Boogeyman

"The strongest human emotion is fear."

- The Boogeyman.

The Boogeyman is a powerful and legendary Tulpa that was made by people's nature to fear the unknown. Originally born as an imaginary being used by adults to scare children into behaving. It has no specific appearance and conception of it can vary drastically from household to household within the same community.

Overview
The Boogeyman himself is a formless being that can take any shape the storyteller wishes though he tends to be a grotesque humanoid with a tendency to hide under beds, in closets and other dark places. He is said to be the leader of the nightmare-inducing entities known as the Dream Devils (no connection with demons) which are opposed by the Sandmen and the Dream Spirits, dream-inducing entities.

In many cases, he has no set appearance in the minds of adults or children, but is simply a non-existing embodiment of terror. Some parents will tell their children that if they misbehave then the Boogeyman will get them. His punishments are said to vary from mischievous pranks such as pulling hair, biting toes or shaking beds (akin to a poltergeist) or more malevolent behavior such as manifesting as horrible creatures to scare the child or even going as far as kidnapping the child and taking them away to his shadowy realm to an undisclosed fate; though he is often said to eat them.

Appearance
This creature varies from person to person, as it has no definite appearance and is simply the embodiment of terror. Although usually depicted as a masculine entity, it can be female or genderless.

While the description of the Boogeyman differs on a cultural level, there are often some shared similarities to the creatures. The Boogeyman is depicted as having claws, talons, and sharp teeth. Along with that, the Boogeyman is of the spirit variety, while the minority are demons, witches, and other legendary creatures. Some are even described to have certain animal features such as horns, hooves, and bug like appearances.

One of the Boogeyman's appearances is a tall, lithe, and dark humanoid entity. He has silver-golden yellow eyes resembling an eclipse, dull pale-gray skin, and glossy black hair that is styled to come out as slick, sharp spikes from the back of his head. He wears a long, black robe with a V-neck line and shadows running down his arms, obscuring his body like a shadow.

Another appearance is that of a round puppet, with stumpy legs and fingerless arms, covered from head to toe in a brown-grey or neon green burlap sack (depending on the lighting), and obvious seams are visible along the sides. The "eyes" on its face are featureless black holes, as is the inside of his mouth. The tip of his head extends outward and flops down, vaguely resembling a Santa hat. On the inside of the sack, the Boogeyman is a huge mass of a variety of different colored bugs and snakes.

Another appearance is that of an unnaturally tall and improbably thin humanoid entity that few could every mistake for a human being, even at a distance. He strides across the ground on stilt-like legs, reaching out towards his victims with long, spindly arms. His right arm is missing all but one of its fingers, leaving it little more than a nail-tipped tentacle. His neck is so swollen with goiters that he appears almost chinless, his bloated throat dominating most of his lower jaw. His face, though still somewhat humanoid, is frozen in a deranged grin, his mouth remaining perpetually open in a ghastly parody of a smile; where his already-hideous teeth are so large that they appear to be forcing the Boogeyman's jaws apart, leaving him with the needle-fanged grimace of a deep-sea angler fish. The Boogeyman is dressed in the tattered costume of a ringmaster, complete with a stitched-up top hat, a ragged longcoat, a pinstriped shirt and trousers, and a theatrical staff.

Personality
When looking at the personality traits of the Boogeyman, they are most easily divided into three categories; the kind that punishes misbehaved children, the kind that are more prone to violence, and the kind that protect the innocent. They all relate in the same way, being that they all exist to teach young children lessons. The large majority of Boogeyman are there to just frighten children with punishments, and not actually inflict much damage. The more vicious Boogeyman is said to steal the children at night, and even eat them. The last category is the Boogeyman who protect people and only punish those guilty, regardless of age.

The Boogeyman is everything a person fears, and it thrives on the fear of others, taking a cruel delight in turning their pleasant dreams into nightmares. Being a master manipulator, the Boogeyman often preyed on its victims psychologically. Its knowledge of people's worst fears allowed it to unnerve its enemies and enjoyed watching them squirm, often leaving their fates to their imagination through thinly-veiled threats before finishing them off. The Boogeyman has a perverse level of pleasure from playfully tormenting with its victims in an almost animal-like fashion. The Boogeyman is a voraciously creature who believes that Halloween shouldn't be a fun holiday like everyone else does; he thinks it should be sinister and harmful.

The Boogeyman has a malicious fondness in creating puppets to continue what he does best, creating fear on anyone he could find. While he has many puppets, two of his favorites are Kozmotis Pitchiner, a hero of another world pushed to despair and insanity after the loss of his family, and Nathaniel Winter, an anxiety-filled man who desired to live a life without fear and doubt.

He has strong regard for horror writers, and they recognize him as an iconic horror figure, especially Stephen King, who once wrote a compelling short story with him as the subject. H.P. Lovecraft is also a notable devotee, as the being embodies the vagueness that fuels most of his stories. The Boogeyman, in return, keeps a number of Lovecraft's stories in his collection.

Powers and Abilities
The Boogeyman is one of the strongest Tulpas to ever exist, personifying the fear of the dark, of the strange, of the unknown. He has many interesting powers and abilities that somewhat vary with his different moods and appearances. However, few - if any - see the Boogeyman up close: most of the time, he prefers to toy with his victims from a distance with illusions and nightmares, only attacking a target head-on if he has no other choice.
 * Nightmare Manipulation: As a nightmare entity, the Boogeyman can create, shape, enter and manipulate the nightmares of others, including modifying, suppressing, fabricating, influencing, manifesting, sensing, observing nightmares and turning dreams into nightmares. The overwhelming shock, fear, anxiety and terror can prove too suffocating for the victim in which their hearts might explode or brains might die.


 * Power of Darkness: The Boogeyman possess various powers over darkness, such as traversing great distances through shadows and literal darkness; it can literally become a shadow, and affect the physical world by interacting with other shadows. While literally hiding in the darkness, it can't be touched or seen unless he deliberately makes his presence known. As darkness is everywhere, it can appear from any shadow or dark corner almost instantly. This is why it sometimes appears under beds, because beds are always dark underneath.


 * Power of Fear: The Boogeyman thrives on fear, primarily the fear of children. It feeds on everyone's fears, which made it incredibly powerful. It has an intuition and power of insight on all types of fears, both general and personal, enabling it to determine what any individual fears, which it uses to play mind games or break one's spirits. It claims to always know people's greatest fears.
 * Fear Constructs: The Boogeyman can create fear in any shape or size along with create the manifestations of fear or corrupted pleasant dreams pulled from the mind of a sleeping entity for the Boogeyman to control.


 * Black Sand: Like the Sandman, the Boogeyman possess its own version of the Dreamsand which causes endless nightmares to anyone who had it thrown to. It can corrupt Sandman's own Dreamsand as well as any pleasant dream that it touches, turning those dreams themselves into nightmares. The Boogeyman also has the ability to morph its black sand into weapons such as a scythe or a bow and arrow.


 * Vacuum Morphed: The Boogeyman is shown to have the ability to suck in air with the power of a jet engine.

Myths and Legends
Because of such a global impact, it makes it difficult to find the original source of the legends. The first reference to the Boogeyman would be considered the hobgoblins described in England, in the 1500's. Many believed that they were made to torment humans, and while some only played simple pranks, others were more foul in nature.

Boogeyman-like beings are almost universal, common to the folklore of many countries. All of these have a similar concept, a mysterious being who punishes kids for being naughty.

Bogeymen may target a specific mischief such as one that punishes children who suck their thumbs or misbehavior in general. In some cases the Boogeyman is a nickname for the Devil. The Boogeyman is related to many similar beings, who, together, form an entire villain type in themselves. However, he is definitely the most infamous of them all and is especially prominent in Western cultures. Even to this day some people will use the Boogeyman to scare children into good behavior, though it is becoming less popular due to negative effects it can bring to some children.

The Boogeyman may be called "Boogerman" or "Boogermonster" in rural areas of the American South ("booger" being the American English equivalent of the British English "bogey"), and was most often used to keep young children from playing outside past dark, or wandering off in the forest. During the Corn Festival, young Cherokee males wearing caricature masks would make fun of politicians, frighten children into being good, and shake their masks at young women and chase them around. Male participants in this "Booger Dance" were referred to as the "Booger Men". In some Midwestern states, the boogeyman scratches at the window. In Eastern Iowa he is called the Korn Stalker In the Pacific Northwest, he may manifest in "green fog". In other places he hides or appears from under the bed or in the closet and tickles children when they go to sleep at night, while in others he is a tall figure in a black hooded cloak who puts children in a sack. It is said that a wart can be transmitted to someone by the boogeyman.

Etymology
The word bogey is believed to be derived from the Middle English bogge / bugge ("something frightening", "scarecrow"). Theories on its origin include a root meaning "goat", or a cognate of the German bögge, böggel-mann ("goblin"). It could be influenced in meaning by Old English -budda used in compounds for "beetle". A related word, bugbear, from bug, meaning goblin or scarecrow, and bear, was imagined as a demon in the form of a bear that eats small children, and was also used to mean a general object of dread. The word bugaboo, with a similar pair of meanings, may have arisen as an alteration of bugbear.

The word could also be linked to many similar words in other Indo-European: bogle (Scots), bûzeman (Western Frisian), boeman (Dutch), Butzemann (German), busemann (Norwegian), bøhmand / bussemand (Danish), bòcan, púca, pooka or pookha (Irish), pwca, bwga or bwgan (Welsh), puki (Old Norse), pixie or piskie (Cornish), puck (English), bogu (Slavonic), buka or babay/babayka (Russian, бука), bauk (Serbian), bubulis (Latvian), baubas (Lithuanian), bobo (Polish), bubák (Czech), bubák (Slovak), bebok (Silesian), papão (Portuguese), торбалан (Bulgarian), Μπαμπούλας (Greek), ბუა), babau (Italian), бабай (Ukrainian), baubau (Romanian), and papu (Catalan).

In Southeast Asia, the term is popularly supposed to refer to Bugis or Buganese pirates, ruthless seafarers of southern Sulawesi, Indonesia's third-largest island. These pirates often plagued early English and Dutch trading ships of the British East India Company and Dutch East India Company. It is popularly believed that this resulted in the European sailors bringing their fear of the "bugi men" back to their home countries. However, etymologists disagree with this, because words relating to Boogeyman were in common use centuries before European colonization of Southeast Asia.

In Luo dialects in Eastern Africa the term 'bwogo' (with pronunciation sound like 'booga') means to scare. This correlation is most likely spurious as Nilotic language roots predate the modern concept of civilization itself.

Trivia

 * He keeps a personal library of books that is quite extensive, containing numerous horror-related stories, including The Cremation of Sam McGee, The Fall of Silas Galloway, and... How The Grinch Stole Christmas?
 * Boogeyman tales vary by region and may be any gender or asexual.
 * It is said that when the Boogeyman goes to sleep at night, he checks under his bed for Chuck Norris.
 * It is said that he is very good at making a concoction known as Snake and Spider Stew.
 * There is a song about the Boogeyman known as Hush, Hush, Hush, Here Comes the Bogeyman which treats it like a joke.
 * Obviously, the Boogeyman doesn't like the song or its creator - Henry Hall. However, the Boogeyman does like the song known as the Oogie Boogie Song.
 * It was rumored that he was either a human who became a monster or a primordial demon which took to living in a dimensional space.

Image Sources

 * (Boogie man by eemeling d9kns1q-fullview.jpg) Boogie Man by Eemeling
 * (Screams by eemeling d9nwjdj-fullview.jpg) Screams by Eemeling
 * (Goya - Que viene el coco (Here Comes the Bogey-Man).jpg) Que viene el coco, Lu by Francisco Goya
 * (Boogeymantrash 1250.jpg) Boogeyman Art from The Boogeyman
 * (Boogeyman Xiperius.jpg) Boogeyman by Xiperius
 * (Bogeyman by mitchgrave d8nhjbe-fullview.jpg) Boogeyman by MitchGrave
 * (Boogeyman by victoria the witch d8mumk6-fullview.jpg) Boogeyman by Victoria-the-witch
 * (Boogeyman by nalebunny96 da7iet6-fullview.jpg) Boogeyman by NaleBunny96
 * (Boogeyman by tehsasquatch d9eilfl-fullview.jpg) Boogeyman by TehSasquatch
 * (The bogeyman by cinemamind db4fkbl-fullview.jpg) The Bogeyman by cinemamind
 * (Boogeyman mrgreenlight.png) Boogeyman by MrGreenlight
 * (Guy-dailey-oogieboogie-copy.jpg) The Oogie Boogie Man by Guy Dailey
 * (Oogie Boogie.jpg) Oogie Boogie by ???
 * (A gamblin man oogie boogie acrylic painting by itsbirdyart d9fcff7-fullview.jpg) A Gamblin' Man (Oogie Boogie Acrylic Painting) by ItsBirdyArt
 * (Pitch in the books.png) Pitch, as portrayed in the books from The Guardians of Childhood
 * (Pitch Black.jpg) Pitch Black by RattledMachine
 * (Pitch in his lair.jpg) Pitch Black from Rise of the Guardians
 * (BuccabooSMT.jpg) Bugaboo from Shin Megami Tensei
 * (Smtsj3.jpg) Bugaboo's design from Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey
 * (Boogeyman.jpg) Boogeyman's official artwork from Devil Children Red/Black Book
 * (Sh downpour art 120317 24 bogeyman.jpg) Bogeyman's concept art from Silent Hill
 * (Bogeyman-the-park-the-secret-world-video-game.jpg) Bogeyman model from Secret World
 * (Boogeymanupdated.jpg) The Boogeyman from Boogeyman