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Bogeyman or mad ghost question at the bottom

"The bogeyman, boogyman, bogyman, boogieman, boogey monster, or boogeyman, is a folkloric or legendary ghostlike monster often believed in by children. The bogeyman has no specific appearance, and conceptions of the monster can vary drastically even from household to household within the same community; in many cases he simply has no set appearance in the mind of a child, but is just an amorphous embodiment of terror. Bogeyman can be used metaphorically to denote a person or thing of which someone has an irrational fear. Parents often say that if their child is naughty, the bogeyman will get them, in an effort to make them behave. The bogeyman legend may originate from Scotland, where such creatures are sometimes called bogles, boggarts, or bogies.[1]

Bogeyman tales vary by region. In some places the bogeyman is male; in others, female, and in others, both. In some Midwestern states of the United States, the bogeyman scratches at the window. In the Pacific Northwest he may manifest in "green fog." In other places he hides under the bed or in the closet and tickles children when they go to sleep at night. It is said that a wart can be transmitted to someone by the bogeyman.[1] Bogeymen may be said to target a specific mischief – for instance, a bogeyman that punishes children who suck their thumbs – or general misbehavior."


this was taken from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boogeyman

now it seems a bogeyman acts like a haunt, has any one had a expricane with this, or is it possible that it is a ghost? have you heard of other legends about what it is?

I was intrigued to see the bit about the midwestern US, where the bogeyman scratches at the windows. This is where I live, and this is what I was raised on. The bogeyman always seemed to be a local phenomenon though, as the "man" always was a person who had passed on, who in life was a mean-spirited person, or who had done some evil deed. In death he came back as the bogeyman or boogieman. So, when parents told their young ones that "the bogeyman will get you" they related it to an actual person who had lived, and that made it seem all the more real and fearsome.

From another site a bit of different information.

LINK to the article below.

The boogeyman, also spelled bogeyman, is an imaginary monster often believed in by children. Adults have traditionally used the boogeyman to threaten children into going to sleep on time, although this practice seems counter-intuitive. The boogeyman may also be used as a threat to induce children to finish their meal or to behave in general. Versions of the boogeyman exist almost universally, and some psychologists believe that the monster may stem from an evolutionary need in prehistoric times to discourage children from wandering away from the safety of the group.

The boogeyman has a nearly endless number of incarnations, as anything frightening or repulsive will suffice. The monster is usually said to live under a child's bed or in the closet and to appear at night, although in some regions of the United States, he scratches on the window of a child's room. Usually, the boogeyman is more or less humanoid, although he may be much larger or smaller than regular people. He is often dressed in black and may carry a sack or basket with which to kidnap children. Some cultures believe in a female, witch-like equivalent of the boogeyman.

The word boogeyman is first attested as bogeyman in the 16th century. It is probably related to the earlier bogle, first appearing in print in 1505 with the sense of "ghost." By extension, boogeyman is now used to describe any imaginary or irrational fear, while retaining its original meaning of a monster that terrorizes children.

There are a few well-known boogeyman figures in the English-speaking world, including the Irish creature Rawhead and Bloodybones and the character Freddy Kreuger in the Nightmare on Elm Street films. The boogeyman has also been variously portrayed in children's entertainment, from Oogie Boogie in the film The Nightmare Before Christmas to the Boogie Man in the Powerpuff Girls cartoon show. The Disney film Monsters, Inc. postulates a world of closet monsters who make their living by scaring children at night and collecting their screams.

I've heard tons of Bogeyman stories in my life. They always seem to fit the circumstances of the incident my older brothers wanted to scare me about. I believe thats all he is, a scary story to frighten kids. By the way, I have never told my children or grandchildren stories of the bogeyman. I prefer to employ other methods to instill fear into the hearts of those who need scaring!

To me, this is all Grimms Fairytales and not much more.

I heard of boogieman being under the bed and sucks you through never scratching at the window,
Always a legend of boogieman under the bed or in the closet,

My older sisters used the tales of something under the bed that would come and get us if we got out of bed. I've never heard about the green fog bit here in the Northwest but I believe that the bogeyman could manifest itself however the situation needed fits.

This post obviously reminds of the movie by the same name, really good one! ;)

Bogeyman to me is someone that has been condidtioned in our minds since we have been small. I believe it is a myth that just keeps on going from generation to generation.

I believed in the boogieman up till i was 17.I faced my fear of going under the bed one night and spent the night under my bed to this day I have no problem with the boogieman.
How ever shadow people are a different story they haunt my house. :)

Although in modern times the name of the boogeyman is most often employed as a metaphor for human criminals or dangers portrayed in the media, the cautionary tale is still a factor in the raising of children, and the folkloric boogeyman remains very much alive in the minds of many children.

The word bogey is linked to many similar words in other European languages, which may be cognates; púca, pooka or pookha (Irish Gaelic), pwca, bwga or bwgan (Welsh), puki (Old Norse), pixie or piskie (Cornish), puck (English), bogu (Slavonic)

In Ireland they were a type of faerie that lived in the bog and kidnapped children so they could play with them. They made them stay a year and a day.

The bogeyman appeared in the book Mythical Monsters and was after a boy who thought the bogeyman was his big brother playing a joke.

Another possible source for the word is the Russian word бог (God), pronounced "boag", rhyming with "rogue". Demonizing things, notions, even the name of God, from Eastern Europe and beyond is not without precedent in Western Europe and North America.

In Southeast Asia the term is commonly accepted to refer to Bugis or Buganese pirates, ruthless seafarers of southern Sulawesi, Indonesia's third largest island. These pirates often plagued early English or Dutch trading ships, namely those of the British East India Company or Dutch East India Company, resulting in the European sailors bringing their fear of the "bugi men" back to their home countries.

In the British Isles, the term "goblin" was commonly used to describe both friendly house- or forest- spirits, such as brownies and hobgoblins, and fearsome traditional boogeymen or bugbears. Examples of malevolent British goblins include Rawhead and Bloodybones, an English 'closet monster' who lurks in the dark corners of houses, and the Scottish Redcap, a bloodthirsty goblin who makes his lair in ruins or piles of stones along lonely roadsides, waiting to assault those who carelessly wander too far from home. Both of these boogeymen abhor religions of all sorts, and are repelled by prayers and liturgical recitations.

In North America, Puritan tradition cast all goblin types as evil spirits, and the words "goblin" and "hobgoblin" retained no positive connotations. Threats of abduction by goblins have been applied by parents in both the European and North American traditions. Examples of the threat of goblin abduction as a cautionary tale appear in Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market" and Maurice Sendak's "Outside, Over There".

References and further reading:

Rawhead and Bloodybones: The Boogeyman in Cautionary Tales

Where does the boogeyman really come from?

I grew up with the impression that the Boogeyman or whatever it is called is just a scare tatic for the kiddies and a just a folklore / fairytale yet this is all very interesting about him / it.

The Boogy man checks his closet before he goes to bed for Chuck Norris. I kill the Boogy Man, I have done so for 5 children.

Id say yes the bogeyman could be a ghost but it seem to me the term mostly just relates to somthing parent use to scare thier children into behaving

The boogieman is just a sick tool used by parents to get the behavior they want out of their children. I was threatened with it a lot as a child. I never had any experiance with one though.......unless you count one of my parental units. That one was definatley a monster, in the purest since of the word.

it's always a challenge to seperate folk lore from beliefs. Bogyman to me was just a way to scare children, however.

a tale to scare kids into going to sleep and minding, passed on from the early ages of written tale, i donot think it is a mad spirit at all. a twist on bedtime stories to help insure the kids to sleep and mind,.

For me boogy man is justs a folk lore and as for ghost i believe in them very much!

What is sad is that some children that are told there is a boogy man are told so to account for traffic in the house or other routine disturbances. Some random event ( a coat falling in a corner, in the perifial vision) can spook the child for life.

Possibly neither, more likely neither. Just a fed into legend that easily freaks kids out as they make up their own versions of it.

I think its something someone with too much imagination made up.

Let us not forget that the boogy man is spread by children to other children as well. Versing a child in what is real and what is make believe is important.

this is no funny subject matter and think what you will of me but when we lived in rhode island the boogieman was these heaad like things that look like the heads that wigs were put on back in the old days with long necks they had sharp teeth and no real features and they would travel from closet to under the bed and pull my hair ... and in oregan he manifested himself as bert from seseme street and he carried a knife and was very violent and my sister swear that as a child in pennsylvaina that these creatures took her into the walls of the house into other dimention and poked her with needles ...she has hundreds of little scars all over her back and her arms and they cant be explained i believe her and she believes me we know what we saw and felt and we are of sound mind

When I was little, my older brother and I created our own boogeyman called, "John Dark" (I've told this story here before on another profile :P) We used it to scare my little evil step-brother, ha!

John Dark was a mean guy that came out at night and did mean stuff. I don't even know if we got into details, but we would always have a reason to send my little brother outside in the backyard or something at night to freak him out :P

We would say, "Shawn, oh man! We forgot to feed the dog today, will you go out there and bring her a scoop?" He'd go outside, and we'd whisper breathy out the windows "kih kih kih kih ha ha ha ha" *Friday the 13th scary background noise*, then scream "JOHN DARK!"

He'd take off running back in to the house :P

Scars, and deep scratches, I have worked at rehabs, as a lanitor and then as a front desk security monitor, and I have seen what frayed finger nails can do. I have seen young girls after bitting their tongues to cause a disturbance, and to get pain killers. I have seen the after math of children (between teens) slam their head against walls and claim that Captain Howdy was doing it. What hysteria I have witnesses has one common element, they are all very Dramatic girls, that had been very much spook by everybody that was around them in their developmental years, and they had a non-stop talent for telling stories (usually stories found in tabloids). They always got mad when people where not astonished by their tales.. and claims. One girl claimed a ghost kicked out her panel.

I always thought they were completely different. The boogeyman was something that kids always believed in. Hence the boogeyman under my bed. When you look at it they can possibley be one in the same. As kids we dont really know to much about ghost and things that go bump in the night. All we really know is that something is scaring us. I guess as we grow older we tend to lose that boogeyman idea and turn towards ghost etc.

It is funny how the boogeyman tends to only deal with kids. Is this only because kids have yet to really understand whaat is happening. The boogeyman is something that kids can relate to. Something scares them and they are unsure of what it is.

Mom would joke to not get out of bed or the boogey monster would get your toes.. I mean it was a joke but i mean it had to have started somewhere.

The original Boogey man was a pirate and children where told to beware them because they kidnapped kids to use on the ships as cabin boys. How they became a haunt or when I haven't the slightest. Although cultures change and so do the stories of a culture.

Mikhail

The bogeyman to me as always been to me just something that parents used to keep their children i check although thankfully it was never used on me, and my dad did something simular to dabbler and killed the monster for me under the bed and in my closet until i was old enough to kill them myself.

I believe there is no smoke without fire, but in this particular case it's just a desparate adults way of manipulating a childs imagination and making the child behave the way the adult wants him/her too.

when i was a kid my siblings use to tell me the boogey man was a ghost that came out and danced on your soul and put boogers in your ear.. Dont you all love siblings lol.

I think its just a pissed off spirit that has gained so much anger it actually has gotten a physical form that is hidous beyond imagination

Vamps Gaze, some of the stories siblings tell are more vicious then that, I think yours where very creative actually,, booger man I like that better then Boogy man.

Its just a folk lore made up and told to children and if you ask me it's just ridiculous to scare children like that

So the Boogeyman gives people warts? *thinking* Hmm, I had a wart once....

We were told about the boogeyman when I was a child and it was told to us for behavior modification...of course we were not bad kids by any means but we were told those stories I guess for good measure.

I tried never to use the scare tactic on my little boys I don't want them to be afraid of the unknown but like most little kids when my 6 year old started goign to school he came home freaking about the boogeyman. So i had to be a boogeyman killer and explain to him that it didn't really exist. It was only something that the kids at school made up to scare him. I did however tell him that if he ever saw anything that he thought was a boogeyman to come get mommy no matter what time it was and mommy would take care of it. He is sensitive to stuff of that nature like he can feel when there is something there and for the most part he has never been scared by it. So if it scares him then i know that it can't be good.
As a child i was told that it was a mean spirit of so and so that was going to come back and if i got out of bed he or she would chop of all my toes.. It worked for a little while.. I think it's twisted that parents use that though..

I personally have never used that on my children as I believed it to be cruel and have always let my children be open to the world and what is in it.

I let my kids watch horror movies from the time they were very young and we would watch shows that showed how the movies were made and I do not remember one time that any of my children have woken with nightmares. I remember suffering from them as a child because my parents liked to use the boogeyman and other such creatures to scare us.

For the people that mentioned they do not use the bogey man legend with their kids, how do you address your child when they mention that another child mentioned the bogey man?

Funny thing is...my kids never mentioned it to me via another childhood friend. Maybe todays children are not told about the boogeyman as they were when we were children.

My sister in law just mentioned to me that at my nieces slumber party
a girl got throwing up scared when the other girls convinced her that shadow people where out to get her, they even took her on-line to show her the shadow people site. My niece was entertained but she was scared for the girl.

That poor girl I think they didn't mean to scare her so bad.
It seems to be a tradition to scare people silly.We told ghost stories at my slumber party's and we talked about urban legends. To days day in age with the internet now they have visual aids.When we did it we had to use our imaginations in order to scare our self's silly.

The threshold has become more focused on accepting such things as real, with fields of studies created to present such Super natural things, as actually existing. It has the same effect of Santa Claus, only with a villain type character. The tendency to "get some one" in a greater degree then you where scared raises the stacks. Especially if the "victim" is rational, and thinking critically. Responding to spooky stories with." I don't believe that." To which is responded. "Well you should, and here's why." *goes to site on-line. Being foiled by ones peer is incentive for mean things. I have scared people so badly that in order to get them back in the house I needed to expose my set-up.. shortly after that night the person that was scared could barely contain the herself in anticipation of another victim being scared, I actually changed the effect.. it scared the insider, more then it did the new person present.

Whating people to be as scared about something as you where when you first heard it, or saw something, is based in irrational fears taking an obsessive position in the Psycy.

I know this has nothing to do with the Boogeyman really but your post Dab made me think of Point Pleasant and the Silver Bridge disaster that was in the movie Mothman Prophecies. We had went over the site of where the actual bridge collapse occurred and my oldest son and his girlfriend were in the car behind us and my son said he got the eeriest feeling when he went over the bridge. He gets scared by the things that are real more than the things that are imagined.

An attentive person your son. A reverent sense is the sign of a thoughtful person. Memorial based people are rare, in the sea of sensationalist.

The bogeyman is defently a kids story. I was always told to be good or the bogeyman will get you now I am told be good or I will be in trouble with the law....does that mean the law is the bogetman????No dont think so. The bogeyman was created to scare kids.

Good point, I was told as an adult that if I was really bad, that not only would the cops/Law get me, but that I would go to jail, and in jail I would become somebodies Punk.. so that worked for a while. Then I started talking to cons, and they said that never happens, unless someone wants to be someones Punk..

when i was a kid my dad always told me of a different spirit not the boogyman or any crap like that it was about the indigo whowas a shape shifter that terrizied maine native american cultures for many centurys and he also told that the indigo came every two hundred years and he would kill again

I think the boogeyman is a scarey fantasy weve created to scare little kids..never had an experience with a real entity in my bedroom at night so no, i think its just a myth