Unmasking the Bogeyman

Come children. Sit down by the warm glow of the campfire. Listen to it crackle, as the destructive force of nature we call flames licks away the bark of these formerly living tree branches.

Odd, isn't it? Flames. The symbol of Hell itself. Although to be fair, the Bible never actually describes Hell, so our understanding of the eternal fiery pit is a creation of our own collective imagination. But the point is, here we find ourselves in the wilderness huddled around flames because the thought of venturing off into the wilds of darkness is the more frightening prospect.

Say, that reminds me. Have you heard of the Bogeyman? Yes, it's a stupid name but he's not a figure to be taken lightly. Well, I suppose at his core he is, because in truth he's nothing more than a manipulation tactic by adults to force children into going to sleep or eating broccoli or any number of other bullshit rules that they know they don't have to follow.

But ignore reality for the time being.

First thing to understand, the Bogeyman is not the devil. The devil, as all cartoons know, is that red figure who sits on your shoulder and whispers selfish intentions into your ear. He wants you to break the rules. Whereas breaking the rules, or often 'rule', is the core of the Bogeyman's wrath. Now this does not place him on the side of the angels as some might conclude, as the whole 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' axiom is irrelevant when dealing with an amoral being. As such, he views himself as neither good nor evil, but as a self-appointed protector of one element that he believes is 'correct'.

One of the oldest and most oft told tales is "Overcoming the Monster". To paraphrase Brad Dourif, the monster is a figure who does not negotiate (unlike the devil). He is a combination of the worst in both humanity (a cold calculating intellect) and nature (animalistic ruthlessness). He exists by one rule: do not break the rule.

What rule is that? I just told you. The rule is, do not break the rule. How do you know if you've broken the rule? Simple, he fatally punishes you for it. Did I hear somebody mutter something about that not being fair? Well of course it's not fair! To you. It's perfectly fair to him. He has no need to bother explaining his motivation to you.

This is why adults have the power to lord threats of the Bogeyman over children. They've obviously lived long enough to at least know plenty of behavior that doesn't break the rule, giving them the advantage of expertise. So if they tell you to do your homework or the Bogeyman will get you, you don't have the background to challenge them.

Did you notice something I said just now? I'll say it a different way. Take out the trash or the Bogeyman will get you. Keep the noise down or the Bogeyman will get you. Grab your toe, yell like Tarzan, and place a Kleenex in the refrigerator or the Bogeyman will get you. Do x or y will happen.
Now I realize I'm introducing algebra to a bunch of children, but this is too fascinating to let slide.

Notice how x varies from case to case while y is consistent, and yet y is still the more ambiguous variable? No matter how insanely preposterous x gets, it's very specific, y  never is.

What does it mean to be 'gotten' by the Bogeyman? He gets you and...what? He ties you up? Stomps on your feet? Forces you to become a dietician? No specific horror is as unsettling as the undefined outcome of him getting you. Uncertainty is the nightmare. And it's this same reason why the Bogeyman's appearance is shrouded in so much mystery, often portrayed with a burlap sack over his head.

So now that we understand him a bit more, which portrayal of the character was the greatest? And when I say greatest, I mean most true to terrifying form yet somehow engaging in a psychological unsettling but charismatic way. Naturally I have the answer, but let me explain how I got to it by working backwards from the ones who fell short of perfection.


5. Michael Myers

Late seventies through the mid-eighties had a whole slew of masked juggernauts competing for the spot. Michael Myers wasn't the first, but he was the first breakout star, and thus the template for any prospective Bogeyman. Even his debut film identified him as such when Laurie Strode and Dr. Loomis deliver the final exchange of the script. "Was that the Bogeyman?" "As a matter of fact, it was."

It's a question of heated opinion whether or not Michael was the greatest of the slasher baddies. He certainly can't compete with Jason for any tangible statistic like box office draw, kill count, or number of film installments. And Jason all but rendered Michael obsolete by perfecting the slasher movie formula and ultimately making the audiences root for him instead of his victims.

In order to get at Michael's significance, you pretty much have to ignore anything past his first appearance; H20 was fine enough if not all that memorable, the Rob Zombie movies were just too mean spirited, and Halloween II never sat right with me seeing as how an entire hospital staff got slaughtered just for showing up to work. So screw all that. Let's treat Michael as a one shot character.

We don't know why Michael does what he does, and any attempt to explain it seems to cheapen the appeal. He's a kid who puts on a mask and believes he's the Bogeyman. And thus he is. That's what's fascinating about him. He's like the wrong side of the Disney mantra where he just believes hard enough and his dream comes true. Unfortunately his dream is to be a serial killer.

So where does he fall short then? After that great setup there's really nowhere for him to go. There's no possibility of a character arc, you just have to let the night play out. Sure, the Bogeyman is a concept, but he has to be a bit more than that to really shine, and Michael just doesn't.

Jason has the staying power, as he managed to crack the fun factor of horror movies, and in my opinion Leatherface was a sorely more engaging character. So while I don't think Michael makes the best Bogeyman even in this batch, his first story might be the most brilliantly concise campfire tale told around the monster, striking that perfect balance of less being more. You could never get away with a slasher movie with such a low body count today, which makes it all the more special.


4. Pyramid Head

Let's try a different medium. The modern era of videogames has graced us with a creative blend of back story and presence in the survival horror genre. The best thing is, courtesy of reloading from a recent checkpoint your character's death and survival is all part of the same story. Fiona Belli can die gruesome impalements over and over throughout the course of Haunting Ground and still canonically live at the end. It's a loophole that films rarely get to abuse (check out the delightful Happy Death Day for a charming exception).

There have been so many stalker characters in recent video games that it's nearly impossible for any of them to really stand out. Yeah, Slender Man is frightening but we kind of got it after his first appearance. Freddy Fazbear is the stuff of nightmares but again, more backstory doesn't really accentuate anything past jump scares. We're not looking for which creep can sneak up on you the best, we're looking for someone who can intrigue you while scaring the hell out of you. For that we turn to Silent Hill.

Take the concept of the executioner; hooded, muscle-bound shirtless guy with a heavy blade. His an interesting figure throughout history because he's not inherently thought of as evil but merely the final step in the medieval judicial system. It's his job. If he's horrifying it's because the system is horrifying. But if we turn him into a monster he would be Pyramid Head.

If you have only a passing familiarity with the Silent Hill series, you might think Pyramid Head is the primary antagonist of the series. He's not. He's not even in most of the games. His importance is ultimately limited to Silent Hill 2, and even then he's not your antagonist so much as he's your sheepdog; keeping you on the grueling path to enlightenment.

He's similar to Michael in that he's not about to go running after you; he'll get you when he damn well feels like it (although in his case he's dragging a massive sword that might be slowing him down). But the difference is a question of humanity. Pyramid Head abandons all humanity which may have been within himself because he's at work. There's no ethics for him, there's a task. Michael on the other hand...well, what is humanity? I like to equate it with benevolence, in which case Michael consciously renounced his humanity. But what about sadism? That seems to be a uniquely human concept which serves as more of Michael's motivator than Pyramid Head's.

So that leaves us with an interesting variation on the Bogeyman. Old Heady still can't be reasoned with, or even defeated, but unlike Michael he can be cooperated with. If you can figure out what Head wants you to do and do it, he's cool with letting you go. If the Bogeyman were purely robotic, we'd have our winner. But no, the real terror has to come within us, which means we have to place corrupt humanity back into the death bringer.


3. Dracula

If I were you (the reader) I'd probably be inclined to skip this section purely on the grounds that Dracula is yesterday's cliché. Don't get me wrong, the guy's earned his place in film history. But post Hammer Horror era, he's probably outlasted his own dignity. Even the 1992 Francis Ford Coppola film left me feeling like the whole concept was a very well lit, made-up, costumed, technically precise, yet none-the-less DEAD horse of achievement in cinematography. But I bring him up here because of how well we can get to know the Bogeyman by understanding what he's clearly not, as represented in Dracula.

First off, did you ever notice the whole throwaway plot line in both Dracula and his template stealing contemporary Nosferatu? There's a sequence of the character's boat passage where the crew starts disappearing. If you were to chop that one scene out of the story and blow it up to a full length feature, you'd have a perfectly rendered Bogeyman formula.

Ah! But you still wouldn't have the Bogeyman, and here's why. The ship's crew is just a ship's crew that happens to be in the wrong place. There's no greed, or ignoring of Crazy Ralph's warnings, they're just hired hands who become food. The Bogeyman requires his prey to be doing something, however slight in measurement, wrong. The punishment of execution for being nosy is excessive, but there are no truly innocent victims. Hence the final girl.

Now I want to take a brief moment to explore the uncomfortable relationship between horror and beauty. Poe was the master of killing female characters to evoke emotions in his readers. The Phantom of the Opera is the classic tale of the ugly monster coveting his object of purity by murdering anything that threatens to knock her off her pedestal. This is undoubtedly a factor in why the figure in darkness is so often a male, and the only one capable of defeating him is a young attractive female who doesn't smoke, drink, swear, and gives generously to Unicef.

When you trace Drac's origins to history's most accomplished brute Vlad the Impaler, it's interesting how that thirst for blood has been revised. Vlad was a ruthless monster with a personality pretty close to the typical Bogeyman, while Dracula is a much more seductive devil. Drac may be King of Universal's monster lineup, but he has standards that Michael and Jason do not.

It may seem like I'm changing subjects, but just sit tight. Are you familiar with Vlad's female equivalent in history, Elizabeth Bathory? She's inspired her own vampire mythos, although strangely it hasn't caught on like the Bela Lugosi films did. Truthfully we don't really know if Bathory was the cruel presence she's made out to be, as her history was recorded by people who detested her. But the main thing that stands out about her legend is her M.O. of bathing in the blood of virgins to preserve her own beauty, an idea that you really can't imagine folk tellers assigning to a male character. Again, that opens up a whole other discussion, but for now let's set that to the side because we're going to need it in a minute.


2. Jack the Ripper

The grandfather of both the serial killer and the unsolved mystery. We all know what he did, even if we'll never know who he was or why. What's interesting about Jack, it's the perfect way to put a face on the Bogeyman without actually putting a face on him; both humanizing the monster and monsterizing the human.

The more we delve into the current climate of sexual assault survivors, an unfortunate truth is revealed. We never question why a man assaults a woman. Topics like what she was wearing, or to what degree she stressed her objection are often raised. But when it comes to the actions of the male, cases seem to either fall into the straight up denial that he did anything, or if he did then boys will be boys. We kind of skip a vital step in the process.

Is it because we've grown accustomed to the notion that all men have within them a floodgate separating their Mr. Hyde from their more amiable public Dr. Jekyll? We men certainly have our own gender based problems, but I've never had to worry about a strange woman following me to my car at night. Throughout my life I've never once thought that saying no to a female's advances would provoke a violent reaction. On the flip side, I have my own story or two involving a male coworker from a previous job who couldn't accept 'no' or the multiple variations thereof as reality. And that is a frightening spotlight to be in.

But my Halloween blogs are supposed to be about the joy of darkness, so let me try to steer us back on the main road. What we can regrettably accept is that probably the reason Jack the Ripper's identity was never discovered was because it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that any man could have been him. Could he have been a woman? Sure. But as we don't tend to think of women as having that same internal floodgate to darkness we can't explore the option without a prospective motivation for her.

Like Dracula, Jack has a historical female counterpart in Lizzie Borden. But her mystery isn't in who she was, it's in why. You'd think we would have explored her in more depth throughout film history. Did you know she was the subject of a major movie released last month? No? Not surprised, nobody went to see it. I don't think anyone even knew about it. Do you think we're just prone to romanticizing our male killers in a way that our female killers just don't intrigue us? Or maybe we just can't accept a woman going bad without a clear cut reason for it, and motives tend to detract away from the fear aura that the Bogeyman thrives on.

Well, what if I told you that the Bogeyman was actually a woman? I.E. the greatest portrayal of the frightening figure who's going to 'get' you is a female character? She meets all the criteria discussed in this blog, her identity is fully revealed, motives are clear cut, and she's still more of a nightmare than anybody else heretofore mentioned.

Okay, I warned you.


1. The Final Girl

Like dinosaur DNA in amber, you just have to know where to look (and no, it's not the T-rex). Think. Where is the one place you can go for a surplus of feminine cruelty that completely outclasses the masculine brutes? That's right, fairy tales. And who was the ultimate catalyst for placing fairy tale characters firmly in the mainstream's collective consciousness? Right again, Disney. You're two for two. Final round. Who then is Disney's mistress of nightmares?

No! It's not Maleficent! I mean, yeah, Mal is awesome and badass and a freaking dragon, but she's not the Bogeyman. I'm talking about the queen. You know, Grimhilde? Sort of? Well, I don't think Disney's confirmed her name, but from Snow White. Now we're on the same page.

Well think about it. Her evil comes from her own obsession with beauty. Like Elizabeth Bathory's reputation, she simply has to preserve her status or it's all out war to set things back to the way they always have been. She's a wasp who views Snow White as her potential replacement, and thus an obstacle to eliminate well before the threat becomes apparent. You can just see the fury in her eyes. Even Walt Disney's own animators said that after Snow White was released Walt would never let them draw a villain as innately scary as the queen.

So we have the identity, the motivation, and now we have the transformation where she sacrifices her (alleged) beauty to turn into the hag, where she can murder Snow White personally. And the fascinating thing is, once she sacrifices the one thing she held so dear, she gets really crazy. Delighted with the newfound freedom she has. And it is the single most frightening -what are you all looking at me like that for?

Oh...I get it. You think I'm talking about the movie. No wonder you're confused, you poor sad, stupid, naïve little...dears. No, I'm talking about the ride.

This isn't some sequence of images on a screen that you can just block out by covering your eyes or leaving the theater should it become too intense. Nothing as generous as that. Instead imagine your family has taken out a second mortgage to cover the cost of a four day ticket to the world's favorite resort, full of overpriced balloons, pastries, and the occasional plague of seagulls. You've shaken hand with Captain Hook who turned out to be much more pleasant of a fellow than you've been led to expect, maybe bought a hat with ears, took a spin on a magic carpet, got a replacement hat with ears. It's been a good, safe, unintimidating day so far.

So now you're at the front of the line for one of the Fantasyland attractions, and a minecart/bed hybrid pulls up next to you. Oh look! It's got Dopey's name on it! Your favorite! Well this should be fun, you say as the Stepford smiling attendant locks you into your vehicle and gently launches you into the serpentine adventure that's about to change your life forever.

Why, it's the castle doors. And who is that to greet you from the second story window? It's the queen. In a clearly sullen mood. Perhaps she wasn't expecting you. Well, surely you haven't broken any rule by allowing this pre-laid out track to guide you where the Imagineers have decided you should go, right? I mean, all you did was get on the damn ride like you thought you were supposed to.

You approach a mirror. Not THE mirror, but A mirror, which serves as a friendly reminder of how mirrors are meant to work as you turn the corner. And there, ahead and slightly to the right of you is the queen. With her back to you, staring into another mirror. Her reflection indicates that she has not magically cheered up since a moment ago, and it's a tad on the eerie side to be dragged uncontrollably up to her, as she's clearly not someone you'd want to surprise from behind. Fortunately startling her is not something you're going to have to worry about. She makes it evident that she knows you're there as she turns around to face you...

And holy shit! The face of the witch in all of her three dimensional Tony Baxter designed glory has been described as hawk-like, gaping, and drunk off her own dementedness. Something in your psyche shrivels up and dies as her image permanently burns its way into your mind. On reflex you try to hide your eyes, but it's too late. All you see is her.

You peek through your fingers at the sequence of skeletons reaching toward you, a warning that comes well beyond the point of usefulness, and she reappears on your left at her cauldron. Surely her manifestation is not as unsettling as the vestige she implanted in your young brain. You want to look at her again but find yourself physically incapable of making eye-contact with any part of her. A shelf crashes overhead from the sheer force of her presence.

You're outside the castle, and she appears so suddenly that she may have climbed into the vehicle. You spin wildly through the forest, and the trees and logs themselves are out for your blood. You arrive at the dwarf's cottage, but who cares anymore. Animals stare at you through the window. Disney animals. The kind that intern for Cinderella for no retribution other than the joy of involvement. They stare at you in fear. You've been marked, and there's nothing they can do about it. There's the dwarfs. Screw them, they're as helpful as the cops in a slasher film.

The witch. And the witch. And the witch. She's actively trying to kill you. With a minecart, a support beam, and at last a huge gem stone. And then she succeeds. Strobe lights flash as the doors to the outside world open. You're not dead. Much worse. You're alive. And the Bogeyman has gotten you. She's inside you. Every ride you go on from now on you'll be peeking around the corners for her. Every dark corner, sharp turn, or shadow is another potential appearance of that damned animatronic. For the rest of your freaking life you're going to feel her a few inches behind your shoulder. Maybe catch a glimpse of that banana-shaped snout of hers. In your own home when you turn off the lights as you exit a room. She will always be one false glance away.


And that, children, is the Bogeyman. He's in every adult. And he comes for every child. And why? Because you have something that we don't. And we detest you for it. You have the innocence that was stripped away from us when we were you.

Have pleasant dreams.