Scaring kids is equal parts awesome, and probably a bad idea.

Parents will tell their kids all manner of things to trick them or scare them. My mom used to say if we sung out the screen at night in summer, that we could call the fireflies. Never thinking for a second that it was coincidence that we make a noise and they flash their little bodies. I also went on my fair share of snork hunts. Same as a snipe hunt, if you're wondering. And yes, long before the Snorks cartoon was a thing, haha.

When parents were feeling particularly funny, they also like to tell kids semi-scary things to either get them to behave (which never works with a scared kid) or to just straight-up mess with them. Like the first time you were ever told there was a Boogie Man. You mostly believed it wasn't true, but never wanted to find out for real.

Have you ever heard of a Boogwoofah?

I was cruising Reddit, and someone started a thread asking if people had ever heard of it when they were kids. Of course, most people pointed out the obvious, that the OP's parents were messing with them. But then, sure enough in the comments, people started saying they had heard similar versions of it, so there must be a tradition in there.

Specifically, the person was saying they grew up in the Eagle Lake area of The County. Other folks started mentioning a similar "creature" called the Woofaboomus. Of course, all these sound kind of ridiculous, but who am I to judge? Is it a legit cryptid like Bigfoot? Hard to say when the jury is still very much out on whether or not Bigfoot is real. But the Woofaboomus seems to have a lot more basis in "reality" according to this piece.

A quick Google search brought up the term boogawoof on Urban Dictionary. That basically means an ugly person. So maybe that's what the Boogawoofah is/was. A super ugly person out to get bad little kids. Hard to say, but with a name like the Boogawoofah, I also don't really wanna find out.

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