The old hag sleep paralysis has a variety of names

* In African culture, isolated sleep paralysis is commonly referred to as "the witch riding your back.

* In Cambodian, Laotian, and Thai culture, sleep paralysis is called pee umm and khmout sukkhot.

* In Hmong culture, sleep paralysis describes an experience called "dab tsog" or "crushing demon.

* In Vietnamese culture, sleep paralysis is referred to as "ma đè", meaning "held down by a ghost" or "bóng đè", meaning "held down by a shadow".

* In Chinese culture, sleep paralysis is widely known as (pinyin: guǐ yā shēn) or (pinyin: guǐ yā chuáng), which literally translate into "ghost pressing on body" or "ghost pressing on bed." A more modern term is (pinyin: mèng yǎn); notice that the character (pinyin: yǎn) is composed of(pinyin: yàn), "to detest", and (pinyin: guǐ), "ghost, demon".

* In Japanese culture, sleep paralysis is referred to as kanashibari literally "bound or fastened in metal," from kane "metal" and shibaru" to bind, to tie, to fasten"). This term is occasionally used by English speaking authors to refer to the phenomenon both in academic papers and in pop psych literature.

* In Philippine culture, "bangungut", or sudden unexplained death syndrome, has traditionally been attributed to nightmares.[23] People who have claimed to survive such nightmares have reported experiencing the symptoms of sleep paralysis.

* In Hungarian folk culture sleep paralysis is called "lidércnyomás" ("lidérc pressing") and can be attributed to a number of supernatural entities like "lidérc" (wraith), "boszorkány" (witch), "tündér" (fairy) or "ördögszerető" (demon lover).[24] The word "boszorkány" itself stems from the Turkish root "bas-", meaning "to press.

* In Iceland folk culture sleep paralysis is generally called having a "Mara". A goblin or a succubus.

* Other European cultures share variants of the same folklore, calling her under different names; Proto-Germanic: marōn; Old English: mære; German: Mahr; Dutch: nachtmerrie; Icelandic, Old Norse, Faroese, and Swedish: mara; Danish: mare; Norwegian: mare; Old Irish: morrigain; Bulgarian, Serbian, Polish: mora; French: cauchemar; Romanian: moroi; Czech: můra. The origin of the belief itself is much older and goes back to the reconstructed Proto Indo-European root mora-, an incubus, from the root mer- "to rub away" or "to harm".

* In Malta, folk culture attributes a sleep paralysis incident to an attack by the "Haddiela" who is the wife of the "Hares", the entity in Maltese folk culture which haunts the individual in similar ways as to those of a poltergeist. As believed in folk culture, to rid oneself of the Haddiela, one must place a piece of silverware or a knife under the pillow prior to sleep. I would be careful with this one.

* Kurdish people call this phenomenon a "mottaka", they believe that some one, in a form of a ghost or perhaps an evil spirit, turns up on top the of the person in the middle of the night and suffocates him/her. Apparently this happens usually when some one has done something bad.

* In New Guinea, people refer to this phenomenon as "Suk Ninmyo", believed to originate from sacred trees that use human essence to sustain its life. The trees are said to feed on human essence during night as to not disturb the human's daily life, but sometimes people wake unnaturally during the feeding, resulting in the paralysis.

* In Turkish culture, sleep paralysis is often referred to as "karabasan" ("The dark presser/assailer"). It is believed to be a creature which attacks people in their sleep, pressing on their chest and stealing their breath.

I'm about half way done, more to come next post.
source wikipedia.