Boogeymen

The Monsters Under Your Bed

Subject MS-4 "Boogeyman"
12-03-2011
Head Researcher on site: Camilla Ellestrom.

The creature showed up in a heap, and is clearly non-humanoid. Rigor Mortis, Null. Livor Mortis, Null.
OXENFREE brought it in at seven hundred hours. Previous research shows that the subject is dependent on its host, a child. This child determines the subject's appearance, mannerisms, and how violent it becomes. This particular specimen killed a Seeker before it was killed in turn.
Beginning first incision...

— Boogeyman lab report

Boogeymen are thought-forms. They haunt a household, more specifically, they haunt a child within that household. Boogeymen are the result of a perfect storm, stress and anger from parents feeding into the fear and imagination of the child.
They are a simple story at first. "Behave. If you don't, the boogeyman will get you." The story begins to take form as the negative emotions felt by the parents, who merely want the child to correct their poor behavior, are further accentuated by the child's belief in the entity and genuine fear of it.
A boogeyman is not a spirit, nor is it a demon. They are merely formed by thought. Boogeymen are classified as supernatural, a term only given to 12 distinct creatures that have been encountered. This means it doesn't follow natural laws. It doesn't feed, does it need to do much to survive.

A Troubled Home

Boogeymen are given form by the child and as such, every boogeyman is radically different. Many can appear humanoid, but more imaginative children have created terrifying creatures that defy such simple terminology. Genders, sounds, and more are just as varied. Effectively, the boogeyman is a personal monster for the child, catered by the child's mind to be what they are most afraid of.
What is most peculiar is how boogeymen vary from one case to another. Some seem similar to fear spirits, only wanting to scare the child, others are more malicious.
In particularly troubled homes where domestic abuse is present or where either parent of the child is emotionally or mentally abusive, the entity grows more hostile and will resort to violence in an attempt to steal the child from their home or worse, kill them.

Development

A boogeyman starts as a lie told to a child by a parental figure. This lie alone is not enough to give it form. There must be a deep fear of the entity from the child, extreme stress within the home, and a particular set of random events that lead to the belief in the entity's existence.
A boogeyman forms first in the mind. Children are remarkably aware and capable of seeing emotional changes in their parents. They will notice the stress and anger and even if it isn't constant, they may think that it is. The child may blame themselves for the negativity in the home and this is coupled with the fear of their own personal monster. This is how it starts.
In order to create a boogeyman, the child must actively be on the lookout for the boogeyman and also must, at times, disobey the rules despite the fear. The child may then begin to hear sounds, some may be normal but it is common for some of these sounds to be auditory hallucinations indicating the boogeyman is beginning to take form.

Face your fear

The Boogeyman will be directly connected to the child that gave birth to them. Most of the time a boogeyman haunting fades away as the child is repeatedly told that monsters do not exist or even that The Boogeyman was a lie.

As the child grows older they may defeat the entity on their own. The easiest way of handling even the most severe cases is to simply have the child conquer their fear. However, the more severe the case becomes, the more likely outside intervention will be needed to avoid tragedy.

Usually when such cases are found The Troubleshooters will call upon the aid of The Magicians of Carthage or OXENFREE, as their connection to metaphysical incursions gives them a major advantage.

Haunting

The child will look about their room, knowing they have done wrong, and will fear the entities arrival. In the dark, things won't look as they should and the child may mistake a coat sleeve for an arm and hand. They may notice the sudden rush of air open the bedroom door, and see eyes staring at them through its opening.
A boogeyman is born in those crucial nights. in the weeks that follow, every detail is fleshed out as the child tries to give their fear a face, and then they see the finished product in a single moment of horror not meant for such an innocent mind. During this moment, a boogeyman attaches itself to the very spirit of the child.
It's easy to suspect ghosts for the activity that occurs and many incidents are misdiagnosed all the time. Demons are also a common scapegoat, to the dismay of any exorcist who attempts to rid the household of the entity. Once it is formed, the entity cannot be severed from the child. Moving to a new home will do nothing, exorcisms will anger it, and any attempt to outright attack it may result in injury.

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by xiperius

Rules of Engagement

If a member of The Web encounters a boogeyman, they must first ascertain the severity of the haunting. If it's a severe case, one usually calls on more qualified organizations. These organizations will then attempt to confront the entity within its own mirror dimension. Once you confront it in its mirror dimension and successfully kill it it will simply cease to exist but great care must be taken to prevent the recreation of it in the mind of the child.

Furthermore the process of reaching its mirror Dimension must be done was discretion. If the boogeyman seeks to kill the child, and notices others trying to stop it, it will double its efforts. It's almost impossible to know what the entity wants and these desires are often nonsensical. A prime example is killing the child. To kill the child would kill the entity as well.

Behavior

The behavior varies from case to case but there are numerous similarities between cases, many depending on the severity of the haunting.

• Minor Haunting: Minor hauntings consist of random encounters with the child in order to continue building their fear, and in turn, building the entities physical form. Past this, the entity is fairly docile, never causing bodily harm to any one in the home even when attacked. The creature usually has a nest in the home where it retreats if confronted.


• Moderate Hauntings: If the haunting is more several due to extreme emotion and imagination, the boogeyman will be more hostile but not to the point of lethal violence. It will be aggressive but won't cause bodily harm. These hauntings are usuachlly confused for poltergeists as the parents will often be included in the visitation. Some have a nest inside the home but as it gets worse, the boogeyman will gain in strength to the point of creating a mirror dimension that it uses as a domain.


• Severe Hauntings: If the child develops deeper fears over time, or in the case of a very troubled home, the boogeyman becomes more and more violent. This can include assaulting the family, possessing family members, and more violent acts such as killing family pets or protective adults that seek to shield the child.

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Note: Over the years, it's become increasingly apparent that boogeymen are not dependent on The Candlelight. A boogeyman can manifest whether candlelight is present in the home or not. It can still spread The Candlelight, however. Some agents of The Web cite their boogeyman as the first monster they ever killed.

Boogeymen and OXENFREE

Transcript from Seeker Dallas on The Davidson Haunting

University Archivist Lea Thatch: state your name and rank please.
Dallas: Seeker Dallas Ortis, Team Blue, hardlight specialist and victim psychiatrist.

Archivist Thatch: Define terms.
Dallas: The Blue Team is an auxiliary unit designed specifically to deal with home reality incursions, things that occur in this reality.
Hard light refers to my focus in training as a seeker: the use of geometric patterns created from hard lights that can elicit an effect on the world around us.
I am qualified to make repairs to hard light equipment and have access to more nuanced configurations that are usually kept from other members of the organization.

Specialty means I excelled when learning the skill and can often perform better than most in my squad.
Archivist Thatch: Really?
Dallas: Well, you weren't exactly clear.
Archivist Thatch: Go on.
Dallas: Victim Psychiatry comes from my civilian education. Before I joined the organization, I was a child psychiatrist, in fact that is how I ended up joining the organization. The organization refers to me as a specialist in dealing with bogeymen as well, and this education is one of the primary reasons for that specialization.
Archivist Thatch: Excellent, it is our understanding that you are here to give us a briefing of the incident that occurred on 1137 Hope Road in the town of Downey, Michigan.
We personally prefer these to be as thorough and detailed as possible. Any information you remember no matter how insignificant it might seem we will most certainly like to know.
Dallas: Gotcha

Archivist Thatch: Let us begin with the events preceding the encounter.
Dallas: Before the actual encounter I was asked to investigate a report of high multiversal energy fluctuations occurring in Michigan. The fluctuations did inevitably lead us to the Davidson residence.

Archivist Thatch: How was this accomplished?
Dallas: anytime an entrance to or from a multiversal plane or another reality occurs, it gives off a massive energy signature as well as a burst of radiation. We have receivers all over the world placed inconspicuously that are specifically designed to pick up on both the energy and radiation involved. When we see a combination of the two it's probably going to be either a rift between worlds or a nuclear bomb, we usually assume the former.
Archivist Thatch: and you immediately mobilize?
Dallas: Absolutely not, that's far too dangerous. There's no one way of knowing exactly what came through or if something just left and more importantly there's no way of knowing what that something is. Usually the operators at the receiver will send a drone from their location to investigate. Once information is gathered we then make a determination on whether or not a team needs to be sent in. In this case, the fact that the rift came from a suburban household, and that the child in the house had to have a very detailed psychological database that we were able to tap into, we were able to almost guarantee that a boogeyman was involved.
Archivist Thatch: How so?
Dallas: bogeymen can only target children, we don't know if it's just preference or if it's something they physically cannot do to adults. What we do know is that generally speaking when the boogeyman enters a home, he usually comes with a massive burst of radiation and energy. On top of this the details of the psychological profile were a dead giveaway away that something was going on. There has never been a time where all of these factors are present in a boogeyman that was not involved. We mobilized immediately upon reaching that conclusion.
Archivist Thatch: Then what.
Dallas: I personally made contact with the family under the guise of being a child's new psychiatrist. My primary goal was to get the child to admit that there was something going on despite what everyone else was saying. There's a reason why the statement acknowledging the problem is the first step to solving it is so cliche. It's absolutely true. There are times when I never have to come back after achieving this simple milestone. Usually, the child can fight back on their own using their own mental fortitude to stand up to the entity.
Archivist Thatch: Usually?
Dallas: Most boogeyman are pretty weak when it comes to the overall Threat Level. They won't cause any natural disasters and they don't actively seek to harm anyone, initially. Fear is their only priority. In this case it was a little more complicated. Jarred Davidson was a particularly disturbed child. I could go into enormously large amounts of detail regarding exactly why and what trauma he sustained but such information isn't relevant to the case. The traumatized child along with the stories told to him by his parents to make him behave created a particularly aggressive Boogeyman.
Archivist Thatch: In your experience, are there any underlying factors that tend to come up frequently when handling Boogeyman such as appearances in abilities? We know they are heavily dependent on the imagination of the child as well as the stories told by the parents.
Dallas: Yes, but that alone isn't enough. The parents don't give birth to it, they just give it a basic form; a foundation. The imagination of the child is the real key to giving birth to the boogeyman. It's not exactly a stretch of the imagination to infer common factors frequently appear in these cases related to things that children are commonly afraid of.
Children who have a particularly powerful case of nyctophobia tend to create Boogeyman that appears almost like Shadow monsters whereas children who suffer claustrophobia will often depict a creature that has no similarities to others other than its size and how it tends to fill a room, making the child feel cramped. If you want to know what the boogeyman might look like and what a might be capable of simply as a child with their biggest fears are. Arachnophobia tends to create Boogeyman that appears like arachnids, but a general fear of insects can often lead to incredibly diverse features. Some have wings some do not some have legs like a grasshopper but eight eyes and spinnerets that make webs like a spider.
Something that is particularly disturbing when it comes to the more aggressive and hostile boogeyman is that they usually have more than just fear involved in their creation. Boogeyman that are hostile and aggressive come from trauma and they will often take similar features and appearances of whoever or whatever caused that trauma.
There's a working theory that boogeymen are always real. Every child has one. That thing you were so scared of at night staring at the closet door may have been real, and it's the same for every human on this planet.
Archivist Thatch: So it needs trauma? abuse?
Dallas: abuse will do it.
Archivist Thatch: and the Bogeyman will then adopt traits of the one responsible for that trauma?
Dallas: Not perfect imitations, These feature distorted elements such as skewed faces but the same voice as an abuser. Or vice versa. The only true universal thing across all cases of boogeyman is that they are monstrous in appearance.
They will not look like natural law had a hand in their creation. There is a reason a grasshopper has the legs that it does, there is a reason why spiders have 8 legs. What the reason is is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is that life tends to have what it needs to survive. I have seen boogeyman with legs they don't even use. Some have wings, but can't fly. Some have mouths and yet they don't need to eat.
Archivist Thatch: Any other similarities?

Dallas: something interesting occurs during their creation on the part of the subconscious mind of the child. Boogeyman always comes with a distinct weakness, buried under layers and layers of subconscious thought. The child generally doesn't know this weakness at first but most will inevitably find it. Sometimes it's as simple as having a stuffed doll that defends them in the night, which in some cases, turned out to be true..
In other cases they experiment with different tactics to deal with them such as a ring of toys around their bed and hiding under the sheet so that they cannot be seen.
Archivist Thatch: These things work?
Dallas: Hell yeah. There is a real reason children do these things and we believe Boogeymen are one of the major reasons for it.
Archivist Thatch: interesting. Was it that easy in this particular case?
Dallas: No, the moment a boogeyman lashes out and attempts to harm another, such weaknesses have been rendered obsolete. In this particular case the weakness was likely Jared's night light. It had evolved out of its own weakness and became a much more formidable opponent.
The creature looked like a shadow figure that I discussed earlier but had many features that appeared like a distorted version of the child's school teacher. It also walked on three legs and had crab-like Pinchers. It's voice was raspy like that of a smoker but deeper and much more guttural. There was a mask hiding a face reminiscent of a praying mantis.


US: So what happened on your first encounter with the child?



Dallas: Boogeyman, take it personally when you try to take their children from them or teach them how to defeat them. I straight-up asked the child about it.
I noticed he kept glancing to the closet, as if afraid to answer my questions and searching for some unseen approval. This is also fairly common with hostile cases as The Entity tends to threaten those the child loves as well as threatening the child themselves if his existence is revealed. This particular entity was no different and Jared was very resistant. When this happens, it takes a couple of tries to earn the child's trust.
The Entity can't travel with a child all the time, especially if the child is outdoors. It is completely unaware of what occurs outside the walls of its own home. In this case The Entity had its own tiny demiplane, and could not be away from it for too long, I'd say a few hours. I took him outdoors to get some fresh air and I asked him again if there was something in the house that he couldn't explain or that no one will believe if he said anything about it. I asked him if he had monsters in his closet and he turned white as a sheet. That was enough of a confirmation for me and I told him that it couldn't hear us way out here.
They looked down to the ground as if ashamed and I saw a mark on the back of his neck. The most hostile Boogeyman we have ever encountered brand the children that host them. In this case it was three tiny little black marks parallel to one another in a single column on the back of the neck. I contacted my Handler and informed her of the situation as well as asked for backup because I knew it was going to need it. Apparently the Boogeyman has some kind of in a sense of multiversal communication. It did something I've never seen before.


Archivist Thatch: What?
Dallas: I had an overwhelming sensation that I was being watched. Pretty normal for most people but in my occupation you learn to trust that instinct. Adrenaline was pumping I was searching around trying to see what could possibly be there and in the child's window I could see it plain as day. It then proceeded to break the window and rush out to attack me. I pushed Jared behind me who at this point was having some kind of meltdown. The boy lashed out at me screaming and hollering as the creature neared. I was forced to reveal myself to him. I use the hard light glove, making the Icehold Configuration, and I froze the entity in place.
One cannot fight a boogeyman if it is not there boogeyman without going to its demiplane. This is the most important detail that should be known and if nothing else it is paramount that this detail is retained from this debriefing. I turned away from the creature and took this as an opportunity to display my power over its to the child. I took great care to demonstrate that it was completely defenseless so long as I was there to keep it that way, and then I offered to show him how to do it.

Archivist Thatch: Did that work?

Dallas: No. He was still having his meltdown and the creature was not completely under my control. When a boogeyman is so deeply ingrained in the psyche of a child it can manifest from the child. Think of it like a quasi-possession. While the child is completely in control themselves or in this case out of control entirely, density can manifest elements of itself such as tendrils or even legs and claws. It attacked me and knocked me out cold. I woke up due to the help of fellow Seekers who arrived not but three minutes later.
Due to the fact that a child is so afraid of the creature and the fact that the creature is so powerful, we had no choice but to go directly to its demiplane and destroy it. This is the one and only time someone other than the child can defeat a boogeyman.

We entered the home and inspected the closet. It was at this point that we learned that shared was nowhere to be found.


Archivist Thatch: the entity took him?
Dallas: Yes. This occurs when the creature feels cornered and then attempts suicide by killing the child. It is rare though that this particular Boogeyman took the child to his demiplane as it was well aware that demiplane was developed not only by the Boogeyman, but also the child's psyche. When a child enters this demiplane they are more powerful than they may be aware of. They can break the rules of this demiplane and even rewrite them to make the bogeyman significantly less powerful even to the point of rendering them non-existent. Based on my own analysis I believe that you're far too gone to know this or even be told.
Archivist Thatch: How do you enter the demiplane?
Dallas: By using a similar receiver we can pinpoint where on Michael's star we have to go to reach that demiplane. By altering it just so we were able to enter with no problem. Once we got there things got even more complicated. The Entity has built-in defenses for itself in the form of clones that we had to fight. These into these are nowhere near as complex as their creator but they do act as an extension of it. The original boogeyman can see through the eyes of all clones it creates in the demiplane.
Understand that this made reaching Jared even more important as we were already short for time and now that it was aware of us being in its home we lost even more time. We didn't even stop to take care of the clones. We decided to use the rewind configuration, which if changed slightly can simply stop time as opposed to reversing it. This froze the Clones but only in our surrounding area. We stormed what appeared to be a tower it had built, shooting what we could as we moved and finally entered its nest. For whatever reason boogeyman prefer damp and humid environments for their nests. We aren't really sure why since nesting is kind of a strange thing in general with them.
They can't reproduce and therefore shouldn't need a place seemingly designed to do so. They go about building nests similar to that of a bird taking things from their surroundings and bringing it back to the location of their nest to build it. The child was in the center of this nest and the entity was just above him. Boogeymen that are this hostile don't seem to have much reason and their violence appears more like madness.
In this particular case, however, this Boogeyman was filled with what I can only describe as Rage or Hate. Those eyes showed malice. It didn't take long to kill it one shot to the head with the right round would do it. The round needs to be ethereal. We call it spookstone. It's one of the major reasons why we are always called when a boogeyman is involved. We are the only producers of such ammunition. One shot is all it takes. Anti-climatic, I know, but that's just what it is. In our world having the right tools can make all the difference.


Archivist Thatch: According to our reports the child didn't make it.

Dallas: No… Jared and his parents didn't make it, his parents having been killed by The Entity sometime after we entered the demiplane and Jared died when the creature died. The connection between the two is too strong. It's something we still haven't quite figured out how to sever safely. The incident was covered up as a gas explosion, a little bit of arson that our friends at Siegfried organized. This is by far the only time I've ever failed to save a child from The Boogeyman. This is the reason I wanted to be here to debrief you and give you as much information as I could regarding these entities and hopes that maybe you could help us figure out how to avoid this outcome…
Archivist Thatch: With the specimen you provided I'm sure we and Camilla Ellestrom can come up with something

Oxenfree is an organization dedicated to multiversal and metaphysical exploration and experimentation. They travel to alternate realities and metaphysical planes in search of a lost child, one Michael Graham.
They take the time to search for other lost children as well, having a thorough database filled with every missing persons case recorded over the last twenty years. The organization has a surplus of experience and deep, complicated history regarding boogeymen.
The quickest way to gain Oxenfree's support is to even casually mention the presence of a boogeyman. The Seekers of Oxenfree despise them, and their vendetta runs deep enough to encourage cooperation with other organizations of The Web, something Oxenfree rarely does.

Jarred's Razor

After an incident leading to the death of a young boy named Jarred Davidson, Oxenfree commissioned The Alexandrian University to study and develop a method that can safely sever the connection between a boogeyman and its host, and shared their entire archive to assist in the process.
The University requested samples of referenced meta-materials found in other realities, namely samples found in the very demiplanes boogeymen inhabit. The Seekers called it "Spook-stone" and initially wrote it off as worthless. The university found something more. Spookstone has qualities that go beyond the physical, and a blade made of this material can carve into the very fabric of a metaphysical form. After months of dedicated research the Metashear was developed, nicknamed Jarred's Razor by The Seekers of Oxenfree.
The metashear is a thin, handheld, circular disk. The housing is composed of titanium steel, and within is a circular spookstone blade not unlike the blade of a circular saw. Batteries power a mechanism attached to the trigger and safety switch in the handle. The housing opens and the blade spins at roughly 300 revolutions per second. The connection between the child and the entity can only be seen during moderate to severe hauntings and only in the boogeyman's own demiplane. Severing this "etherial cord" will spare the child if the boogeyman proves too strong to overpower through will alone.