You wake and cannot move. Something heavy sits on your chest, and your heart hammers. You try to scream and nothing comes. The room is visible, familiar, wrong. A weight presses down. It is breathing.
Across the Balkans, this experience had a name. The creature that rides you in your sleep was a Mora, and she was a woman from your own village, cursed before she was born, and she came through the keyhole.
The Symptoms
Friedrich S. Krauss, the Austrian ethnographer who spent decades collecting South Slavic folk beliefs, opened his 1908 chapter on the Mora with a clinical inventory. Blood congestion. Cramps. Swelling of glands with milk or blood flow. Painful heart palpitations with chest tightness. The folk diagnosis attributed these to a nocturnal attacker. The medical symptoms behind the diagnosis are real.
The Mora “prevents movement, she paralyzes the sleeper’s body,” Krauss wrote. The victim remains conscious but cannot move or wake. She presses on the chest and steals the breath. In the South Slavic tradition, unlike the Germanic Mahr who drank milk, the Mora drinks blood. Victims who suffered repeated visits grew pale and gaunt.
Krauss observed that South Slavic peasants slept on their backs with hands under their heads. German peasants slept on their sides “and therefore complain less often about nightmares.” This is one of the earliest recorded connections between sleeping position and sleep paralysis.
If the Mora discovered a victim with “sweet blood,” she fell in love and would not leave. “Once a Mora has discovered sweet blood in a person, she falls in love with him and will not leave him,” Krauss recorded. The victim could groan, but the Mora prevented waking.
Children were considered vulnerable. Swollen breasts on an infant, unexplained moisture secretion: both were read as signs the Mora had been feeding. If a man’s nipples hardened and caused pain, the belief in Serbia and Slavonia was that noćnice suckled at his breasts every night.
The Names
The belief covers the entire South Slavic world, with local naming variations that reveal something about the creature’s place in each community.
In Serbia, Montenegro, and Dalmatia: mora. Among Croats in the Burgenland border region: mura. In Slavonia and Bosnia: tmora. Krauss noted that if the “t” in tmora is thematic rather than parasitic, it derives from tema (darkness), making her “the one who wanders in the dark.”
In southern Bulgaria: lamia, borrowed from Greek. In Montenegro, people preferred vještica (witch), avoiding the word mora entirely. In parts of the Sava region, the name had already split into two separate beings. The mora sucked small children dry. The noćnica beat them, leaving the child’s upper body covered in blue welts. Same terror, different names and different specializations.
Rural people avoided the word. Saying mora aloud might attract her. The most common substitute was noćnica, the night woman, a polite name for something no one wanted to be polite about.
In Slovenia, a male counterpart existed. The vedomec was a male tormentor known in Styria, though Krauss judged it borrowed from German folk belief. Only the name was Slavic. The behavior matched the German Alp in every respect.
Who Becomes a Mora
No one chooses this. Among all South Slavs, Moras are living women. A harmful spirit takes possession of the person and forces the body into its service. The transformation is involuntary.
The most common origin: a girl born with a caul, the thin membrane of the amniotic sac covering her face. In the Lika region, they said born “in a little bed” (posteljica) or in a “blue shirt” (modra košljica). Such girls could see at night as well as cats.
In Dalmatia, the variants were more specific. Krauss recorded a story by Vuletić about a girl named Annchen, born “in a bloody-red shirt” (u crvenoj košuljici). She could have been saved. Someone had to climb to the peak of the roof and shout to the world: “Rodila se crvena košutica u crvenoj košuljici!” (“A little red doe in a red shirt has been born!”). Nobody did. She became a Mora.
That was the only window. Once the moment passed, it could not be undone.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the mother’s behavior could cause the curse. A mother who invoked the devil while disciplining her children, who swore false oaths, who did not pray or confess, might produce a daughter doomed to become a Mora.
In Herzegovina, Moras were said to be girls born to witches. They learned all witchcraft but could not practice it during maidenhood. The moment the bridal wreath was placed on her head at the wedding, the Mora transformed into a full witch. On the islands of Korčula and Brač, this was denied: a Mora could never become a witch, married or not.
What She Becomes
The Mora can take almost any shape. A horse, a dog, a hen, a snake, a noose, a thread too thin to grasp. The shapeshifting is functional: it lets her enter sealed houses through keyholes and cracks.
Two animal forms are forbidden to her across all traditions. She cannot become a sheep, and she cannot become a bee. No source explains why. The prohibition is recorded and repeated, nothing more.
One folk narrative preserved a form stranger than any of these. A man was tormented every night by a Mora. He mounted his white horse and rode aimlessly, but the Mora followed him from inn to inn. One night he stayed with a tailor. While the tailor sewed by candlelight, the man lay down. The Mora pressed him immediately. The tailor raised his candle and saw a single white hair moving with snake-like speed across the wool coat covering the sleeper. By chance, the tailor held his heavy cloth shears and cut the hair in two. The sleeper calmed and slept soundly until the sun was high. In the morning, the man rushed to the stable. His white horse lay dead. The Mora that had tormented him all along had been his own horse.
Eyewitness Accounts
Krauss collected firsthand testimony. His mother, living in Pleternica in western Slavonia, served as his field assistant, recording accounts from neighbors who trusted her as a local.
Manda Lučić of Ramanovci told Krauss’s mother in 1887 that her child had fallen ill four years earlier. The child developed large breasts with milk flowing from them. Neighbor women diagnosed a tmora. Her husband Lukas waited by the oven corner with a rolling pin (oklagija). Around midnight, something crept through the closed window to the cradle. Lukas leapt out and pinned it with the rolling pin. It was the woman he had suspected. He beat her until she begged: “Kume dragi, nemoj me ubiti, neću to više nikada raditi!” (“Dear godfather, don’t kill me, I will never do this again!”). The child recovered completely.
Manda Superina of Suljkovci told a more elaborate story. A couple’s only child was being drained nightly. A neighbor advised: turn a grain sack inside out, lie at your wife’s feet, cover yourself with the reversed sack, stay awake. When the child groaned, the man grabbed the creature: a hen. His wife would not wake, because a vila had cast sleep on her. He tried to light a candle, but the hen blew out the match. He went to his brother’s room, got a light. They singed all the hen’s head feathers over fire and hurled it into a corner. The hen “wheezed like an empty barrel.” They threw it onto a stone heap outside. Next morning, old Baba Marga in the neighborhood was dying, her head “as if roasted” and her body battered. The man went to her and said: “Je l’ da nećeš moje dijete više sisati!” (“So, you won’t suck my child anymore!”). She died that same day. The child recovered.
The Boy with the Shears
The most striking account in the Krauss chapter is autobiographical.
In 1866, in Požega in Slavonia, a furrier’s journeyman was plagued by a Mora. Every night after he blew out the candle, she entered through the unlockable door and jumped on him. He heard her breathe and clear her throat, but she caused no other harm. All charms failed.
Someone advised him to get a Friday child, a child born on a Friday was believed immune to Moras, to sleep in the same bed and cut the Mora with scissors.
The choice fell on young Friedrich Krauss himself. They were neighbors on Florianigasse. The boy sat on the bed with heavy tailor’s shears. The broom fell, the door opened, the Mora leapt onto the journeyman. He begged Krauss to cut. The shears were too heavy for the boy’s hands. He managed one stab into the Mora’s body. She sprang away with a terrible howl and hid under the bed. People came running with a light. They found a large dog from the neighborhood. The journeyman beat the dog half to death. The next day there was a furious confrontation with the dog’s owner, after which the journeyman packed his bags and moved to Miholjac.
The ethnographer who would spend his career documenting the Mora had met her as a child, armed with scissors too heavy to hold.
Near Derventa in Bosnia, a Muslim girl who was a Mora visited a young man at night out of unrequited love. He was awake and seized her by her red hair. Despite her pleas for secrecy, he told the entire village. She could not retaliate because he held her hair and threatened to cut it off. She married another man, remained childless, and was reportedly still alive when Krauss published in 1908.
Protection
Communities developed an elaborate defensive toolkit. The most widespread: a blade under the pillow. Scissors for children, a knife for adults. Metal was thought to repel or injure her spirit-form. In Bosnia, a mother crossed her nursing child three times with scissors before laying it in the cradle, then hid the scissors under the pillow. Without this, a witch or Mora might strangle the child.
Garlic appeared everywhere, as it did for vampires. Burning old shoe leather on glowing coals to fumigate children’s beds drove spirits away. Krauss added practically: “It is certain that moths and mosquitoes stay away.”
In Montenegro, a woven belt laid lengthwise over the bedcovers was the most trusted defense. The Mora either retreated before the protective band or believed another Mora had beaten her to the victim. The poet-prince Njegoš mentioned this in his Mountain Wreath, where Serdar Janko claimed he always carried horseradish and thorn-spines sewn into his clothes, but added the belt was most reliable.
In Herzegovina, a thread tied around the big toe caused the sleeper to wake the moment the Mora rolled onto them. The sleeper then had to say: “Come tomorrow and ask for salt from me!” The next morning, beat the Mora senseless, and you had peace for life.
A longer incantation from Grbalj in Dalmatia challenged the Mora to count all the stars in the sky, all the leaves in the mountains, all the sand in the sea, all the hair on the hind, all the wool on the sheep. If she finished counting, she had to gird herself with a loom-beam, use a weaving peg as a walking stick, crawl into an eggshell, and drown in the ocean depths.
In Croatia, a specific footprint believed to be the Mora’s could be drawn on one’s nipples to ward her off. Krauss suspected this was borrowed from the Swabian colonists’ Drudenfuß (pentagram) tradition.
The Mora and the Witch
Opinions on the boundary between Mora and witch varied by island, valley, and village.
Some believed the Mora was a witch who had repented and vowed no longer to devour people, only to press them and steal their breath. Others said the Mora was a marriageable girl who would become a witch after marriage. In Herzegovina, Moras were girls born to witches who could not practice their full powers until the bridal wreath transformed them.
On the islands of Korčula and Brač, the divide was absolute. A Mora was never, could never become, a witch. On Brač, you could tell them apart: Moras had scratched faces, witches had heat blisters and pimples.
The false accusations were the cruelest consequence. Women who came to borrow bread and salt from neighbors the morning after a Mora attack were beaten, because folk belief held that any woman asking for bread and salt the next day must be the Mora in human form. Innocent borrowing became proof of guilt.
Sleep, Science, and the Mora
Krauss was ahead of his time. He listed the physical symptoms, blood congestion with cramps, chest tightness with painful heart palpitations, and noted that the Mora “prevents movement, she paralyzes the sleeper’s body” while the victim retains consciousness. This is a precise description of sleep paralysis with hypnagogic awareness.
He connected it to sleeping position. South Slavic peasants slept on their backs with hands under their heads. He compared this to German peasants, who also favored the supine position, and to the urban German middle class, who slept on their sides “and therefore complain less often about nightmares.” Modern sleep research confirms the link: supine sleeping significantly increases the frequency of sleep paralysis episodes.
He also recognized the Mora as something more than a dream figure. She was related to forest spirits and wind spirits. The Dalmatian incantation’s opening, “Mora bora,” may reference the Bora wind, the cold northeast gale that tears down the Adriatic coast. She was a dead spirit reborn into a living body, a creature that did not want to be reminded of the spirit world it came from.
The Mora bestiary entry preserves the folklore in compressed form. What this article preserves is what the folklore meant to the people who lived inside it: the woman next door who visited you at night, the scissors under the pillow, the child with the heavy shears, and the hen that wheezed like an empty barrel when its feathers burned.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Mora in South Slavic tradition? She is a living woman whose spirit leaves her body at night to press on sleepers’ chests, suffocate them, or drink their blood. The transformation is involuntary, caused by birth circumstances.
What other names does Mora have? Mora in Serbia, Montenegro, and Dalmatia. Mura among Croats. Tmora in Slavonia and Bosnia. Lamia in southern Bulgaria. Euphemisms like noćnica (night woman) were used to avoid attracting her attention.
How do Mora attacks compare to modern science? They match symptoms of sleep paralysis: immobility, chest pressure, awareness without ability to move or speak, and panic. Krauss also connected them to supine sleeping position, which modern research confirms increases sleep paralysis frequency.
How could people protect themselves from Mora? Scissors under the pillow, garlic, woven belts across beds, fumigation with burning shoe leather, incantations before sleep, and a thread tied around the big toe. The most dramatic method: catching her and forcing her to appear in human form the next morning.
Who was Friedrich Krauss and why does his work matter? Friedrich S. Krauss (1859-1938) was an Austrian ethnographer who collected South Slavic folklore firsthand. His 1908 Slavische Volksforschungen contains the most detailed fieldwork accounts of Mora beliefs, including cases told by named informants in specific villages with approximate dates. As a child in 1866 Požega, he was himself recruited as a “Friday child” to fight a Mora with tailor’s shears.
By the Author
Serbian Folk Tales by Đorđe Kojanović Stefanović, ed. Rade Kolbas Illustrated Serbian Fairy Tales Vol. 1 by Rade Kolbas Folk Tales (Stojanović) by Mijat Stojanović, trans. Rade Kolbas Icelandic Fairy Tales by Josef Poestion, trans. Rade Kolbas
Sources
Bibliography. The same list is held in the article’s frontmatter for the citation tools that read it programmatically.
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- Friedrich S. Krauss, Sitte und Brauch der Südslaven (Vienna, 1885)
- Petar II Petrović-Njegoš, Gorski vijenac (The Mountain Wreath) (Vienna, 1847)
- Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, Srpski rječnik (Vienna, 1818; expanded 1852)
- Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, Život i običaji naroda srpskoga (Vienna, 1867)
- Owen Davies, The Haunted: A Social History of Ghosts (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)
- Owen Davies, ‘The Nightmare Experience, Sleep Paralysis, and Witchcraft Accusations,’ Folklore 114, no. 2 (2003): 181-203
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- David J. Hufford, The Terror That Comes in the Night: An Experience-Centered Study of Supernatural Assault Traditions (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982)
- Brian A. Sharpless and Karl Doghramji, Sleep Paralysis: Historical, Psychological, and Medical Perspectives (Oxford University Press, 2015)
- Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare (oil on canvas, 1781), Detroit Institute of Arts
- Jan L. Perkowski, Vampires of the Slavs (Slavica Publishers, 1976)
- Felix J. Oinas, ‘East European Vampires,’ Journal of Popular Culture 16, no. 1 (1982): 108-116
- Éva Pócs, Between the Living and the Dead: A Perspective on Witches and Seers in the Early Modern Age (Central European University Press, 1999)
- Jacob Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, 4th ed. (Berlin, 1875-1878), chapter on Mahr/Alp
