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 The Bannister Hall Doll, a boggart said to have haunted Bannister Hall in Higher Walton, Preston, in two of its forms | |
| Grouping | Folklore creature |
|---|---|
| Sub grouping | Household spirit, or ogre attached to a particular location |
| Similar entities | See here |
| Folklore | English folklore |
| Other name(s) | Boggard (in Yorkshire) |
| Country | England |
| Region | Parts of Northern England, particularly the North West |
| Habitat | Both within homes and outside in the countryside. |
A boggart is a supernatural being from English folklore. The dialectologist Elizabeth Wright described the boggart as 'a generic name for an apparition';[1] folklorist Simon Young defines it as 'any ambivalent or evil solitary supernatural spirit'.[2] Halifax folklorist Kai Roberts states that boggart ‘might have been used to refer to anything from a hilltop hobgoblin to a household faerie, from a headless apparition to a proto-typical poltergeist’.[3] As these wide definitions suggest boggarts are to be found both in and out of doors, as a household spirit, or a malevolent spirit defined by local geography, a genius loci inhabiting topographical features. The 1867 book Lancashire Folklore by Harland and Wilkinson, makes a distinction between "House boggarts" and other types.[4] Typical descriptions show boggarts to be malevolent. It is said that the boggart crawls into people's beds at night and puts a clammy hand on their faces. Sometimes he strips the bedsheets off them.[5] The household boggart may follow a family wherever they flee. One Lancashire source reports the belief that a boggart should never be named: if the boggart was given a name, it could neither be reasoned with nor persuaded, but would become uncontrollable and destructive (see True name).[6]