Maran
Maran (singular mara, roughly translated as “nightmare”) are terrifying female beings that haunt people at night. They crawl upon the victim’s chest while they sleep, suffocating them and sucking out their life force. If you wake up, you will be breathless and feel as if you have been smothered.
Maran can enter a victim’s home through the smallest of opening, so to prevent this one can sing hymns, blessing as much cow hair as possible and place it in the window. If a mara attempts to enter, she must first count all the individual hairs before entering, leaving her little time to attack before the victim wakes. Alternatively, flax seed can spread around the bed before sleeping and if a mara comes she will compulsively have to count all the seed.
Maran are also known to attack horses which will be found in their stall in the morning appearing to have been ridden very hard. Symptoms will include exhaustion, foaming at the mouth and a matted mane. Hanging a dead bird of prey or painting a hexagonal marker on the stall of the horse will scare the mara away.
Maran are said to be the souls of unmarried women who have died and returned to take the warmth and essence away from the living. It is also possible for any woman to become a mara at night if she is cursed. The curse comes about if a mother attempts to prevent the pains of childbirth using sorcery. A daughter will be cursed as a mara and a son will be cursed to live as a werewolf.
The transformation into a mara starts with a thick smoke that appears to come from the woman’s body, takes it’s terrifying shape and then flies off into the night. The curse can be broken if someone tells her she is a mara the moment she returns to her body in the morning but the timing must be perfect because the woman may lose a finger or toe if the curse is lifted too soon and the body has not fully transformed back to normal.
Artwork by Johan Egerkrans