What Is The Full Noon Curse In Folklore?

The full noon curse or the full noontide curse is a fascinating piece of folklore. Apparently some supernatural creatures are at their most powerful at midday, when the sun is at its highest point in the sky. Rather than being at their most active at midnight, as is the case with many creatures of folklore, the entities affected by the full noon curse are at their most powerful during the day. Many tales of the full noon curse feature travelers or farmers seeing apparitions, or even hearing whispers when the shadows are shortest. Some creatures said to be affected by the full noon curse demand food or silence, and if these demands are not met, all manner of misfortune will befall the person affected.

Interestingly, the full noon curse is part of the solar mythology, and, as in many cultures, noon is a special, liminal moment when the usual rules cease to apply. The Slavs had a field spirit, ‘Poludnitsa’ or ‘Lady Midday’ as she is usually called in folk tales. Beautiful to look at, the Poludnitsa is deadly to mankind, inflicting either a swift death by sunstroke or madness on all who work in the fields under the scorching sun and get no rest. Thus the curse of full noon is the darker version of the above tales, uncanny and strange in the midst of complete everyday reality.

The full noon curse is a fascinating piece of obscure folklore. Stories of this sort are what I love about folklore in general, and this one is particularly nice because it is unusual enough to be worth writing about. Apparently the curse becomes active at high noon in open spaces such as fields, and is marked by an abrupt and unusual silence: no birds singing, no wind. Sometimes it is associated with ghosts, but more often with the curses of witches and the like, cast on specific individuals. In a famous legend from Wales a farmer was said to have been cursed by an old woman after he had (very improperly) mocked her. His crops withered and died in the space of minutes the next day at noon. There is something particularly unnerving about the full noon curse because it goes against our normal expectations of what a haunting is: typically we imagine a nighttime encounter with dark shadows. But this is different, because it plays on our fear of the vulnerable being attacked in the most exposed of circumstances. Who knows what kind of malice is able to pass through the thin veil between this world and the next at noon?

The full noon curse is a real thing in folklore. It’s kind of the opposite of most horror tropes, which tend to play with the fear of the dark. But with the noon curse, the very light of day can be just as scary, if not more so. In some folklore, the noon curse can be a full and complete curse, cast at noon to affect the person under which it is cast, whether good or ill. In other cases, there are locations that are somehow ‘cursed’ to be deadly at midday. An abandoned well, for example, or a crossroads somewhere in the world. And then there’s this really weird and creepy legend from Haiti about ‘midday zombies’ – reanimated corpses that are brought back to life by dark magic, and are forced to walk the Earth during the day. All of these strange stories revolve around the concept of noon being outside of time in some way, and thus outside of normal boundaries and defense. It’s kind of spooky, and is definitely not something you’d typically associate with a bright and sunny day.

The full noon curse from Folklore is a relatively unknown phenomenon compared to say midnight superstitions. But that makes it even more interesting. For a start in many cultures, noon is considered a ‘dead hour’ when spirits and even demons are at their most powerful and can more easily cross over into the world of the living. In some Mediterranean cultures it is said that if you fall asleep under the noon sun, ‘noon demons’ will come and steal your soul. In Japan there’s a well-knownemonia called the Kuchisake-onna who appears at midday with the intention of slicing open the mouths of people who do not treat her with the proper respect. But not all of the full noon curse is bad. In many Latin American countries for example, the Duende (a mischievous little goblin) is said to play tricks on people who are alone outdoors during the full of noon. The full noon curse is made up of a multitude of superstitions from all over the world and is centered around the most blindingly, silently intense hour of the day – when the world holds its breath and everything seems to be on hold. Maybe I’ll think twice about not putting on some extra sunscreen today.