WHAT EXACTLY ARE BOGGARTS?
Through nostalgia we transform the past into something idyllic, however, when we hear folklore it shows there was alway something frightening hiding under the surface. Everyone has a story they were told when they were young; to not do this or not go there incase some sort of monster would get you. One such creature is the boggart, a house spirit which falls within the goblin and fairy family. The descriptions of these goblins like creatures change from place to place from a ghost to a black dog, or the devil, sometimes dangerous, but to others harmless. The evil goblins are a stable of English folklore, the boggart stories come from Northern England, typically Lancashire, but similar creatures pop up all over with different names such as Dobbies and Boggle.
The name changes from place to place, but essentially it's a creature that’s quite helpful by doing chores and tidying up, however is also mischievous and can become evil. The Boggart name comes from a house ghost, and as Folklorist Catherine Briggs said in her encyclopedia of fairies “almost like a Poltergeist in its habits”. You must never give a boggart a gift or a name because then it can become bad and attach itself to you. It’ll follow a family wherever they go and the boggarts tricks will get worse and worse, first hiding in the kitchen cupboards stealing their bread and butter, making milk go sour, dogs go lame, and finally causing people to disappear, particularly children.
Some boggarts are easily deceived, but others are cunning and hard to remove. One famous story is the Boggart and the farmer. Once a farmer named a boggart which attached itself to him, the boggart demands that the farmer gives it his crop, they agree that the farmer would get everything below the ground, and the boggart everything above the ground. So the farmer plants potatoes, the boggart then angrily demands everything below ground, The smart farmer plants wheat, and the boggart leaves the farmer for good in a huff.
The Boggarts can also inhabit marshes or holes in the ground, The boggart haunts man-made objects, such as walls, under bridges, or sharp bends. One such place in folklore is a large park outside of Manchester named Boggart Hole Clough, in Blackley with its link in the bronze age is said to be haunted by a Boggart. The park has a steep ravine in this ancient woodland, and the boggart was blamed for death and people disappearing in the area. The Boggart is said to inhabit a decaying old farmhouse that has been left to rot, unfortunately on our visit we couldn’t find it. Legend has it you can hear the boggart laughing at night in the trees and the bushes, so next time you find yourself in the wilds Lancashire, you might not be alone.
LACKING THE BOGGART CREW
