Boo Hag

The boo hag is a figure from the folklore of the Gullah Geechee people, the descendants of enslaved people of African ancestry who built distinctive communities along the Sea Islands and coastal plain of South Carolina, Georgia and neighboring states. Gullah Geechee culture is living and thriving, and the boo hag is best understood as an element of its oral storytelling tradition, not as a creature that outsiders can go hunting for.

In the stories, a boo hag is a person, often a woman, who uses witchcraft to slip out of her skin at night. She hides the skin, becomes a raw, red, skinless figure able to squeeze through tiny gaps, and “rides” a sleeping victim, draining breath and energy and leaving the sleeper exhausted by morning. In some tellings she can enter a home only if invited; in others she wears the skin of another person to move among the living unnoticed. The tales belong to the Gullah Geechee communities of the South Carolina and Georgia coast, and versions from Georgia’s coastal islands were recorded by the Federal Writers’ Project in the 1930s.

Tradition also supplies the defenses. Salt and pepper sprinkled on the skin a hag has hidden keep her from putting it back on, salt on windowsills guards the house, and a broom at the foot of the bed is said to ward her off. Haint blue paint on doors, windows and porch ceilings is widely said to discourage haints and hags alike. The stories double as warnings about deception and about whom to let into the home.

Many readers also see the boo hag as a story about slavery’s violence: a being who strips away a person’s autonomy and takes their strength mirrors the exploitation that Gullah Geechee ancestors endured. Modern interpreters, including South Carolina Geechee filmmaker Jay Najeeah, whose film Hag draws on her family’s storytelling, emphasize the tale’s role in keeping cultural memory alive.

By day an ordinary-looking person; at night, a skinless, red, vein-lined figure with thin limbs that can squeeze through keyholes and cracks. Victims wake breathless, tired and sometimes with a sense of weight on the chest.

Houses at night in the Lowcountry and Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia; the hag can enter only through cracks and gaps, and in some versions only if invited.

The boo hag appears in children’s books, novels, poetry, songs and film. It is part of broader Gullah Geechee cultural heritage that includes haint blue paint, storytelling, basket weaving and the Gullah language. Treat the legend as a living tradition of a living community, and listen to Gullah Geechee storytellers and heritage organizations when you want to learn more.