Ammuntadore
Sardinia · The islands
The whole of Sardinia
Ammuntadore — the Sardinian spirit that climbs onto the chest of the sleeper and holds him still, with no fixed form: it takes the one suited to the victim.
- Variants and dialect names
- Ammuntadòre, Ammutadori, S'Ammutadori, Muntadori, Mutarolla
- What is told
- It has no fixed form: it takes on the aspect suited to the victim — witch, skeleton, cloud of vapour, person with a bloodied face. It attacks during sleep, causing strong pressure on the chest, muscular paralysis, inability to cry out, a sense of suffocation.
- What it was forthe author’s reading
- The clearest clinical case in the atlas: the description coincides point by point with sleep paralysis with hypnagogic hallucinations. The belief supplies a name, a cause and a countermeasure for a terrifying and recurrent experience.
- Where it is attested
- Specific Sardinian documentation online is weak; the «incubus» type is, however, documented throughout Europe since antiquity.
- Caution
- The etymology is illuminating: from the Sardinian ammuntare, «to be oppressed in sleep», from muntare, «to mount on top» — that is, «the one who mounts on top». The same pattern as the Salentine Carcaluru, from calcare, and the French cauchemar. The convergence is independent and strengthens the hypothesis.
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