Urban legend- The Boogeyman

Idea that there is a monster of some sort who lives under your bed or in your closet and

lives to haunt you.

Alex heard about the Boogeyman when he was very young. He describes that when he was younger he feared the boogeyman like no other. Everyone knew about him all his friends, his mom and dad, and he or she all said he existed and Alex believed that they wouldn’t lie to him because he was a kid. But the boogeyman in his household was a guy that would kidnap him and take him away forever and he would disappear forever and never see his mom again. He was so terrified by the thought of this that he used to dream about him and imagine in his dreams what he would look like and how he would kill Alex. Luckily, Alex had a twin brother, who lived in the same room with him throughout his whole childhood. If not for him, Alex claims that he probably would never have gotten any sleep at all. It wasn’t because he thought Robert would protect him, it was because he slept on the bottom bunk and he knew that the monsters would probably get him first, giving Alex ample time to escape. The Boogeyman was so real to Alex that he couldn’t even go into dark rooms during the day unless someone was with him.

Alex believes that this “boogeyman” was so real because the idea of the Boogeyman has been passed down for so many years and thus even though Alex’s parents no longer believed in the boogeyman, it was a concept they grew up with as well and didn’t necessarily want to negate that tradition of believing that the boogeyman exists. But I believe there is a deeper meaning to the concept of the boogeyman.

While I agree that the boogeyman is something that every child grows up with there is a reason that the story, even with how much it scares children, continues to be passed down and feared by children all over the world. I believe that being afraid of the boogieman is a grown up process. It is that stage in a child’s life where there is a tug of war between growing up and being a “big kid” and holding onto their childhood and staying in the safety of their parents. Today, all over the country, everyone ends up being afraid of something. It’s part of growing up. Every kid will experience the struggle of being able to conquer your fear and grow up, or they can stay being stuck in that immature stage where fear dominates your life. Thus the boogieman represents that in-between stage and once the child is no longer afraid of that unknown monster, they have really matured.

Annotation: This urban legend is also found in the novel The Boogeyman which is a book containing many short stories about the illusive creature.

Battin, B W. The Boogeyman. Ballantine Books, 1984. 2 May 2008

<http://books.google.com/books?id=3s0eAAAACAAJ&dq=the+boogeyman>.