Croatian mythology has many monsters, bogeymen, and apparitions that are used to scare children and make sure they grow up to be decent christian citizens.
Bogeyman (Baba Roga)
Every culture needs a practical way of keeping children in check. The United States has Ritalin* and Croatia has Baba Roga, a mean-spirited old witch covered with warts. Our version of Russian Baba Yaga.
Now hold on a minute. Isn’t it interesting how elderly women are so frequently portrayed as nasty old hags? This is sad and unfair, but understandable. The world is a patriarchy and women are predominantly judged by their beauty. Since people automatically associate beauty with good nature, when women lose their beauty, so goes their reason for being nice.
Having that in mind, it doesn’t come as a surprise that Baba Roga would kidnap, torture, and finally eat children. After all, why wouldn’t she? She’s ugly!
Now, an ugly old man who likes to torture kids… that’s unusual. And understandable. The poor guy probably lived with a Baba Roga, a horrible woman cursed by ugliness, lazy around the house, and a horrible cook! That ordeal scarred the poor soul for life.
Baba Roga, to her credit, doesn’t go after every child. She specializes in bad children: those who are loud, disobedient, overly energetic little troublemakers.
So, yeah, she does go after every child.
Thank God for Ritalin.
2015 October Frights Blog Hop
October 1-10th
2. Duncan Ralston, Author of Gristle & Bone
3. Blaze McRob
4. Kerry Alan Denney aka The Reality Bender
5. Thomas S. Flowers, Author of Reinheit
6. A. F. Stewart
7. Kindra Sowder
8. Cinsearae S.
9. Randy Speeg
10. Miracle Austin
11. Brandy Jeffus Corona
12. MYTHICAL BOOKS (INT)
13. Clay and Susan Griffith
14. ***
15. Precious Monsters
16. Nickronomicon
17. ***
18. The Cerebral Writer
19. Barbara Custer
20. Katie M John
21. Lexa Cain
22. Mary Rajotte
23. Belinda Frisch (Mystery, Thriller, Horror Author)
24. S.C Hayden
25. Ash Krafton
26. E.J. Stevens @ From the Shadows
27. J.H. Moncrieff - Things That Go Bump In The Night
28. C. Lee Spencer - Love/Kroft
29. Nicola C. Matthews: Paranormal Fantasy Author
30. Elizabeth Kelly
31. KM Randall
32. Anne Michaud
33. Steve Vernon
34. Debbie Christiana
35. Angela Yuriko Smith
36. Cathrina Constantine
37. Kerry Adrienne
38. Scott Scherr (Don't Feed The Dark)
39. Crymsyn Hart
40. Zrinka Jelic
41. B.K. Brain
42. greydogtales
43. Chris Verstraete - GirlZombieAuthors
44. Juli D. Revezzo~Paranormal author
The poor children can't catch a break. A great post.
ReplyDeleteGotta love the Boogeyman myth. The real creepy part is that there is a boogeyman myth for just about every country in the world. Some of them are different but even more are frighteningly similar.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason, I remember my mom was always a fan of using Wendigo as my "boogeyman" as I had a tendency of wandering the woods.