Bogeyman
Species: Shadow Entity
Habitat: Dark places in general, especially inside human settlements and houses, possibly the Twilight Zone as well
Disposition: Varies but includes bold, ferocious, sadistic, mischievous, playful, friendly, affectionate, simple-minded, prideful, possessive and even shy personalities
Diet: Spiritual energy/mana of human men, fear of humans and mamono, omnivorous diet of normal foodstuff
According to the Order and their supporters, monsters were simply malevolent entities spawned from the darkness of our world which was created by the Chief God. Supporters of the current Demon Lord on the other hand would claim that it was the first Chief God who created monsters to keep the human population under control. However, even the supporters of the current Demon Lord had to agree that there is at least one type of mamono whose monstrous ancestors were literally spawned from the darkness of our world during the age of the previous Demon Lords, a genesis which many have claimed even the first Chief God had not anticipated. These beings are known as the bogeymen.
Believed to exist from the time when humanity suffered from monster attacks led by the first Demon Lord, bogeymen had persisted as a symbol of terror and horror for a long time ever since. While theories of their genesis vary, such as the vengeful spirits of slain monsters or evil humans gaining physical form, the physical manifestation of human fear towards monsters and/or the unknown, or a race of beings that actually belonged to a different realm that had somehow entered our world, it is an undisputed fact that the early bogeymen were a race of monsters that primarily fed on the fear of their victims.
Unlike most monsters of the past era, bogeymen initially start out as ghost-like entities of shadow that could only appear at night, could be harmed by bright lights, and possessed a limited ability to physically interact with their surroundings. During the daytime, bogeymen would hide in shadowed places such as under a bed or a staircase, inside an attic or a basement, or behind furniture such as a closet as they would be killed by sunlight. When night time arrives, the bogeymen would leave their hiding places to seek out their victims by quickly travelling between nearby shadows or darkened places. Due to having a limited ability to physically interact with their surroundings, the most they could do was to scare their victims with their unnerving presence and/or mannerisms such as crawling from under the bed to breathe onto their victims, lunging at their victims from inside the closet before disappearing or staring at their victims while literally standing onto the ceiling above them. Despite the limitations, bogeymen possessed an instinctive ability to plan the best way to scare their victims thus ensuring that they feed on the maximum amount of fear. Children, who would generally be easier to scare than adults, would naturally be targeted by bogeymen. Once a bogeyman gains enough energy from the fear of its victims, it would begin to develop an actual physical body.
Unlike the first stage, bogeymen that possess a physical body were able to freely interact with their surroundings, possessed limited shape-shifting abilities, were capable of creating illusions, could read the thoughts and emotions of their victims and, if powerful enough, gained telekinetic abilities. In addition, bogeymen with physical abilities could transform back into their ghost-like forms to conserve energy, to hide more easily during the daytime, to slip past physical barriers, and to stalk their victims more effectively. What was more, the physical traits of each individual bogeyman varied wildly as their physical forms would be influenced by their favoured types of victims and their favoured methods of scaring them. For example, a bogeyman with spider-like traits would favour scaring people with arachnophobia while a bogeyman with dog-like traits would favour scaring people with cynophobia. As stated before, bogeymen with physical bodies possess limited shape-shifting abilities and well as the ability to create illusions, thus allowing them to assume just about any variation of their primary physical forms to best horrify their victims such as a bogeyman with dog-like traits changing into a bleeding skinless version to terrify people with haemophobia.
One of the more horrifying traits of the bogeymen was the fact that they were not only monsters that could appear out of seemingly nowhere and were seemingly impossible to flee from, but that they would not only target humans but even monsters as they possessed no loyalty to anyone, not even the previous Demon Lords or the first Chief God. To make matters worse, bogeymen with physical bodies may choose to either kill their victims in horrifying ways, such as eating their victims alive by ripping them apart piece by piece, or simply terrorize them to the point they either became insane or committed suicide. What was truly horrifying however, was the simple fact that while some of the bogeymen were indeed mindless monsters, others possessed a truly malicious intelligence and may even possess a beautiful human form just to further terrify their victims. Thankfully enough, the bogeymen of the past could be harmed and even killed by holy magic and would therefore keep away from people and places that possess such magic as well as flee from enemies that could kill them. However, there had been stories of bogeymen with physical bodies that could actually fight against valkyries and heroes such as the Slender One, the Smiling Hound and the Raking Hands.
One rumour claims that the reason why the current Demon Lord, Lilith, had the support of various monsters which would normally try to kill each other instead was not only because of her persuasive charm and intellect as a succubus but also because she actually managed to gain a powerful bogeyman as an ally. Although it is still unknown why the bogeyman had agreed to be Lilith’s ally, what is known is that the bogeyman was a seemingly human woman whose name was known as Hallows Evernight. As no Demon Lord had ever gained a bogeyman as a willing ally before, and well aware that bogeymen terrorize humans and monsters alike, even the least intelligent of sentient monsters at the time would realize that Lilith was a powerful potential Demon Lord. When Lilith came to power as the current Demon Lord, it is believed that Hallows Evernight created her own spirit realm known as the Twilight Zone which serve as not only the home realm of the bogeymen but also as a transit point to allow bogeymen to travel to anywhere which is shadowed or darkened such as under a bed, under a flight of stairs, inside a closet, and inside a dark alley. An alternative theory is that Hallows Evernight had simply returned back to the home dimension of her kind and became its ruler by transforming it into her own version of a demon realm known as the Twilight Zone.
In the current age, all bogeymen possess physical bodies in the form of beautiful women or cute girls that, like all mamono, can feed on the mana of human men by having sex with them. However, they still retain their ancestral ability to feed on fear and could even live exclusively on it although they can also eat solid food to sustain themselves due to having physical bodies. While all bogeymen of the current age do possess physical bodies from birth as seemingly normal human girls with unusual colorations and wreathed in shadow, they still retain their ability to transform into ghost-like shadows and actually favour such ethereal forms by default until they gain human husbands. Unlike their predecessors, the bogeymen of the current age do not get harmed by bright lights or killed by sunlight although they could be weakened by them until they change into seemingly ordinary women or girls who would be helpless until they regain their powers. Holy magic on the other hand is still effective in harming and killing them.
As far as physical traits are concerned, all bogeymen are either women or girls with white, grey or black skin and hair colorations. Those with grey hair or skin often have different shades of light or dark grey while those with black hair or skin often have different shades of highlights such as red, purple, blue, green, yellow, brown and grey. As for eye coloration, bogeymen often have shades of red, purple, blue, green, yellow, grey and black irises while their sclera are often white or black. Unusually enough, bogeymen may possess normal human eyes or eyes that barely has any sclera with cat-like pupils. Although all bogeymen are born with a human form wreathed in shadow, they can gain a more monstrous form, albeit without losing the beauty of their main humanoid bodies, once they have gained human husbands. Their altered forms would be based on what their husbands are afraid of such as a bogeyman gaining a form of a centipede as her husband is terrified of them. There was actually a case of a bogeyman growing an extra pair of monstrous pseudo-heads just so that she should scare her husband with them.
When a bogeyman is interested in a human man, she would stalk him until she locates his place of residence. From that point onwards, she would live at his place and scare him every night. However, unlike their predecessors, these bogeymen may not necessarily be ferocious or sadistic when tormenting their victims, although it is generally agreed that even the most mild-mannered among them would be maliciously terrifying against anyone that they truly despise. In fact, some bogeymen are content to simply play pranks upon their victims every night. Due to being influenced by the demonic mana of the current Demon Lord, the fear that these bogeymen cause and feed upon would actually arouse their potential husbands despite being terrified of them. By feeding on both the fear and sexual arousal of their potential husbands, the bogeyman would gain an increasingly altered physical body as well as become increasingly aroused. With each passing night, both the bogeyman and her potential husband would become increasingly attracted to each other until they finally have sexual intercourse. Depending on the circumstances, the husband may overcome his fear and ravish the bogeyman followed by claiming her as his wife, or he would be ravished by the bogeyman instead and be claimed as her husband. There is even a third option when a potential husband actually attempts to court his bogeyman, an act which the bogeyman may graciously accept, seemingly accept with more sexually predatory intentions, or simply reject and attempt to ravish him right away. Regardless, once a bogeyman has claimed a husband she will become more affectionate towards him although it may not make her any less sadistic or ferocious in her desire to scare him. It should be noted that, just like their wide range of physical forms despite being one species, bogeymen also possess a wide range of different personalities to the point that one may assume that it helps them to better scare their potential victims and husbands by not following a “standard of racial personality”.
Although a controversial theory, it is believed that the bogeymen of the current age are actually less different from their monstrous predecessors than most people would expect. The reason is that while it is true that the bogeymen of the current age do love their husbands, and enjoy scaring them, they actually gain most of their energy by feeding on the subconscious fears of their beloved husbands and friends instead of the mana they gain by having sex with their husbands. True, the bogeymen do enjoy feeding on the said mana and can obtain nourishment from it, but how many could claim that they are not afraid of losing a loved one?