Jeff Provine Knows Why You Shouldn’t Look Under the Bed

There is a precise age where you stop checking under the bed before turning off the light.

It isn’t because you stop believing something could be hiding in the dark. It’s because you reach a silent agreement with yourself: if there is something down there, you’d rather not confirm it.

Jeff Provine has never made that agreement.

In Never Sleep Again, Jeff takes the modern mythology we tell ourselves, the urban legends whispered at sleepovers, the unexplained noises in old machinery, the stories passed around because somebody swears they really happened, and asks the question you absolutely should not ask when you're alone at night:

But what if it's true?

So we asked Jeff what supposedly supernatural or unexplained thing genuinely creeps him out.

His answer was: the night hag.

It’s the shadowy figure that sits on your chest while you sleep, sometimes described as draining your life. There are modern explanations for the experience, including sleep paralysis.

Comforting, right?

Well.

Versions of the same figure appear across cultures and centuries: the mare of Scandinavian folklore, North American stories of the hag or witch-rider, the Egyptian kabous, the Persian bakhtak, the Japanese kanashibari, and others scattered across Asia and the Pacific.

Different places. Different histories.

A remarkably similar thing sitting on everybody's chest.

“That shared experience makes me worry there might be something more going on,” Jeff told us.

Thanks, Jeff.

And that might be the best explanation for what makes Never Sleep Again so much fun. These are the kinds of stories that dare you to dismiss them, preferably while you're sitting somewhere well-lit. Monsters, ghosts and urban legends are much easier to laugh off in the afternoon.

The air is finally turning crisp. October is coming.

Go ahead. Turn off the lights.

Jeff Provine knows why you’ll turn them back on.