Boggart

Boggart
The Bannister Hall Doll, a boggart said to have haunted Bannister Hall in Higher Walton, Preston, in two of its forms
GroupingFolklore creature
Sub groupingHousehold spirit, or ogre attached to a particular location
Similar entitiesSee here
FolkloreEnglish folklore
Other name(s)Boggard (in Yorkshire)
CountryEngland
RegionParts of Northern England, particularly the North West
HabitatBoth within homes and outside in the countryside.

A boggart is a supernatural being from English folklore. The dialectologist Elizabeth Wright described the boggart as 'a generic name for an apparition';[1] folklorist Simon Young defines it as 'any ambivalent or evil solitary supernatural spirit'.[2] Halifax folklorist Kai Roberts states that boggart ‘might have been used to refer to anything from a hilltop hobgoblin to a household faerie, from a headless apparition to a proto-typical poltergeist’.[3] As these wide definitions suggest boggarts are to be found both in and out of doors, as a household spirit, or a malevolent spirit defined by local geography, a genius loci inhabiting topographical features. The 1867 book Lancashire Folklore by Harland and Wilkinson, makes a distinction between "House boggarts" and other types.[4] Typical descriptions show boggarts to be malevolent. It is said that the boggart crawls into people's beds at night and puts a clammy hand on their faces. Sometimes he strips the bedsheets off them.[5] The household boggart may follow a family wherever they flee. One Lancashire source reports the belief that a boggart should never be named: if the boggart was given a name, it could neither be reasoned with nor persuaded, but would become uncontrollable and destructive (see True name).[6]

  1. ^ Wright, Elizabeth Mary, Rustic Speech and Folk-lore (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1918), 192.
  2. ^ Young 2022, p. 7
  3. ^ Haunted Halifax and District (Stroud: History Press, 2014), 52.
  4. ^ Harland and Wilkinson, pp. 56, 58.
  5. ^ Harland and Wilkinson, p. 55
  6. ^ Waugh, pp. 18-19; cited in Hardwick, p. 132