Boggart

Boggart
GroupingFolklore creature
Sub groupingHousehold spirit, or ogre attached to a particular location
Similar entitiesSee here
FolkloreEnglish folklore
Other name(s)Boggard (in Yorkshire)
CountryEngland
RegionParts of Northern England, particularly the North West
HabitatBoth within homes and outside in the countryside.

A boggart is a supernatural being from English folklore. The dialectologist Elizabeth Wright described it 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 within and out of doors, as a household spirit or a malevolent genius loci (that is, a geographically-defined spirit) inhabiting fields or other topographical features.

  1. ^ Wright, Elizabeth Mary, Rustic Speech and Folk-lore (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1918), 192.
  2. ^ Young 2022, p. 7
  3. ^ Haunted Halifax and District (Stroud: History Press, 2014), 52.