VirginiaTam, see this Wikipedia page on the Boogyman:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogeyman. For what it's worth, I added an edit comment to the talk page of that article, referring the editor to this thread and specifically to my 12 Sep 09 - 06:16 PM post in this thread. In that post I quoted a passage from "White on black: images of Africa and Blacks in Western popular culture" by Jan Nederveen Pieterse which mentioned "Beelsebub" and "Bugaboo".

**

I recall mention of "the boogyman" by my father when I was a child (in Atlantic City, New Jersey in the 1950s). However, the warning that "the boogyman's gonna get you" was given playfully with an imitation "spooky" voice and as a prelude to him pretending to chaseg my sister's and me. From that same time period, I recall my father saying (in that same spooky voice before chasing us) "I am the ghost of old John McDonald". I'm going to EAT YOU UP!" Then he'd walk like a zombie with his arms outstretched chanting "Yum Yum. Eat'em up. Yum Yum. Eat'em Up.

We loved it.

**

I think that's one of the reasons why my sisters and I didn't take the boogyman seriously. Another reason was that we were too firmly rooted in the Baptist church, and that church didn't teach anythig about bad spirits except the devil. But we knew that God was stronger than the devil, so didn't spend time worrying about "him".

And, speaking for myself, another reason why I wasn't afraid of the "boogyman" was because his name was too close to the word boogies, and while it was yucky to think of a man made out of those, it wasn't at all frightening.

That said, I can see how hearing about the boogyman under other contexts could indeed be scary.