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In this article:

• Fear of the Boogeyman and other creepy creatures is a common fear of children rooted in our fear of what lurks unknown in the dark.
• These fears, however, are often taught to children by their parents to scare them into good behavior.
• Many myths and folk stories about monsters revolve around the abduction and killing of children which can be terrifying for kids who believe too much in them being true. 

Fear of scary creatures is a pretty common fear children have. It’s a type of learned fear, which kids may have picked up while watching scary movies or hearing spooky campfire tales. They know very little about the world and haven’t yet figured out that the Boogeyman and other hairy monsters aren’t real. If they were, they’re probably not hiding under the bed.

Unfortunately, some parents use their kids’ wild imagination to teach them a lesson. I’m speaking of adults who spin tales of a terrifying creature, a Boogeyman-type character, whose sole purpose is to snatch kids who misbehave or don’t do their assigned chores. If you ask me, the real terrifying part is that the urge to scare children into behaving using scary monsters is universal.

Scary Child-Eating Mythical Creatures Are All Over the World

There are dozens of mythical creatures—some ghost-like, some with demonic characteristics—that parents and guardians of different cultures cultures use as cautionary tales. And the lesson is common across the board: Be good or the Boogeyman will take you. 

In many English-speaking countries, this creature is often described to be a shadowy figure with no face and with sharp talons. Depending on how imaginative your parents were, this so-called Boogeyman may also have red eyes, hairy skin, and razor-sharp teeth. It always lurks in shadowy spaces, such as under the bed or inside a closet, and snatches children who misbehave.

Slavic countries called their Boogeyman character the Baba Yaga. But unlike John Wick’s nickname in the movie, it took children and not disobedient Russian mobsters. There’s no literal translation to the term, but ‘baba’ is taken from the Russian word for grandmother or old woman (babushka) and ‘yaga’ can mean witch, wicked wood nymph, and horror, depending on the Eastern European country it originates from.

In general though, the Baba Yaga is an old female figure residing in the depths of the forest. She rides around on a mortar (as in, the mortar to the pestle) and has literal chicken legs. The Baba Yaga’s home also stands on chicken or bird legs that allow it to move around the forest. The legend goes that Baba Yaga, the Slavic version of the Boogeyman we’re familiar with, eats children who wander too deep into the forest. The lesson is pretty straightforward: Don’t stray too far from home.

Some legends depict a kinder, less cannibalistic version of the Baba Yaga. For instance, the Russian folk tale Vasilisa the Beautiful tells the story of a young girl banished from her home by her evil stepmother. She goes to the forest and meets Baba Yaga, a fearsome old woman rumored to eat people. Although Baba Yaga did initially plan to kill Vasilisa, she eventually becomes a crucial figure in Vasilisa’s plot to defeat her evil step mother and find true love, which shows that there is a different side to scary monsters like the Baba Yaga.

Indeed, not all of these monsters are deeply traumatizing like the Boogeyman and Baba Yaga, but they always seemed to do the trick. The tamest version is perhaps Akaname, a yokai or supernatural being that visited Japanese households if kids didn’t keep their surroundings clean.

Akaname literally means ‘filth licker’. It’s a small red goblin with slimy hair and a long tongue. When Japanese children don’t maintain the cleanliness of their home, specifically the bathrooms, Akaname is said to come out to lick the filth. Getting Akaname to come out might seem like an exciting game of conjuring the Bloody Mary, but it is said that the creature carries diseases with it. If you don’t want to get ill, you will keep your bathroom clean.

Not all Boogeyman type beings are as helpful, though. Another Southeast Asian creature that has scarred many children is the Pugot Mamu of Filipino folklore. ‘Pugot’ translates to decapitated, which explains why this creature is a headless being. It slurps naughty children with a gaping hole where a head should be. Like the Boogeyman, the Pugot Mamu is said to come out at night, which deterred children from breaking their curfews.

To me, the most terrifying version of the Boogeyman is El Cuco, a mythical creature depicted in Latin American and Spanish-speaking countries. Unlike the shadowy figure of the Boogeyman, the witch-like characteristics of the Baba Yaga, or the goblin-like Akaname, El Cuco has no form — it’s a shapeshifter.

What makes El Cuco truly traumatizing is its ability to transform into a different being. In Stephen King’s The Outsider, El Cuco transforms into people children might trust, like their neighbor or Little League coach. In Latin American folklore though, it is said to shapeshift into what its prey fears. It’s kind of like the boggarts in the Harry Potter universe, only instead of paralyzing children with fear, El Cuco eats them. 

When Fear of the Boogeyman Goes too Far

Scaring kids using the Boogeyman is easy. They’re naturally afraid of many things they don’t understand yet, so parents might find it effective to call on the Boogeyman if their child misbehaves. To some extent, scientists think there is merit to instilling fear in children. It helps them be more cautious and reduces their risk-taking behavior, which can keep them safe in a monster-infested world.

In general though, fear is not a very good way to discipline children. It makes them scared of more things, like going to the bathroom at all in case the Akaname shows up, or sleeping in their own bedrooms to hide from the Boogeyman.

And chances are, they’ll only learn to avoid doing certain behaviors to save themselves from being eaten by mythical creatures. They might not learn that the real reason they should do their chores is to develop responsible behavior at home. Using the Boogeyman to scare children might deliver the same results, a behaving child, but it teaches the wrong lessons.

In some cases, people never learn to get over fears they picked up from horror stories they hear in childhood. It can create fears or phobias that persist throughout adulthood, such as an intense fear of the dark. People with nyctophobia, or fear of the dark, imagine all sorts of threats in shadowy spaces, and could be associated with fears they developed when they were children. Parents who scare their children using mythical creatures like the Boogeyman, who lurk in these dark corners, could be contributing to anxiety and phobias that they may never be able to shake off.

The legend of the Boogeyman doesn’t just cross geographical boundaries. It transcends generations, too. For the internet generation, the Slender Man became the stand-in for the Boogeyman. Born from a creepypasta, the Slender Man is a tall, thin, and faceless figure that lived in the woods and targeted children. Legend has it that the Slender Man gave its prey nightmares and made them paranoid if they didn’t behave.

One might brush off the Slender Man as a silly viral internet meme, but it has caused a lot of trauma for many children. In 2014, a pair of 12-year old girls stabbed their friend in the woods in an attempted murder. The young perpetrators confessed that they did it for the Slender Man whom they believed to be real. In this case, it wasn’t their own parents who scared them into believing urban legends but the internet, whose stories were convincing enough to scare an impressionable audience into committing unspeakable acts.

Regardless of the source, mythical creatures like the Boogeyman which are designed to compel children into behaving are more scarring than they are scary. Parents never really know until much later if their kids will ever learn to overcome these fears.

The mysterious Boogeyman, the cannibalistic Baba Yaga, the filth-eating Akaname, the headless Pugot Mamu, the shapeshifting El Cuco, or whatever mythical creature it is your parents used to discipline you might only be contributing to long-term anxieties and debilitating phobias. As fascinating as these mythical creatures are, they could be traumatizing young people instead of teaching them important lessons. And as the urban legend of Slender Man has demonstrated, the fear of these creatures might only inspire susceptible minds to do bad things, not teach them to behave.