What is... the Boogeyman?

    Who or what is the Boogeyman? 

    Is it a man who hides in little kids' closets waiting for their parents to leave before scaring them? Is it a monster that hides beneath a child's bed waiting for a foot to dangle off the edge? Is it merely just a tool by parents to scare their children into being good and going to bed on time? The answer is both deep and, well, not so deep. 

    The not-so-deep answer is that the boogeyman is all and none of these things. In modern usage, the name is attributed to any sort of mysterious evil lurking in the darkness as well as any sort of opposing force. Even George Soros has been called a boogeyman by the BBC. The boogeyman is also popular in pop culture media being used as the main antagonist for numerous movies and games. For example, Freddy Krueger from The Nightmare on Elm Street, Slenderman, The Babadook, and Oogy Boogy are all variations of the Boogeyman. And despite each being the boogeyman of their respective universes, none of them are any bit similar other than being some spooky creature.

    Even the monsters from the movie Little Monsters all take on that boogeyman persona with how they hide under beds or in the shadows of bedrooms. 

Now the deeper answer dates back to middle English, an older form of the English language dating between 1100 to 1500s. Boogeyman etymologically descends from the Middle English 'Bugge' or 'Bogge' which means a terror or something akin to a scarecrow. Those words also relate to the word 'Bugbear'. 'Bug' meaning something like a goblin or (once again) scarecrow, and 'Bear' meaning a demon that takes the shape of a bear to eat little children. You'd think it'd just mean the bear animal, but no. Funny that. 

Similar to fairies in Celtic folklore being used as a catch-all term for the various creatures among the isles, Goblin was also a catch-all in also for the Celts originally for any small and ugly but friendly fay, to eventually mean any fay with evil or malicious intents like phookas, kobolds, and trolls. Later in the mid-19th century, the term Bogey would come to mean the Devil or any sort of demonic creature, spirit, or entity. 

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Middle-English-language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogeyman#:~:text=It%20may%20derive%20from%20the,a%20general%20object%20of%20dread.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/goblin

https://globaljournals.org/GJHSS_Volume19/2-Goblin-Mythology-A-Brief-Study.pdf