A — documented

Pantafica

Abruzzo · the Marche · Central Apennines and the Adriatic
Inland Abruzzo and the Marche; the belief covers the entire peninsula under different names

Pantafica — nocturnal entity that materialises in the sleeper's room and sits on the chest or on the belly, preventing breathing and movement.

The Pantafica, an old woman or a large black cat, seated on the chest of a sleeper in Abruzzo; beside the bed a sorghum broom and a bag of pulses.

Variants and dialect names: Pantafica, pandàfeche, pandàfreche, pandàseme; pantafa and pesarello in the Marche; fantàsima in Umbria and Tuscany; spirde
What is told: Nocturnal entity that materialises in the sleeper's room and sits on the chest or on the belly, preventing breathing and movement. Two prevailing forms: an old witch or a large black cat. The victim is conscious but paralysed.
What it was forthe author’s reading: Aetiology in the strict sense: it is the cultural explanation of sleep paralysis with hypnagogic hallucinations. The ethnographic value lies here — one and the same physiological experience generates a different name and a different figure in every Italian valley.
Where it is attested: Finamore (1890, 1894), Giammarco (DAM), Boccia (2020). On the scientific side, the study by Jalal, Romanelli and Hinton (2015), carried out in an Italian setting as well, analysed the cultural interpretations of sleep paralysis: a rare case of documented convergence between folklore and the neuroscience of sleep.
Caution: The folk remedy is a valuable datum: a broom with many bristles or a bag of pulses is set beside the bed, because the creature is compelled to count them and remains occupied until dawn. The same arithmetical compulsion appears in Slavic and Germanic folklore.

Reality checkestablished

What has been established today.

The pantafica is the only Italian figure of sleep paralysis on which a dedicated study exists: Jalal, Romanelli and Hinton interviewed 68 inhabitants of Abruzzo, collecting the local explanations of the episode, from the ghost to the witch to the almost human cat that sits on the chest. The mechanism is that of REM atonia persisting on waking, accompanied by dream images projected onto the real room and by a sense of suffocation due to reduced ventilation. The authors warn that the sample was not representative, so the percentages that have circulated in the press are not to be generalised to the Italian population.

B. Jalal, A. Romanelli, D. E. Hinton, «Cultural Explanations of Sleep Paralysis in Italy: The Pandafeche Attack and Associated Supernatural Beliefs», Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 39(4), 2015, pp. 651-664

The grade says how well the entry is documented, not how interesting it is. How the grades are assigned.

Entries that share the motif, the phenomenon behind it or the history of their collection — not the geography.

Pantafica

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