The Boogieman

**Image credit: Tristan Jones The Boogieman is creature that many think to be only a scare tactic by irritated and tired parents to get children to behave or to do what they are told. What few realize is that the Boogieman is in fact, a demonic non-human entity that stalks children to feed on their fear, much like a vampire. His appearence is one of wild contrasts; his body is relatively small, covered in light blue fur, a mix-up of human and animal features. His head is the most distinguishing feature, much to his own dismay in some cases, as people tend to fixate on its overly large size in comparison with the rest of his body. However, the deformed shape is also what makes him so terrying with blood red lips, yellowed and broken teeth, sharp red claws (the color of dried blood) and a sneering beckoning grin. With his unshaven chin, backwards bent legs,high pitched gravely voice, crouched posture and huge nose, the Boogieman is in fact a sight to behold, similar to a sinister version of the Greek nature god, Pan. The Boogieman does wear clothing, usually a dark black-blue dress coat with trailing tails. His high cheeks and pointed ears make for a demented image, but one that is highly effective in soliciting his hearts desire: sheer terror. The Boogieman resides in his own pocket dimension of the Ghost World, a twisting turning warped world where right and wrong, black and white, rules of the normal world and even the ghost world do not seem to apply. The Boogieman's dimension is truly his domain, a place where he as absolute dominion, where reality itself is at his whim. He has a network of connections to the human realm, mostly through specifically chosen closets into the bedrooms of children he intends to victimize around the world. It is not known how or why he chooses specific children and closets, only that not all closets are a portal for the Boogieman. At his disposal are a range of dark powers; the most familiar of those powers is the ability to intice and then psychically feed off of the fear of those he terrifies, most notably the fear of children. He seems to have developed a taste for certain fears which implies that the fears of each person provide a unique "taste" for the Boogieman. The more fear he has consumed or has available, the more powerful he becomes. While his full power reamins a shadowy mystery, the powers he has demonstrated over several encounters with the Ghostbusters include altering physical matter, dimensional portal creation and destruction, super-human agility, strength and dexterity, as well as a powerful sonic scream that acts as a concussive force wave that he can direct to knock his opponents back. He has the ability to sense the level of fear in a person and his size appears to change with the amount of fear he has consumed, though this may be an illusion in the mind of the victim. While he is at his most deadly in his own realm, he does have the ability to feed on enough fear to create micro pockets of his own dimension in the living world. He is immortal and indestructibl as most psychic entities are. His one weakness is to be starved of fear; if he does not feed for an extended period, he comes a simple, almost formless muttering helpless entity that whispers of dark things. His chief advantage against Proton based equipment, such as the Proton Pack, is that he is corporeal entity, a physical presence, not an non-corporeal entity, such as a ghost. The Blast Streams do little against him besides annoy him however they do seem to at least hurt him or disrupt his power enough that he tries to avoid contact with them after first contact. Being a corporeal entity, the Capture Stream cannot lock onto him and the Ecto-Traps cannot contain him or capture him. A PKE meter can detect his presence, a unqiue reading of minus nine, because he seems to give out psychokinetic energy like all ectoplasmically based entities. Despite his resistance to the Blast and Capture stream, enough concentrated firepower from a series of full stream proton beams can at least temporarily drive him back. It is possible to use a disruptor ray to distablize his corporeal form and revert him back to his non-corporeal form at which point he does become fully vulnerable to the blast and capture streams and can in fact, be captured which is precisely how he finally met his end. The Boogieman has remained in the Ecto-Containment Unit since his last escape when the Halloween demon-god Samhain broke out of the ECU, and has not made any further escape attempts. It seems that his reign of terror that has lasted thousands of years and terrorizes untold of children, has finally came to an end. The Boogieman is a Class 7 corporeal repeating entity. The Real Ghostbusters

The Boogieman Cometh: The Boogieman first appeared in the "The Real Ghostbusters" episode, "The Boogieman Cometh", in which it is discovered that the Boogieman used to prey on Egon's fears as a child and Egon's experiences with that terror shaped him into the Ghostbuster that he is today, making him seek out to understand the paranormal and fight it. In the episode, noted for its dark tone and genuinely eerie visuals, Megan and Kenny Carter are being terrorized by the Boogieman. Their parents do not believe them so they run away from home and try to hire the Ghostbusters. The Ghostbusters check out the apartment at Egon's insistence and find little to indicate a true paranormal disturbance until the Boogieman makes his appearence, and Egon is once again face to face with his childhood tormentor. A fierce but short battle ensues with the Ghostbusters taking a beating and the Boogieman getting away. The Carter's wake up due to the noise and toss the Ghostbusters out, not believing in the Boogieman. Winston later goes back out anyway and stakes out the Carter residence. The Boogieman reappears, this time seeking vengence on the Carter children for alerting the Ghostbusters...it is implied he is going to do far more than scare them when Winston stops him, scaring him back into his own realm. The Ghostbusters realize they have to stop the Boogieman and Egon has developed the perfect tool: The Ghost Bomb, a piece of prototype hardware designed not to capture but to destroy any spirits within a 50 yard radius. The problem is that it lacks sufficient power to function. Egon comes up with a radical idea; take the fight to the Boogieman himself in his own realm. Setting up a sting operation, the Ghostbusters lure the Boogieman into a trap and chase him into his own dimension where they find they are at his mercy. As a last ditch effort, Egon suggests rigging up their proton packs as a power source for the bomb, to shut the Boogieman's realm for good. They know if they do this, they are defenseless but it is the only option they have. **Image Credit: Sony Pictures They manage to elude the monster and set the Ghost Bomb at his very throne, rigging it to all four Proton Packs set to overload. Just as they are about to make their escape, the Boogieman corners them on the bridge back to the human world. Seemingly trapped, the Ghostbusters are saved by the timely and somewhat ill advised intervention of the Carter children, who followed the Ghostbusters through the portal in their closet that the Boogieman opened so he could show them that he was unbeatable and could destroy their heros. Face to face with the Boogieman, Egon made sure he knew that his time was up, that no more children would suffer because of him. Boogieman moved to destroy Egon and, armed only with guts and some marbles, the children successfully angered the Boogieman enough that he turned on them and almost fell into a chasm thanks to timely marble throwing by Kenny. As the Proton Packs began to whail an alarm, the clock was almost run down. Egon grabbed the kids and the others followed, running out through the portal back to the Carter home, leaving the Boogieman to discover the trap they had laid. The Boogieman tried to stop the explosion but was caught in it as the Proton Packs went nuclear, detonating the Ghost Bomb. The Ghostbusters and the Carter children survived the encounter and ended up in a somewhat charred bedroom and the Carters now had to believe their children and were grateful for their rescue. It was believed that the Boogieman was finally gone.