The Boogeyman

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
-Plato

When I was a kid, I really believed that the boogeyman existed. Since my bedtime was at 9pm, I was allowed to sleep in my parents’ room with the door slightly ajar, since their room was just across the hallway, and I could see my dad sitting on the couch watching TV while I'm lying on their bed. After a while, I would doze off and my dad would carry me to my room, which was at the back of the house, all creepy and dark, and tucked me in.

And I would lie there, on my bed, half-asleep, half-awake, imagining about the monster under my bed. I remember that I could never go to sleep in the dark, and so my dad always leave the door ajar, so some light from the hallway would steal into my room, creating myriads of dancing shadows against the rotating fan. And so I would fall asleep, dreaming about dancing boogeymen, creeping and crawling all over my small room.

I guess, that's why sometimes I still sleep with the light on. No, I am not afraid of the dark anymore. It's just that I like to read before I go to sleep, and sometimes I'm just too lazy to walk to the light switch. But I still believe that the boogeyman exists, in another 8-years old mind.

Last night episode of Criminal Minds was about a small town in Ozona, Texas, where someone was killing children. And it was up to the team to catch the killer, before he strikes again. There was a myth in the town about the big haunted house on the hill, where supposedly an old man who lived there tortures children and eats them. If you miss the show, you can read all about it here.

In the end, they discovered that the killer wasn't the old man, he was not even an adult. The killer was an 8-years old kid, whose parents just divorced, and the dad was the local guidance counsellor. The kid was trying to bash up a girl with a baseball bat when he was apprehended. When asked why he killed those kids, this was his reply:

Gideon: Why'd you hurt those kids?
The kid/killer: Because I wanted to.

And because he chose to.

And when I was eight, all I had to deal with was the boogeyman under my bed.