The Polish Nightmare Being (Zmora) and the Problem with Defining the Category of Supernatural Double-Souled Beings
Folklore January 2, 2023 Agnieszka Pieńczak, Polina B. Povetkina 2 citations
The zmora, a supernatural being in Polish folklore that suffocates sleepers, is often classified as double-souled in the ethnolinguistic dictionary Slavianskie drevnosti. However, archival sources from the Polish Ethnographic Atlas and other Polish collections indicate that informants rarely describe the zmora as double-souled. This article examines how far the zmora can be considered double-souled in Polish folk tradition and how important that trait is for defining it. It reviews the concept of double-souledness, its associated motifs, and the term's history, then analyzes examples of the double-souled zmora in Polish folklore and their geographic distribution within broader soul dualism in Polish tradition.