Mora
The term mora comes first from Polish mythology. A mora, or plural, mora can appear in the night as a whisp of hair, a moth, or a piece of straw. In some Slavic languages mora also means literally, “moth.” In Serbian, the word mora means “nightmare”, whereas in other legends it is Mora, or Mara. Mara was an ancient dark spirit from old Slavic mythology. Mara takes the form of a beautiful woman, and comes to the bedside of men at night. She waits by the bedside, and gives the men feelings of desires in their dreams, and eventually begins torturing them with temptation and sexual thoughts. In this manner she feeds off of their life force, dragging it out of them through their dreams and keeping it for herself. Other names for her were “nocnica”, which meant night woman, or “ejjeljaro”, for night-goer.
In Germany they were known as mara, mahr, mare, and in Romania they just another species of the all-evil spirit league that fell under the umbrella term “moroi.” In France, the term for the same kind of creature was instead, the “cauchemar.” The Hungarian folklore expert, Éva Pócs, traced the term all the way back to it’s root word, the Indo-European term for death, “moros.” According to the author, Paul Deveraux, a mora could also be a kind of witch, who transformed herself into an animal when she went prowling at night. The animal could be a variety of different creatures; from cats, dogs, birds, insects. The witches were said to have come that way from the womb; born with a caul on their heads, which is said to be an omen of witchcraft at birth. When the mora witches die, they come back as ghost, possibly with more intent to harm than the first time through.