Archive MT-347 · Epistolary horror

The Hag Case

In 1987, a West Virginia coal miner is referred for psychiatric treatment after weeks of refusing to sleep.

Published 11 October 2026

In 1987, a West Virginia coal miner is referred for psychiatric treatment after weeks of refusing to sleep.

Caleb Rourke claims that he wakes unable to move.

There is pressure on his chest.

And an old woman stands in the corner of the room.

The diagnosis seems straightforward: recurrent sleep paralysis accompanied by vivid hallucinations. His psychiatrist, Dr. Samuel Vaughn, is confident that folklore, exhaustion and fear can explain the rest.

Then Caleb's wife sees someone too.

Then his son.

Then his daughter begins drawing something none of them recognise.

As Vaughn documents the family's deteriorating nights, the explanation he trusted begins to fail. The figures are different. The locations are not. And whatever the Rourkes are seeing appears to be getting better at something.

The Hag Case is a recovered archive of psychiatric assessments, sleep records, interviews, hospital notes and personal documents chronicling a case that should have had a perfectly ordinary explanation.

It did.

At first.