On December 31, 2025. I received a call from an old friend I hadn’t heard from in a very long time.
She called me specifically to talk about a ghost. She is from Hungary and lives in the United States. The rest of her family is still in Hungary. Including her sister, who is the mother of a son who is the father of her grandchild. Her grandchild, father and mother live in Vienna, Austria.
Two things happened to her three-year-old grandson at about the same time. One, he was diagnosed with Type I diabetes. The other is a reoccurring dream that he had of a witch on a horse carrying him away. While he was in his room sleeping. This scared him so much that he wouldn’t go into his room for weeks. My friend called me to find out if I thought there was a connection between the two.
Myths about horses and witches or Night Hags or Night Mares
When the child was two years old a year prior, the parents had taken him to a doctor and he had been told that he was well but would probably have diabetes in the future. My friend’s sister was of the belief that this doctor, who the parents thought was mean, put some sort of curse on the child, causing the diabetes to emerge. I don’t think this is true. The mean angle, I think, was because the family was from Hungary, not from Austria.
So, I looked up Austria which is surrounded by forest. Were there any Myths or legends in those forests related to witches and horses? And it turns out that myths and visions of witches and horses or Night Hags, or night mares, are common all over Europe and in other countries. Here are a few examples of beliefs involving horses:
Earth horses are magical horses. Horses have been used extensively in magic for cult practices. You might recall the attacks on mares a few years ago – these were demonic cults all tied up with the mare ridden by the Night Hag. They have unpleasant resonances with witch power particularly over women.
The Night Mare presages terror, the incubus, marë or mara: old Saxon. The incubus straddles its victim’s chest at night and locks them metaphysical torpor. Also called the Night Hag, the riding of the Witch. It’s troublesome to horses, its symptom is the knotted mane – counteracted by hanging a stone with a hole in it over the stable door. This stone is not man made, it’s naturally occurring and are regarded as sacred. Don’t walk past if you see one. Pick it up. It’s invaluable.
It’s been called the Pan stone. It thwarts the marë, the witch of night and the devil who steals into the stable and gallops the horse to hell and back to leave her sweating, terrorised with a knotted mane, it’s an alarming spectacle. I recall a mare in Sussex in 1970 odd, finding her in the early morning in a terrorised state. She had a knotted mane, was white with sweat, panting and wild-eyed. We had to move her not just from her stable but to another farm entirely. She took weeks and weeks to recover. We had to cut off her mane, we could not untangle it.
Horse brasses were employed as charms to protect them from the mare.
It was termed Facinatus by the Romans – the evil eye. Still found all over the Middle East and Turkey, I’ve met plenty of horses with them, mine wore them. In fact all my horses have worn them. The Nazar Bonçuk. It’s very old, to be found in the writing of classical antiquity, Plutarch wrote about the evil eye two millennia ago, how the rays that come from the evil eye have the power to create the destructive energy of envy, which leads to sickness of body, spirit and mind. It will destroy a horse, so claimed the ancients.
The Marie Llwyd is a Welsh tradition to dress up in a sheet with a horse skull on your head and go about first steeping people on New Year’s Eve. It brings good fortune, even though the spectacle is alarming.
A skull conveys the idea of a lost presence though materially still apparent. It has latent power, impelled by the spiritual realm. A connection between life and earth. The Liminal Horse again, although the Marie Llwyd also represents the rider.
Generally, a horse skull brings luck and repels evil. Skulls placed under floors were used to create an echo in music rooms – and in churches since loud noises were believed to expel evil. The latent spirit derived from the skull has shamanistic resonance. Hence the himori.
Marocco the Magical Horse was the most famous horse of the late Tudor and early Stuart period in England. Shakespeare wrote about him, Francis Bacon, Walter Raleigh, Kenelm Digby, John Donne and half a dozen others. He performed magical tricks. Thrice indicted for witchcraft and thrice released his schooling was celebrated by Gervase Markham in Cavalrice and was to become the foundation mark for natural horsemanship. He’s not a true magic horse, but he’s close. People believed he was possessed of supernatural powers weaving between witchcraft and trickery.
Talismans – some are natural, some man made: colour is a natural talisman, so are whorls, stars, white marks, solid colours – there’s a whole language about them. Whorl of the spurs, whorl of wealth, mane of ill fortune, the swinging tail – horse of a rake who’s loved by all yet hates himself.
