7 Horrific Boogeymen Used to Scare Kids Around The World
Parents have been inventing stories about monsters to scare their children into obedience for centuries. It make sense, short of being held at gunpoint, a bloodthirsty demon is just about the only thing that's going to convince a six-year-old to brush his teeth and go to bed before midnight.
Some cultures, however, took this idea a bit too far and invented creatures that would make any grown man shit his pants. Like...
The Australian Furry Frog Tentacle Demon
We all know that Australia is home to the vast majority of Earth's deadliest creatures. Seriously, it's like the headquarters for the Justice League of Poisonous Animals. Even the goddamn snails can kill you. Had most of us lived here before Steve Irwin tamed the fuck out of it, we would have been petrified to even look out the window for fear of some horrible cyanide butterfly gunning right for our eyeballs.
He's got a black belt, too. And a knife.
Not so for indigenous Aboriginal children. After growing up in the nightmare kingdom that is the Land Down Under, these kids had such big-ass balls of steel that their parents had to invent something utterly insane just to keep them from wandering off into the outback. Enter the Yara-ma-yha-who, a child-sized, frog-man covered in red fur with octopus arms and a gaping, toothless mouth.
This Seussian demon lived in the branches of fig trees--presumably because that's the last place anyone would expect to see it--and would swoop down on unsuspecting children, using its sucker-laden arms to drain their blood until they were too weak to move. For reasons the legend chooses not to explain, the creature would then leave for a while, possibly to help a friend move a desk.
Before the poor kid can recuperate and run home, though, the monster would return and swallow them whole, puking them back up as a shorter version of themselves covered in red hair.
This is a fate worse than death.
The idea is that bad children or ones that ran away too often would be caught by the Yara-ma-yha-who over and over again until they eventually turned into a little, red, fig tree haunting monster themselves. For some reason this is viewed as worse than staying at home and growing up to land a job in the paint department of the Brisbane Home Depot.
Namahage (a.k.a. Japanese Home Invasion Demons)
Most parents find that terrifying stories are usually enough to keep their kids in line.
"Now remember to eat all your peas, Jessica, or else Rumpelstiltskin will come steal your fallopian tubes under the next full moon."
But some Japanese villages really get into the spirit of childhood trauma and take boogeymannery to a whole new level with the Namahage festival.
On the night of December 31 (while the western world gets drunk off its ass without any productive purpose), a band of adult volunteers--parents, teachers, clowns, whoever may be craving the sweet taste of a child's fear--dress themselves as shaggy, knife-wielding ogres and visit families door to door. It's sort of like grown-up trick-or-treating, except instead of yelling "trick or treat!" they're threatening the lives of little kids for all their disobedience over the past year.
"I heard there's a little boy here who doesn't like to brush his teeth!"
Anything goes, really, so long as it strikes terror into gullible little hearts. During each visit, parents get to gleefully play along as far as they're willing to go, stopping the devils just short of dragging the kids away by mercifully promising (wink, wink) that the kids will behave themselves and offering the monsters free alcohol instead (so it is like trick-or-treating, only child endangerment is the point).
We like to think that the worst kids are visited later in the night, since by that point there stands an increasingly greater chance of them being vomited and/or urinated upon. If that doesn't squeeze a solid year of angelic behavior out of the snot-nosed punks, we don't know what will.
Cuco the Child Eater
Most famous in Hispanic countries, the Cuco is a mysterious being name-dropped in various traditional lullabies as a horrible, unknowable whatsit with an appetite for the restless. A Latino version of "Rock-a-Bye Baby," for instance, can be translated as "sleep little child, sleep now, or the Cuco will come and eat you." You know, because nothing soothes a baby like threats of cannibalistic murder.
Better than a glass of warm milk.
Though best known for his appearance in lullabies, El Cuco's usefulness is really only limited by a parent's sadism. You're already threatening your child to sleep using a hideous monster, so why stop there? Kid won't eat? Send in the Cuco. Flunked a math test? It's Cuco time. We're betting the Cuco is also a prominent figure in discouraging teenage pregnancy.
"Remember C.J., if you get Becky pregnant, the Cuco will tear your penis out through your asshole."
By the time you kick them out at 30, you'll have molded yourself a successful, productive, serial killing member of society. And really, that's what parenting is all about.
Black Annis, Baba Yaga and Other Creepy Old People
Few things made us more uncomfortable as children than being introduced to old people. They offered us candy and jokes left over from Reconstruction, and their houses smelled like outlawed insulation materials. Twist these unsettling undertones into the most godawful horror stories imaginable and you have the perfect boogeymen, because getting gummed to death is the slowest and most nauseating fate we can imagine.
Really, anything involving this face is more than we care to think about.
In England they have Black Annis, who lived in a cave dug out with her own iron claws and wore the tanned hides of naughty children as a goddamn skirt. The Slavic Baba Yaga lived in a dancing chicken-leg hut and rode a magic cauldron when she ventured out to go hunting for kids. There was also that cookie-house witch from Germany's Hanzel and Gretel, though she might not really count since she got her ass kicked into a fucking oven (the last thing we want to do here is empower little children).
All of these monsters have two things in common: they're ugly, old, women and they love the sweet taste of child flesh. Evidently the inventors of these stories were looking for an ironclad way to avoid having their kids come bugging them for money later in life, and we have to admit the "cannibal granny" seems like a pretty solid deterrent.
"I just need a couple of bucks to make it to next month. I'd ask Mom but, you know, she might eat me."
The Kappa Will Eat Your Children's Assholes
One of Japan's oldest and most famous mythological beings, Kappa are "water goblins" best described as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles after a lobotomy.
Seen here.
Instead of a brain, these slimy duck-billed turtle people simply have a hole on their head filled with water, which undoubtedly makes them excellent problem solvers. Kappa factor into a lot of Japanese myths and, as such, they do their share of boogeying on the side. Parents told their children that a Kappa might attack them if they play by a lake or river unattended, and the critters are used on warning signs even to this day.
Specifically, Kappa attack by sucking the victim's intestines straight out through their buttholes, a story said to be inspired by the distended anuses of waterlogged corpses. In case one form of anal violation just wasn't enough, Kappa are sometimes said to be out-of-control rapists that sodomize wayward children foolish enough to wander alone to the water's edge. In America, we just tell our kids that they'll drown.
If it's not rape, it's not Japan.
The Whipfather, Santa's Child-Murdering Assistant
According to the legend of the Whipfather, a desperate innkeeper fallen on hard times encountered three young boys who appeared to be from wealthy families. Naturally, his immediate response to the situation was to gruesomely slaughter them by slitting their throats and cutting them into pieces with the help of his wife.
He was caught red-handed (literally) by none other than jolly ole Saint Nick, because evidently this folktale was written by a nine-year-old boy.
Other versions of the story feature the Dinobots.
After bringing the three children back to life (because Santa really is just a way cooler Jesus), the big red guy decided to take the law into his own hands and condemn the psycho to an eternity of community service as his new helper, traditionally portrayed in chains at Santa's side. Bratty kids were (and in some cases, still are) warned that while Santa makes his rounds delivering presents, the Whipfather will stop by to deliver both coal and painful assbeatings to naughty children, because there's clearly no better punishment for a child-killer than to take him on a holiday joyride of bondage and sadism.
Clearly a step or two needs to be added to his pre-screening process.
By the way, he is not to be confused with Krampus, another boogeyman associated with the holidays, one that German folklore describes as a demon enslaved by Santa to punish wrongdoing and torment children in early December just to counterbalance the holiness of Christmas.
The 1800s even saw an influx of Krampus greeting cards, a fun way to remind kids to behave or be horribly tortured.
Merry Christmas.
Krampus was traditionally depicted as a hairy, long-tongued devil. He carried a bundle of switches to beat the shit out of naughty children, but was also known to drag kids around in chains before tossing them into his wooden pail for a trip back to Hell.
"I'll just take the beating, thanks."
The Egyptian Child-Burner
Despite sounding like something a mummy shouts when he gets kicked in his bandaged testicles, Abo Ragl Ma Slokha actually translates to "man with the burnt leg"; a hideous figure who hunts down children and cooks them alive. Why? Because he's angry that his leg is burnt.
"I can totally relate."
Why is his leg burnt? Because he didn't listen to his mommy, either. Yeah, really, that's how the story goes. This guy got hurt screwing around as a kid, so now he looks for kids that are screwing around and gnaws the charred flesh from their bones. Evidently parents in Egypt made this up to scare a good work ethic into their children.
Built by fear. Also, slave labor.
In another version of the story, he stalks through the night dressed all in black, preying on shiftless undisciplined kids.
Something like this.
Basically the lesson here is "do your damn chores or be eaten by a one-legged monster/anime villain."
Now, with kids all over the globe having these stories pounded into their heads for centuries, you might think they'd grow up full of violent fantasies and in turn make the world a pretty fucked-up place. But as you can see, nothing could be further from the truth. Thanks for keeping us in line, boogeymen!
Jonathan Wojcik writes a lot more about monsters and freaky creatures on his own site, bogleech.com
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To see another monster the world one-upped us on, check out 7 Vampires Around the World Worse Than The Ones In Twilight. Or check out the nightmare fuel video games has fed us, in The 10 Most Terrifying Video Game Enemies of All Time.
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