When I first thought of writing my take on a ‘bogle’ story, ‘Tears
of the Tatty Bogle’, I began to wonder about the scarecrow character (as tatty
bogles are often represented) and why they lend themselves so readily to use in
scary tales.
Clearly there’s the iconic, grizzly look – the stuffed man
with a sack for a head and sewn-up eyes, crucified and left alone in a barren
field. But the same figure has been used in an unthreatening way in stories – Worzel
Gummidge and the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz being obvious examples.
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| A scarecrow from Human Nature/Family of Blood episodes of Doctor Who, 2007 |
It made me think of a frightening lone figure in a field
from my childhood, the perfectly spooky-story named, ‘Tracker Joe’.
Not a scarecrow, but a living bogeyman, Tracker Joe was the sinister groundsman who used to tend the golf course I grew up near. Let me give you some context here – I lived on a council estate on Walney Island, Barrow-in-Furness and the golf course was there because of the sandy soil; us scum-bag kids from the estate weren’t really welcome at the clubhouse door.
I remember from a young age (around four or five years-old)
hearing the stories of what Tracker Joe would do to you if he caught you on the
fairway. The one that stuck in my memory was simple but effective: if he found
you trespassing, Joe would lift you onto the trailer he pulled behind his
tractor and take you to his dark, tool-filled shed; there, he would put your
hand in a vice and extract your fingernails, one-by-one, with dirty pliers.
Presumably to deter you from stealing precious golf balls.
I don’t know the origin of the stories about Tracker Joe,
but I do know this – it was the children who perpetuated them. I was told the
stories by the older kids on the estate, the pre-teens us youngsters would try
to hang around with, and the teenagers they would try to hang around with. It
was perhaps one of the few times the oldest children engaged with the youngest
– when they were trying to scare the crap out of us.
Obviously, looking back now it’s clear why the stories
existed. What better way to keep the kids out of somewhere that adults don’t
want them to be than to terrify them with stories of the awful consequences of
transgression? Don’t stray from the path or you’ll get eaten by the wolf. Don’t
go into the potato fields or the Tatty Bogle will get you. The great thing is
that if the story is really scary then you only have to tell it once for it to take
hold and the audience will do the rest by retelling it, embellishing it every
time... just like the Tracker Joe stories and the kids on my estate.
We might not hear these urban tales so much today but we do
have our bogeymen. We warn our children about the stranger who lurks near the
school gates, ready to invite them into his car. Believe me, as a parent, these
stories scare the hell out of me.
But while they clearly serve an important purpose, what
truths do they obscure? Is the danger really in the woods or is it more likely
to be at the end of the path? Was it Tracker Joe us kids should have been wary
of or perhaps a monster waiting at home? According to the NSPCC, children are
far more likely to know an abuser than not.
The danger outside the home verses the danger within the
home was something I had in mind when I wrote ‘Tears of the Tatty Bogle’. While
it might not have been the main theme of the story, it was certainly something
that informed every part of the writing. I’ll leave you to decide who the real
bogeyman of the tale is.
