Boogeyman Quotes

The boogeyman sleeps on your side of the bad Whispers in my ear :"Better of Dead" Fills my dreams with sirens and lights of regret Kisses me gently when i wake up in a sweat "boo!

I'm the king of the 20th century. I'm the boogeyman, the villian, the black sheep of the family.

Your religion assumes that people are children and need a boogeyman so they'll behave. You want people to believe in God so they'll obey the law. That's the only means that occurs to you: a strict secular police force, and the threat of punishment by an all-seeing God for whatever the police overlook. You sell human beings short.

Wellsie frowned. "I'd like you to stay away from him, okay? He's...not right in a lot of ways. Do you know what I mean?" Actually, John wasn't so sure about that. Yeah, the guy was enough to make you think fondly of the boogeyman sometimes, but clearly he wasn't all bad.

And yeah. I can handle the Boogeyman. Even a monster has nightmares. I’ll be his.

Just like that, I have my answer. And I watch with her as the Boogeyman dies by his own knife. At the hands of a woman. The hands of a victim. In a way, it’s poetic justice.

I'm so much worse and better than you. I'm the thing the monsters in the dark fear. And now i'm even the Boogeyman's nightmare.

I’m so much worse and better than you. I’m the thing the monsters in the dark fear. And now I’m even the Boogeyman’s nightmare.

Something you killed didn't stay dead? Wow. That must have really put some termites in your coffin.

That’s me, Brady thought happily. When they give your middle name, you know you’re an authentic boogeyman.

Fear. It's the most basic, the most human emotion. As kids, we're afraid of everything. The dark. The boogeyman under the bed. And we pray for morning. For the monsters to go away. Though they never do. Not really

Name the fears that are holding you back. It's the equivalent of flooding the boogeyman with light.

I’m going to fuck the Boogeyman, and then I’m going to hunt with him. He just doesn’t know it yet.

The Boogeyman,' he said, just to be sure. 'The Boogeyman killed an employee of the President of the United States.' The president nodded. Some days, Zach thought, I really hate this job.

The FBI will be all over me. And my boyfriend has the cops watching my house. The house where I have all my murder supplies that I have to use. Cops that follow me to the store when I get milk. Obviously they can’t follow me and guard my kill zone for days on end while I torture people. Stupid Boogeyman. I wish I could castrate him.

Questions?” Cade asked, pointing at the file where Zach had stuffed it into his messenger bag. “Yeah,” Zach said. “Any chance I can go back to D.C.?” “Any useful questions?” “Do you think it’s really the Boogeyman that killed Brent? You think it’s back?” “I sincerely hope not.” “When you say things like that, I start to cry a little on the inside.

I give a damn if any fan recalls my legacy, I'm trying to live life in the sight of GOD's memory.

She didn't want any contact with Whitney at all. He was the boogeyman. He'd held absolute authority over her for her entire life. Defying him was difficult. It said a lot that Shylah was willing to die-that she would choose a horrific death rather than go back to him.

He was known as the "Boogeyman of the East," and I was the unknown "Wicked Witch of the West.

His belief went willingly, logically, the way the boogeyman disappeared once you looked under the bed. That was the problem with God: he didn’t hold up to a critical analysis.

It was just easier to believe in the boogeyman than to acknowledge that there were so many evil people in the world.

Makani peered over her grandmother’s shoulder and out the large window that looked across their front lawn. She scanned the yards for the boogeyman, the Babadook, Ted Bundy. The street was empty.

So I get a little tired of having to swallow my lived experience to be force-fed someone else's what-ifs. I get tired of my safety coming second. I get tired of the realities of trans and gender non-conforming people's lives being overshadowed and ignored in favour of a boogey-man that might be lurking in the ladies' room. I get really tired of being mistaken for a monster. I get tired of swallowing all these bathroom stories and smiling politely. But the last thing I can do is allow myself to get angry. Because if I get angry, then I am seen as even more of a threat. Then it's all my fault, isn't it? Because then there is a man in the ladies' room, and for some reason, he's angry.

The future is the monster, not the boogeyman under the bed. The past is just something we're trying to outrun tomorrow. The monster is the future. The unknown. The boundaries not yet crossed. The challenge not yet met. The potential not yet realized. The dragon not yet tamed. On a one way collision course with no turning back. The future, the monster, is always waiting for us, and always sees us a-comin'. So we should lift our heads, look it in the eye, and watch it heed.

If I was shadows and moonbeams and tales of death and horror, she was sunshine and laughter and the yellow brick road from The Wizard of Oz . We balanced each other.

Just like that, I have my answer. And I watch with her as the Boogeyman dies by his own knife. At the hands of a woman.

I was having nightmares because I’d discovered monsters that were real. Disease and the prospect of death were far scarier than any boogeyman.

There is no boogeyman. Just a bunch of flawed humans, some more flawed than others, but more or less cut from the same human mold.

No,” she says quietly. “I’m so much worse and better than you. I’m the thing the monsters in the dark fear. And now I’m even the Boogeyman’s nightmare.

I’m the thing the monsters in the dark fear. And now I’m even the Boogeyman’s nightmare.

You sound like someone’s parent, saying there is no boogeyman in the closet. They’re always the first to die for not believing the kids.

He knew it was rape if she wasn't coherent enough to say yes, right? Or did he think it counted only if the boogeyman jumped out of the bushes and ravaged some sober, unassuming freshman on her way to the library?

That was a hard and terrible thing to acknowledge, the idea that even if she managed to get away, that he would haunt her always—the boogeyman in the closet, the monster under the bed, the creature tapping at her window.

He caught her elbow before she'd taken more than a few steps. "Are you walking home?" "Yes." "It's," he glanced at his watch, "nine o'clock." She shrugged out of his hold and continued on her way. "The Boogeyman doesn't come out until ten, so I'm good.

Clowns.” Clowns? “Really?” I tried to imagine a tiny Aiden crying over men and women with overly painted faces and red noses, but I couldn’t. The big guy was still facing me. His expression clear and even, as he dipped his chin. “Eh.” God help me, he’d gone Canadian on me. I had to will my face not to react at the fact he’d gone with the one word he usually used only when he was super relaxed around other people. “I thought they were going to eat me.” Now imagining that had me cracking a little smile. I slid my palm under my cheek. “How old were you? Nineteen?” Those big chocolate-colored eyes blinked, slow, slow, slow. His dark pink lips parted just slightly. “Are you making fun of me?” he drawled. “Yes.” The fractures of my grin cracked into bigger pieces. “Because I was scared of clowns?” It was like he couldn’t understand why that was amusing. But it was. “I just can’t imagine you scared of anything, much less clowns. Come on. Even I’ve never been scared of clowns.” “I was four.” I couldn’t help but snicker. “Four… fourteen, same difference.” Based on the mule-ish expression on his face, he wasn’t amused. “This is the last time that I come over to save you from the boogeyman.” Shocked out of my mind for a split second, I tried to pretend like I wasn’t, but… I was. He was joking with me. Aiden was in bed joking around. With me. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I was just messing with you.” I scooted one more millimeter closer to him, drawing my knees up so that they hit his thighs. “Please don’t leave yet.” “I won’t,” he said, settling on his pillow with his hands under his cheek, his eyes already drifting to a close. I didn’t need to ask him to promise not to leave me; I knew he wouldn’t if he said so. That was just the kind of man he was. “Aiden?” I whispered. “Hmm?” he murmured. “Thank you for coming in here with me.” “Uh-huh.” That big body adjusted itself just slightly before he let out a long, deep exhale. Without turning around, I laid the flashlight down behind me and aimed the beam toward the wall. He didn’t ask if I was really going to leave the flashlight on all night—or at least however long the battery lasted—instead, I just smiled at him as I took my glasses off and set them on the unused nightstand behind me. Then I tucked my hands under my cheek and watched him. “Good night. Thank you again for staying with me.” Peeking one eye open, just a narrow slit, he hummed. “Shh.” That ‘shh’ was about as close to a ‘you’re welcome’ as I was going to get. I closed my eyes with a little grin on my face. Maybe five seconds later, Aiden’s spoke up. “Vanessa?” “Hmm?” “Why was I saved on your work phone as Miranda P.?” That had my eyes snapping open. I hadn’t deleted that entry off the contacts when I quit, had I? “It’s a long, boring story, and you should go to sleep. Okay?” The “uh-huh” out of him sounded as disbelieving as it should have. He knew I was full of shit, but somehow, knowing he knew, wasn’t enough to keep me from falling asleep soon after

Sonnet of Conspiracy Perhaps there's a monster under the bed, Perhaps there's a boogeyman in the closet. Perhaps they're sterilizing kids with vaccine, Perhaps they're controlling all with a radio set. Yes our science is well advanced, But not advanced enough to control minds. Besides mind-control needs no fancy tech, When people are run by smartphone chimes. Tales like these are good for entertainment, Amongst a bunch of kindergarteners. But being adult requires the use of reason, Without submitting to prehistoric fears. Treating insecurities with common sense, Anyone can manifest civilized sentience.

He was thinking of Marcy, standing at the edge of the police parking lot like a lost child, wringing her hands and staring at Ralph as if he were a complete stranger. Or the boogeyman. Except it was her husband who was the boogeyman. As if reading his thoughts, Samuels asked, “Doesn’t look like a monster, does he?” “They rarely do.

Did they know what Communism, “Bolshevism,” was? They did not; not my friends. Except for Herr Kessler, Teacher Hildebrandt, and young Horstmar Rupprecht (after he entered the university, in 1941), they knew Bolshevism as a specter which, as it took on body in their imaginings, embraced not only the Communists but the Social Democrats, the trade-unions, and, of course, the Jews, the gypsies, the neighbor next door whose dog had bit them, and his dog; the bundled root cause of all their past, present, and possible tribulations.

Stephen King once wrote: “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, did you?

When a monster is finally caught against all odds, it feels like magic.

I can't go to a priest because I'm not Catholic. I can't go to a lawyer because I haven't done anything to consult a lawyer about. All I did was kill my kids. One at a time. Killed them all.

An interesting thing about kitchens: while ghosts are most drawn to the dark, deserted areas of the house, typically the attic or basement—or closets, in the case of our current boogeyman—the kitchen, in my experience, tends to be the least haunted area. Maybe it’s the fact that kitchens are well-lit, but they’re also the center of activity for the living, the emotional energy constantly churned and refreshed. They’re the heart of the home, and I think something about that keeps the restless spirits at bay, hiding in the shadows. There are plenty of exceptions, of course.

A man on his deathbed left instructions For dividing up his goods among his three sons. He had devoted his entire spirit to those sons. They stood like cypress trees around him, Quiet and strong. He told the town judge, 'Whichever of my sons is laziest, Give him all the inheritance.' Then he died, and the judge turned to the three, 'Each of you must give some account of your laziness, so I can understand just how you are lazy.' Mystics are experts in laziness. They rely on it, Because they continuously see God working all around them. The harvest keeps coming in, yet they Never even did the plowing! 'Come on. Say something about the ways you are lazy.' Every spoken word is a covering for the inner self. A little curtain-flick no wider than a slice Of roast meat can reveal hundreds of exploding suns. Even if what is being said is trivial and wrong, The listener hears the source. One breeze comes From across a garden. Another from across the ash-heap. Think how different the voices of the fox And the lion, and what they tell you! Hearing someone is lifting the lid off the cooking pot. You learn what's for supper. Though some people Can know just by the smell, a sweet stew From a sour soup cooked with vinegar. A man taps a clay pot before he buys it To know by the sound if it has a crack. The eldest of the three brothers told the judge, 'I can know a man by his voice, and if he won't speak, I wait three days, and then I know him intuitively.' The second brother, 'I know him when he speaks, And if he won't talk, I strike up a conversation.' 'But what if he knows that trick?' asked the judge. Which reminds me of the mother who tells her child 'When you're walking through the graveyard at night and you see a boogeyman, run at it, and it will go away.' 'But what,' replies the child, 'if the boogeyman's Mother has told it to do the same thing? Boogeymen have mothers too.' The second brother had no answer. 'I sit in front of him in silence, And set up a ladder made of patience, And if in his presence a language from beyond joy And beyond grief begins to pour from my chest, I know that his soul is as deep and bright As the star Canopus rising over Yemen. And so when I start speaking a powerful right arm Of words sweeping down, I know him from what I say, And how I say it, because there's a window open Between us, mixing the night air of our beings.' The youngest was, obviously, The laziest. He won.

When you're a kid, the world can be bounded in a nutshell. In geographical terms, a child's universe is a space that comprises home, school and—possibly—the neighbourhood where your cousins or your grandparents live. In my case, the universe sat comfortably within a small area of Flores that ran from the junction of Boyacá and Avellaneda (my house), to the Plaza Flores (my school). My only forays beyond the area were when we went on holiday (to Córdoba or Bariloche or to the beach) or occasional, increasingly rare visits to my grandparents' farm in Dorrego, in the province of Buenos Aires. We get our fist glimpse of the big wide world from those we love unconditionally. If we see our elders suffer because they cannot get a job, or see them demoted, or working for a pittance, our compassion translates these observations and we conclude that the world outside is cruel and brutal. (This is politics.) If we hear our parents bad-mouthing certain politicians and agreeing with their opponents, our compassion translates these observations and we conclude that the former are bad guys and the latter are good guys. (This is politics.) If we observe palpable fear in our parents at the very sight of soldiers and policemen, our compassion translates our observations and we conclude that, though all children have bogeymen, ours wear uniforms. (This is politics.)

Billy sipped the last of his coffee from the mug and shut down his laptop. 1,000 words wasn’t great but it also wasn’t as bad as no words at all. It hadn’t exactly been a great couple of years and the royalties from his first few books were only going to hold out so much longer. Even if he didn’t have anything else to worry about there was always Sara to consider. Sara with her big blue eyes so like her mother’s. He sat for a moment longer thinking about his daughter and all they’d been through since Wendy had passed. Then he picked up his mug with a long sigh and carried it to the kitchen to rinse it in the sink. When he came back into his little living room and the quiet of 1 AM he wasn’t surprised to find her there over to the side of the bookshelf hovering close to the floor just beyond the couch. Wendy. Her eyes were cold and intense in death, angry and spiteful in a way he’d never seen them when she was alive. What once had been beautiful was now a horror and a threat, one that he’d known far too well in the years since she’d died. He and Sara both. He stood where he was looking at her as she glared up at him. Part of her smaller vantage point was caused by kneeling next to the shelf but he knew from the many times she’d walked or run through a room that death had also reduced her, made her no higher than 4 or 4 and half feet when she’d been 6 in life. She was like a child trapped there on the cusp between youth and coming adulthood. Crushed and broken down into a husk, an entity with no more love for them than a snake. Familiar tears stung his eyes but he blinked them away letting his anger and frustration rise in place of his grief. “Fuck you! What right do you have to be here? Why won’t you let Sara and I be? We loved you! We still love you!” She doesn’t respond, she never does. It’s as if she used up all of her words before she died and now all that’s left is the pain and the anger of her death. The empty lack of true life in her eyes leaves him cold. He doesn’t say anything else to her. It’s all a waste and he knows it. She frightens him as much as she makes him angry. Spite lives in every corner of her body and he’s reached his limit on how long he can see this perversion, this nightmare of what once meant so much to him. He walks past the bookshelf and through the doorway there. He and Sara’s rooms are up above. With an effort he resists the urge to look back down the hall to see if she’s followed. He refuses to treat his wife like a boogeyman no matter how much she has come to fit that mold. He can feel her eyes burning into him from somewhere back at the edge of the living room. The sensation leaves a cold trail of fear up his back as he walks the last four feet to the stairs and then up. He can hear her feet rush across the floor behind him and the rustle of fabric as she darts up the stairs after him. His pulse and his feet speed up as she grows closer but he’s never as fast as she is. Soon she slips up the steps under his foot shoving him aside as she crawls on her hands and feet through his legs and up the last few stairs above. As she passes through his legs, her presence never more clear than when it’s shoving right against him, he smells the clean and medicinal smells of the operating room and the cloying stench of blood. For a moment he’s back in that room with her, listening to her grunt and keen as she works so hard at pushing Sara into the world and then he’s back looking up at her as she slowly considers the landing and where to go from there. His voice is a whisper, one that pleads. “Wendy?

Spiritual unconsciousness is like being afraid of the dark. When we are in the dark, we can’t see properly. However, we can imagine all sorts of things. The boogeyman under the bed. A creature in the closet. We can create all sorts of monsters in our mind. But that is exactly the point. They only exist in our mind. If we turn on the light, everything looks different.

Aging hipsters are a hillary clinton cartoon become a nightmare real life dumb and dumber. A new renaissance emerged built like a boogeyman from the bones of social media, 4Chan, and Ferguson, Missouri.

It was a myth, a fantastical portrayal of my mentor himself, his legend forever anchoring itself to history in a way mine will never be. Spring Heeled Jack, the boogeyman with eyes like fireballs who could jump unnaturally high. Breathing blue flames he'd ravage women with his claws.

Good night. Don't let the boogeyman bite" "Mindy, there is no boogeyman, "I said as I snuggled in to bed, " I hauled Carl in years ago.

It's a supernatural library filled with unfinished ghost stories, written by ghosts, where time has no meaning , and the Boogeyman wants to blow it all up. What exactly is it you think I can handle about any of that ?

so

Do you think it's really the Boogeyman that killed Brent? You think it's back?" "I sincerely hope not." "When you say things like that, I start to cry a little on the inside.

Then you wanted to kill him. He’s too good to die. He’s everything opposite of us. His light still shines. I hope they have fun with you in hell. You sentenced yourself there the day you targeted the only thing that makes me feel as though there’s still a soul inside me left to be saved. The only thing I love more than revenge.” Just like that, I have my answer. And I watch with her as the Boogeyman dies by his own knife. At the hands of a woman. The hands of a victim. In a way, it’s poetic justice.

Bam. When it hit me, the boogeyman was gone. The boogeyman was that feeling of regret about the past and fear about the future.

This is what you do when you have a family. You get up when it's still dark outside and you go to work so the people you love can have a better life. Even when you're sick or tired and don't want to.

Maybe that's what grieving is all about: never forgetting what we've lost.

Innocence once lost, can never be regained. Darkness, once gazed upon, can never be lost.

He left you all alone finally. Tell me, princess, are you afraid of the Boogeyman?

They took too much. Left too little. I had nothing to lose,” she whispers, the words barely making it to me. “Until him.” My heart thumps faster. Logan. She’s talking about Logan. “Then you wanted to kill him. He’s too good to die. He’s everything opposite of us. His light still shines. I hope they have fun with you in hell. You sentenced yourself there the day you targeted the only thing that makes me feel as though there’s still a soul inside me left to be saved. The only thing I love more than revenge.” Just like that, I have my answer. And I watch with her as the Boogeyman dies by his own knife. At the hands of a woman. The hands of a victim. In a way, it’s poetic justice.

Standing there in my pajamas, I thought: This is what you do when you have a family. You get up when it’s still dark outside and you go to work so the people you love can have a better life. Even when you’re sick or tired and don’t want to. I watched him for a while longer, my heart aching in a way I’d never felt before. “Love you, Dad,

I’ve faced the boogeyman, hell, I fell in love with him and survived. I survived a lot more than that.

hooked up with the boogeyman

I dream of Evan Handy, my own personal boogeyman. I run and run. He never catches me, but I'm never free.

You’re attractive enough in a broody sort of way. Even if I’m not your type, I’m sure you can close your eyes and think of England or whatever it is the boogeyman does when he engages in carnal activities.” “Carnal activities.” I don’t think he’s taken a breath in the last sixty seconds. “Are you a virgin, Persephone?” I scrunch up my nose. “That’s not really your business. Why do you ask?” “Because only a virgin would call sex ‘carnal activities.

Is this where one goes to vanish, devoured by a mythical creature, never to be seen again? Is this where the boogeyman resides?

The Boogeyman doesn’t have shit on me.

She wanted it to have the maximum impact on you. To hell with all the others. She may still want revenge, but everything else has been centered around you. She practically prayed the Boogeyman would come after her, just so she could kill him and end the threat he posed to your life. And you treat her like a monster. Why? Because she kills? Do you treat your military like monsters? Do you stare at your own reflection with such disdain? Because I’ve seen your file. You’ve shot and killed thirteen serial killers since your career began. Those were real monsters, just like all the men Lana has dispatched.

The thought of losing my mind terrifies me more than some boogeyman.

I typed to him. All the things I'm scared to be specific about in my poems: the boys and my heartbeat the increasing rate of blood flowing through my body the private places where our aromas genearate the flames and the fire going to Hell and having these desires

I wonder how do gay men: we: us find each other in public and not get punished and punched by playground bully boys.

I don't want to be gay, but it's never been a choice, and I don't know how to explain that to anyone but Wesley.

Well, sooner or later, in every dream there’s a boogeyman. You’ve got to be on the lookout for him.

My sexuality is like a compass. I've been trying to point myself toward the direction where people are walking on a straight line, but my internal arrow just does not naturally go that way.

Truth is, I feel obligated to act out a prescriptive performance every day. Some figurative rite of passage into manhood.

I don't think gay boys can become hip-hop music stars. ...can't be soft in a solid-gold industry where punk, sissy, faggot, and bitch are lyrics that sell out concerts and generate Billboard record sales.

I'm terrified that the Boogeyman is gonna hear what I've been thinking about certain boys and what happens to my heartbeat when I'm around some of them.

A good haunted house is about the utter collapse of our accidental differences, the uselessness of class, of gender, of education, of personal history, of all the distinctions we cobble together and call the self. Late enough at night none of this stuff protects you, not from the boogeyman. What’s haunted or, more accurately, what’s uncovered by terror, is the poor forked thing, and the agon of a haunted house isn’t between God and Satan, or the righteous and the sinners, but rather between the self and annihilation.

Was there something she was telling me? All this time her boogeyman was her own father? Had Kenny been touching her too?

Suddenly everything went dark. The house was almost solid black and so, so quiet. To my mortification, I released a tiny squeal like a terrified mouse. “Shh. It’s okay. Power just went out. Happens all the time when we get a storm like this. Where are the flashlights?” “I don’t know,” I whispered. “What do you mean you don’t know?” “I mean, I. Don’t. Know. We haven’t even unpacked everything yet.” “That’s the first thing I’d unpack.” Had to be a guy thing. “Yeah, well, sorry, but we didn’t.” “Candles?” “I have some in my room.” I heard him release a deep sigh. “Okay.” Suddenly the faintest hint of light spilled out, and I realized he’d opened his cell phone. “I’ll see if I can find those candles.” “I’ll go with you.” “Why are you whispering?” “You’re supposed to whisper when the lights go out.” “So the boogeyman doesn’t get you?” I shoved on his arm. “Let’s just go get the candles.

What are you, the boogey man?" Strike three- her joke sucked. His eyes darkened, and he moved so close his shaggy bangs tickled her brow. She swallowed hard, staring up into his dangerously arctic eyes, drowning in the darkness reflected behind them. "Yeah. Somethin' like that.

Colbert kept a Nixon poster above his office desk. “Nixon was the last liberal president,” he told me. “He supported women’s rights, the environment, ending the draft, youth involvement, and now he’s the boogeyman?

I’m not really the realtor. I made a meal of him last night when he came to air out the house,” the boogeyman said cloaked in darkness.

detectives then returned to his playmate and asked him for a description of the “boogeyman” who had taken Billy. The boy said he was a thin old man with gray hair and a gray mustache.

There are different ways of approaching roles. Some people get involved in the emotional aspects of characters.

the biggest threat to our happiness is the fear itself. Our fear is the boogeyman in the closet.

Can an entire city be haunted?” I believe the answer to be an unequivocal yes.

According to a 2009 study conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, nearly 16 percent of American serial killers were adopted as children, while adoptees represent only 2 percent of the general population.

Standing there in that frozen moment of space and time, I realized how vast the world around me really was and that one day soon I’d be leaving this place I’d always called home, to venture out on my own. My friends would also be scattered to the four winds, and some I would never see or talk to again. Our parents and brothers and sisters would grow old and eventually we’d have to say goodbye to them, too. Nothing would ever be the same.

I just knew there was… something inside of me, this bad thing, and it just needed, and I couldn’t tell anyone about it. I’d try to keep it locked up, behind a door, but sometimes I wasn’t strong enough.

I’d never done well with crying women. They scared me.

The author J. R. R. Tolkien had a word for that feeling—eucatastrophe. The opposite of catastrophe, and all the more important because it’s even rarer.

I can handle the Boogeyman. Even a monster has nightmares. I'll be his.

guess you don’t watch the news, do you?” Leonard asks him, holding the door open for our exit. “Not much time for the news,” Kyle drawls. “Figured,” Leonard goes on. “Or you’d know that Lana is the one who killed the Boston serial killer known as the Boogeyman.” Kyle’s smirk vanishes, and he studies us, probably searching for a lie. “With his own knife,” I add, holding a smile that relays a darkness I’m not used to feeling. “After he attacked her,” Leonard goes on. “He was twice her size and had raped and murdered several women. She beat the shit out of him and stabbed him, ended his life when he came for her.

The Big Fire in ’91, boogeyman Frank Dodd murdering those folks, Sheriff Bannerman and those other men getting killed by that rabid Saint Bernard, hell, even the Suicide Stairs. You believe it was an earthquake that knocked them down, I got a bridge to sell you.

The bot lumbered into the darkness of the right-hand corridor, dragging the screaming and kicking girl like some immense boogeyman, the nightmare of all fragile and good things.

block. All the kids will be talking about it—mainly because they’ll be forced to. How to choose a scapegoat. No religion is complete without a common enemy upon which to project one’s inner turmoil. Life is messy, but why deal with your problems when you can just blame somebody else for them? That’s right, you’ll discover the best way to choose an evil boogeyman (or boogeywoman!) and how to convince your followers to hate him/her. Nothing unites us like hating the same enemy. Get your assault rifles ready! And finally, how to make money. Why start a religion if you don’t profit from it? My guide will give you all the nitty-gritty details on how to milk the most out of your followers. Whether you’re into

The stories about the boogeyman were true, it appeared, only I learned then that most monsters weren’t the hideous creatures they’d been painted as. So often, they were just humans who let their flaws dictate their beings.

Fairy tales don't tell us the dragon is real or that the boogeyman exists," I began. "They tell us they can be killed.

LOGAN: Boogeyman problem. I’ll call later. ME: Okay. Please be careful. LOGAN: Always, pretty girl.

Which reminds me of the mother who tells her child, “When you’re walking through the graveyard at night and you see a boogeyman, run at it, and it will go away.” “But what,” replies the child, “if the boogeyman’s mother has told it to do the same thing? Boogeymen have mothers too.