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As Above So Below
Strange Encounters with the Boogeyman
There is a curious and pervasive phenomenon can be seen across a wide range of cultures worldwide. From one corner of the earth to the other, there seems to have always been a mother telling her child to watch out for what lurks in the night, waiting to prey on those who have been bad or misbehaved.
Such tales know no cultural boundaries, taking on myriad forms but always coming down to one basic concept- that of the foul monster in the shadows waiting to strike out at wicked children from the dimness. There is not always any consistent form that these monsters might take, but they are often called collectively the “Boogeyman,” which is derived from the word bogge, meaning “something scary” or “hobgoblin” in Middle English.
Other than that, it might be the thing in your closet, hiding in the basement, or tucked away under your bed. It is a formless avatar of terror for children far and wide, depending on the culture merely scaring kids or taking them away to devour, and it can take countless physical forms, but it is always completely terrifying.
Whatever form it may take, there have been numerous reports from terrified witnesses who think that they have witnessed what they describe as some form of Boogeyman. One from True Ghost Tales comes from a witness who calls herself “Charmaine,” and who says that this happened to her when she was just 7 years old. She claims that she began seeing a dwarf-like creature she says “had sharp yellowish teeth, had red eyes and it’s fingers looked like they were sharpened.” This little beast would often appear lurking in the shadows just to stare at her, often right in her own room, and sometimes it would smile “the evilest smile I had ever seen.” She says of her harrowing experience with this thing:
Whatever this thing was, it certainly fits the mold of the traditional Boogeyman, flitting about in the dark to scare young children, maybe even preying on that fear. In another report from Your Ghost Stories, a witness from South Africa says she was 13 years old at the time of her experience, and that it began with waking up at all hours overcome with a sick, thick sense of dread and fear. At first she never did see what it was that could conjure up such emotions of pure terror, and it seemed to come in waves out of absolutely nowhere, until one night she finally got a glimpse of her unseen tormentor, dragged into the light in all of its hideous glory. She says:
This apparently went on for several more years, this strange intruder making sporadic visits to this frightened child’s room. She tried to tell her parents what was going on, but they simply wrote it all off as a child’s ramblings and overactive imagination. Unfortunately for her, things would begin to escalate quite spectacularly. She says:
There are quite a few of more of these creepy tales floating around out there. On Reddit there is a witness who claims that when he was younger his family moved to a large and very old wooden house that did not sit well with him from the very beginning. He was apparently often left at home alone in that spooky place while his parents were away out at work, and it was on one of these days being alone in this creaky old building that he had his own brush with something very reminiscent of some sort of Boogeyman. He explains:
In another account the witness says she was around 7 years ld at the time when she was jolted awake by a piercing pain in her ear. The pain was intense enough that she got out of bed to go tell her mom and stepfather, but something kept her from completing her journey to their room. She says that as she crept through the living room, she was suddenly, alarmingly aware of someone sitting there in the murk in one of the chairs. She says of what happened next:
It is not even always just the children who sees these things, and some reports indicate that parents have stepped in to see something they were perhaps not meant to. One Reddit witness says that his 2-year-old child would often wake up screaming uncontrollably, and that when he went to provide comfort his young son would simple babble “Bad man. Bad man.” One night things graduated to full on bizarreness when he says:
Was this an regular human intruder or something else? Why was it there and where did it go? It is interesting to note that across so many cultures we still get these stories of something mysterious terrorizing children, and it does make one wonder if this is all just a child’s way to deal with the fear of the unknown or something more?
This is a universal feature, these tales to terrify kids, as well as the many children calling for their parents in the middle of the night as something they cannot fathom looms there in the dark. Could it possibly be that the phenomenon has spurred on the stories rather than the other way around? Could these be some form of entity that feeds on the potent fear of the very young, harvesting their terror? Or is it just stories, folklore, and an unchanging archetype upon the human psyche, cautionary tales used to keep children in check? Whatever you may think, kids across the world will probably keep on being scared by these perceived threats, whether real or not.
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