot let go of their previous life's regrets.

Another interesting thing to look at is the fact that the figure this time does not correlate to a "hag lady." In this case, it goes back to a black figure of a man, and also manifests as an older lady in Hmong clothes. This comes back to the point that perhaps the visual aspects of these ghosts correlate to what we understand or know. If someone of different background was in this story, would the ghost they saw be the same one or a different interpretation?

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Grandfather's recap of his encounter with the Dab Tsog

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Grandfather's recap of his encounter with the Dab Tsog

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmoykqjsrL8&ab_channel=HmongBedtimeStories

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Analysis: Grandfather's recap of his encounter with the Dab Tsog

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Analysis: Grandfather's recap of his encounter with the Dab Tsog

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From this video, we have a recount of an experience back in Laos. The story revolves around a grandfather who encountered the figure in the forests and had it follow him back home. From there, it began to haunt him and eventually spread to the other members of his family as well. To fight it off, he eventually had to do a soul calling from a shaman to appease the spirit and send it back to where it came from.

Something important to consider about from this story is the fact that most of the hauntings occur to men only. There has been cases of women being haunted as well, but the statistics for that is much less than males. According to Dr. Gib Parrish, a CDC medical epidemiologist, the statistics during these times of deaths in the United States were "more than 104 men, averaging 33 years of age, and one woman. The peak deaths were 26 in one year" (LA Times). In this story, we have a traditional story retelling of the way ghosts are intertwined into the Hmong culture.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxWhf5TBEHw&ab_channel=M%27KayFamilyFilm

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In this film, we have a depiction of what happens to some people when they encounter sleep paralysis and lose control of their body. Some people enter into the spirit world, and are taken by ghosts. In this film, what we see is someone who's cries attract the haunting of a ghost who takes her back with him.

Typically, it is always the males who encounter the ghosts and are dragged away into otherworldly places. However, in this film, we see a twist of the female being the one taken away. We see that although it is rare, the occurrence can still happen. The interpretations of the film lead us to see how sometimes there are different motives to the ghosts, and some that are not inherently bad.

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Scientific Belief in Stress and Genetics

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Scientific Belief in Stress and Genetics

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The Hmong people are a group of South-East Asians living in the mountain sides of Laos. During the Vietnam War, they were recruited by the United States to participate in the war, with promises of safety in the United States regardless of the results. However, the war was a failure, and Vietnam retaliated by doing a mass genocide on the Hmong people. Terrified for their lives, they fled through jungles at night escaping Communist gunfire. Their only hope was on the other side of the Mekong River, where they would have to swim across and find refuge in Thailand. After many deaths and terrible experiences of trying to survive, they slowly immigrated to America. But their lives were nothing like what they were used to, and they began to encounter worse problems. Psychologically, they were broken, and that was the moment the Dab Tsog began a killing spree among them. Interestingly enough, only young men died in their sleep. There were no reported cases of women, and there were no signs of a weak body. Studies today point the deaths towards a mental breakdown for these men who went from powerful figures in their families to unable to provide in a new world. In other studies from around the world, the Dab Tsog has different names, but the sleep paralysis and effects of it are still the same. Most are not as fatal as the one Hmong people have encountered, but still terrifying nonetheless. In Japan, they have the Kanashibari, who sits on the chest to inflict possession and torture. In China, ghosts cling to their loved ones, paralyzing them during their sleep because they miss them too much. Similar to China, Thailand also has beliefs in ghosts that long for their loved ones. This goes to prove that sleep paralysis perhaps does have underlying connections to science, but is explained through different viewpoints of cultures.

One scientific explanation can be found in an article about the placebo affects of sleep paralysis. The author writes "Her argument amounts to a stirring and chilling case for the power of the nocebo, the flipside to the placebo effect. While placebo studies have grown in importance, the nocebo effect has not been studied well in scientific literature, in part because of the ethical issues involved in deliberately doing something that might harm people. Limited studies suggest that it is real and it is powerful. For example, doctors have found that patients made to feel anxious need larger amounts of opiates after surgery than other people. They've found that pretending to expose people who say they are sensitive to electromagnetic radiation to cell phone signals can give them debilitating headaches." This part of the article helps to support the claims that perhaps there is a logical thought to the sudden deaths, and that the cause is a effect of the change in environment. In the case of stress, there is a possibility that perhaps a sudden change to a concrete jungle of a city can trigger these impulses and cause harm to the Hmong people at the time. As a result of being unable to practice their culture or adjust well, they undergo these symptoms and require more help from science.

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The Hmong people have never known a home to call their own. Everywhere they have lived, they have been persecuted and killed. In the very beginnings of the Chinese mountains, they were rounded up and killed, forced to go to a new land in Laos. There in Laos, they met the communist regime, and fought in a war that led to tragedy and fleeing once again. They lived in Thai refugee camps until they could leave for America, and in America they no longer had a familiar home of their own. Although science and logical explanations would point to depression and intergenerational trauma, there was no evidence to discover. They simply went to sleep, and died. Those who survived could only recap their experience with the Dab Tsog trying to bring them back. As more time is spent in the United States, the deaths plummeted, and eventually stopped. Although there no longer are deaths happening, the scars from these experiences still show in popular culture and even scientific studies still. Perhaps there are more to this world than the eye can see, and a longing for a stable home is what brings forth demons such as the Dab Tsog to life.