'Your voice doesn't work and your body will not respond. 'The worst thing is when you try to fight or call for help,' a Redditor said in a conversation about what the experiences with it were like.

Sleep paralysis is a well-studied disorder. The pisadeira that has attacked them watches them as they begin to panic - the victim's eyes partly open, but they're neither fully asleep or fully awake - helpless and trapped in a body that won't move.

Then she sits on their chest so that they cannot move.

La pisadeira.Īfter the meal, when someone goes to sleep on a full stomach, la pisadeira sneaks into their bedroom. She watches them as they sit at the table for dinner. In Brazil, a tall, skinny woman with long yellow fingernails and red eyes creeps along the rooftops, and watches families inside of their homes. The legend goes that if Kashima Reiko is not satisfied with their answer, she will rip their legs off. Now her disfigured spirit inhabits bathrooms, asking children who enter the stalls where her legs are. Kashima Reiko, another young girl, was said to have been cut in half by a train. The school collapsed on top of Hanako-san, who has been trapped there ever since.īut Hanako isn't the only schoolgirl who haunts Japan's school bathrooms. The most popular origin story for the tale holds that during World War II, a schoolgirl was using the bathroom when a bomb fell on top of the building. Hanako-san has become a fixture of Japanese urban folklore over the last 70 years. 'Although I am getting scared just thinking about her right now.' 'Depending on which part of Japan you live in, she may have a bloody hand and grab you, or be a lizard that devours you,' Jessica said. But in a common retelling, the spirit sexually assaults men. The popobawa - 'bat-wing' in Swahili - is indiscriminate in its targets. It prefers to come out at night, but some say they have seen it during the day. It can change shape - a bat sometimes, a human-like form at others. (And that's before we get to the were-hyenas and the infernal bathroom stalls.) Below are some of the best we've found or that were told to us from Code Switch readers.Īn evil creature stalks the Tanzanian island of Pemba in the Indian Ocean. But many of us have our own monsters from different cultures, and when we threw out a call to our readers asking what ghost stories and folktales they grew up with in their own traditions, we got back stories of creatures stalking the shadows of Latin American hallways and vengeful demons from South Asia with backwards feet. It's Halloween - a time for Frankenstein monsters and vampires and werewolves.

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