Orgins of Fear
Boggart
Household spirits similar to brownies and bogies, although their nature is
much more malicious and less helpful. The dark and hairy boggarts are dressed
in tattered clothes, with meddling hands and clumsy feet. The presence of
a boggart is betrayed by the unusual number of small accidents and strange
noises after dark. They tip over milk bottles, frighten cats, pinch little
children, blow out candles, and cause many other mishaps. No one has ever
found a way to appease them, and often there is no alternative but to quickly
and stealthy move to another home.
Bogeyman
The bogeyman is a malevolent creature in folklore. Some of them are merely
troublesome and rather harmless, but others are truly evil. They are
shapechangers, they move objects and cause disruptions. Although a bogeyman
usually haunts a family, in some cases it can become friends with them and
a playmate for the children. The bogle is a more evil type of bogeyman, although
it usually harms only liars and murderers.
The bogeymen are vague and amorphous in appearance and they resemble a large
puff of dust. A bogeyman can be spotted by quickly looking through a knothole
in a wooden partition. If there is a bogeyman on the other side, one might
catch the dull gleam of his eye before he has time to move away.
Bogie
Mischievous but harmless spirits who live in darkness and semi-darkness.
They can be found in cellars, barns, attics, cupboards, hollow trees and
caves, besides many other of such places. Favorite are places were people
store goods for which they have no use, but are reluctant to discard. Hence
a dusty attic or a junk shop will invariable harbor a number of bogies. Although
they try to move with attempted stealth, their clumsiness betrays their presence
with thumps, creaks and scuffles. They amuse themselves by hovering behind
a person's back and thus creating a vague uneasiness, pulling blankets on
cold nights and other uncreative mischief. Also they like to spy on people
and listen to their conversations.
Doppelganger
The frightful image seen at the window, or staring back from the mirror,
could be your own -- a double, or doppelganger (from the German for "double
goer"), the sight of which could foretell your own imminent demise. Sometimes
described as the soul embodied, sometimes an astral projection or aura, the
double most often presented itself as a warning.
Queen Elizabeth I reportedly saw a vision lying on her deathbed, pale and
still, soon before she died. Geothe and Shelley also claimed to have seen
their doubles, and when Catherine the Great of Russia saw her own coming
toward her, she took no chances and ordered her soldiers to shoot at it.
Witches, it was long accepted, could project their own doubles and set them
loose to do mischief far and wide. As a result, many a women was hanged as
a witch even though it could be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that she
was somewhere else entirely when the barn burned down, the cow died or whatever
else had happened that she was now charged with having done. On other occasions,
a double -- of someone else -- could be called forth or seen.
One old Halloween custom has it that if a young girl lights two candles before
a mirror, while eating an apple, she will see in the mirror the spectral
image of her future husband, peering back at her as if from over her shoulder.
If she is brave enough to venture out to a graveyard, and walk all the way
around it twelve times, she will meet up with the double itself.
According to another old belief, anyone who wants to know who will pass away
in the coming year has only to stand vigil near the church door on April
24, the eve of the feast day of St. Mark. At midnight, the airy doubles of
all who will die file in a solemn processional into the church, if the watcher
is unlucky enough to see his own image there, he knows his own time is not
far off.
To this day, the fear of the double is observed, if unknowingly, in the custom
of covering all the mirrors in a house where a death has just occurred. The
double of anyone passing the glass, it was once thought, could be projected
into the mirror and carried off by the deceased to the afterworld.
Gargoyle
Gargoyles are the grotesque carvings of faces and bodies of humans and animals.
Serving originally as water spouts to direct the water clear of a wall, they
can often be found on (Gothic) buildings and churches. In medieval times,
the function of Gargoyles changed. They became representations of religious
events, created for the illiterate population to "read". From the fact that
Gargoyles are such hidious creatures stems the notion that they were created
to avert evil. Placed on the outside of buildings supposedly kept evil out.
In later times, most of them became mainly ornamental and served no other
purpose than decoration.
Etymology: (French) gargouille "throat".
Garm
The monstrous hound Garm guards the entrance to Helheim, the Norse realm
of the dead. It has four eyes and a chest drenched with blood. On the day
of Ragnarok, Garm will join the giants in their fight against the gods. The
god of war Tyr will kill it in this cataclysmic battle but will die from
the wounds inflicted by the hound.
Garm is often equated with the wolf Fenrir. It can also be compared with
Cerberus, the Greek guardian of the underworld.
