Anyone that has young children or has been around a young child for any length of time knows that the favorite word of choice for many children is “why?” The answer to this word fulfills the child’s need for parental attention and satisfies their innate curiosity at the same time, but, as it goes, this tends to be a double-edged sword. While the child’s comprehension of cause and effect may be somewhat limited, having to answer a constant stream of a child’s “whys” may lead to frustrated inventiveness on the part of the parent. Rather than launching into a theological debate with a youngster who will not say his prayers or delivering a lecture on the potential toxicology of mushrooms many a parent, in an attempt to save time and / or sanity, has employed an inventive threat such as “If you eat apple seeds a tree might grow in your stomach” or “If you pick toad stools faeries will take you away when you go to sleep” or, more often, a parent may fall back on a more generic but far more ominous threat beginning with the phrase “If you don't be good, he’s going to get you...”

In North American tradition tales of the boogieman abound, and, although most differ from region to region many tend to preserve a similar central thread such as that which is found in James Whitcomb Riley’s “Little Orphan Annie” where a domestic servant advises the children that “the Gobble-uns ‘ll git you ef you don't watch out!” It seems in this instance that the main activity of Riley’s goblins is the abduction of naughty children. These goblins, also known as “boogymen” and sometimes alternately known as “the boogey monsters,” are the embodiment of all childhood fears: the dark, abandonment, the unknown, being abducted, and so forth.

To do his job, to instill fear, the boogeyman does not need to be a grotesque seven-foot-tall green skinned, razor toothed fiend with glowing red eyes. The real power of the boogeyman is that although he is not inherently evil he represents an amorphous embodiment of terror – he has no identity and no particular form. He is a “fearform,” an anthropomorphic manifestation of fear itself and in no other folktale is this transformation of a basic emotion more apparent than in the case of the boogeyman. He utilizes, or, more appropriately, is the most simple and effective psychological working platform known: an irrational, nonspecific, unidentifiable fear that is specific only in the mind of the individual. He is the unknown in a personified sentient form that manifests in our world as someone or something that we believe can do us untold harm.

Aside from the psychological aspects, what else do we know about him? Using research based on the etymology of the word “boogeyman” it seems that boogeyman folklore may have originated from Scotland, where such creatures are sometimes called bogles, boggarts, or bogies. These words are believed to be derived from the Middle English word bogge or bugge and is thus generally thought to be a cognate of the German words bögge or böggel-mann, which, when translated into English becomes our “Bogeyman.” It is this boogeyman who, in some areas of the Midwestern United States, is said to scratch at a window in hopes of getting an unsuspecting child who is up past his or her bedtime to unsuspectingly let him in, and, in the Pacific Northwest it is said that he manifests in green fog, but, most commonly, he uses a “doorway” to let himself into a child’s room at night so that he can hide under the bed or in the closet – waiting for them to wake in the night or to be up past their bedtime so that he can “get them.”

But once he “gets you” what then? That’s the thing – no one really knows. The boogeyman folklore plays on the individuals fear of the unknown, but examples of what may happen are found in Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” and Maurice Sendak’s “Outside, Over There.” So, how do you get rid of a boogeyman so that he can’t “get you?” In traditional folklore boogeymen abhor religions of all sorts and are repelled by prayers, liturgical recitations and bright light. So say your prayers and leave a night light on… it may just save you from the boogeyman.