“Bogeyman”

“Bogey” or “bogeyman” is derived from Northern England, English word “boggart”. shape shifting creature which crawls into your bed to scare you. Hairy and black, they hide in your closet or under your bed, until darkness falls. Hang horseshoes on your doors to keep boggarts away.

These mischievous but fairly harmless spirits of the earth like to live in dark, cluttered places such as cupboards, cellars, barns, lofts, hollow trees, abandoned mine workings, hillside caves and crevices, and old houses. They cause all the creaks and thumps in these houses, and also pull bedclothes off sleepers at night or cause uneasiness by hovering behind someone's back. It is useless to try to turn round in time to see one, and not really worth one's while, either, as all he looks like is a large puff of dust. However, looking through a knothole in a wooden partition, one may catch the dull fleeting gleam of the bogeyman's eye before he has time to slip away.