Boogeyman Saga
BUGS BOOGEYMAN (PART 1)
By Evelyn B. & Seraphina D.
“I literally do not care about the door at all.”
We’ve all asked ourselves questions before… When is lunch… What class do I have next… Who is the shadowy figure that I wake up late at night to see… but life becomes complicated when we search for the answers. When we stare at our screens, asking un-answerable questions, we’re only filled with unease and dread. We’re filled with intense anxiety. But these questions, no matter how miniscule, must be answered.
One such question that all BUGS students have asked themselves is the question we’re trying to find the answer to today: What is behind the red door next to the girls bathroom?
For many months there has been no sign of what this room could be, only a strip of blue tape with a question mark sharpied on. This itself brings up the question: do the staff even know what lies behind the door?
But before talking to staff we wanted to speak with other students to find their perspective on the matter at hand. On the cool afternoon of October 12th, just as school was letting out, we started talking to a sixth grader who found interest in our topic. Below is a transcript of the latter part of the conversation:
Seraphina: Would you mind if we interviewed you? Not right now, but maybe in school tomorrow?
Sixth-Grader: Sure
(He starts to ride away on his bike)
Evelyn: What’s your name?
Sixth-grader: Joe Mama
He then rode away. Unfortunately we weren’t able to find Joe the next day, But his interest in our ideas gave us inspiration to delve more into the mysterious world of the door, or as we call it, the Cryptid Closet.
To potentially solve this mystery, we first decided to discover the opinions and thoughts about the door with multiple students and staff. Many people are not familiar with the mysterious door. We noticed that interest about the door is not widespread, but one of the people we did talk to had a very interesting opinion.
Seraphina: What are your feelings on the door? Any sinister energy?
Finn: I think they’re hiding something there. If you were to cover up a murder that’s where one would hide the body.
We asked Finn about paranormal experiences later on in that same interview.
“If you go to BUGS there’s an elevator, it’s abandoned. I get ghost vibes from both the door and the elevator,” he said.
Paranormal experiences aren’t common occurrences. For many, they only happen once in a lifetime, so when you see something strange it becomes one more question that you have to answer. That’s how we felt about the door.
After much trial and effort, us Paranormal Investigators decided it was finally time to discover what lay behind the blood-red aperture; would it be a strange snake like creature with fangs, and thirst for human flesh? A teary ghost mourning the loss of their mother? Or perhaps a storage closet? None of these are things you ever want to find outside of paranormal investigations like the ones we do.
We stared at the door, the flickering of the lights above us, the speaking of teachers and students fading into the background, as a hand gripping the key turning the lock. Click.
*Imagine explosion noises here*
Sustainability supplies? Huh?!
It didn’t connect to any of the interviews, a red herring. A red herring from a mysterious ghost, some strange creature leading us to an unknown destination.
We must keep searching…
BUGS BOOGEYMAN (PART 2)
By Evelyn B. & Seraphina D.
One advisory.
One year.
One strangely empty side of the classroom.
Last year, Advisory 701B dawned their backpacks and headed into the room. At first it was a joke, that everyone was very adamant to stay in one half of the classroom, but soon it turned into something more...
Ghost children.
The tables would shake and we would hear mysterious scratching, like that of a bear (see: Hibernation Article).
We were in that Advisory, and yet we were still oblivious to how real those ghost children were. We laughed at the jokes, but felt an odd uneasiness when we entered the room. Now that we are older and wiser, we decided to investigate who those ghost children were.
We decided to investigate [classified], a part of the school that no one knows about. We headed there during a Hornet Headlines meeting one 'noon. To get there, we walked [classified] and then turned to the [classified]. And finally we were there.
We saw empty hallways and barren classrooms that screamed "I'm haunted" (literally, lol), the remnants of a world we would never know. Peeling paint on the walls, the bright yellow color contrasting with the eerie emptiness of the scene. As we peered into the room, we imagined that classroom like any other classroom, filled with signs of life and tables and posters and children and pencils and paper and pencil sharpeners and teachers and clothes worn by the people and plants (maybe) and maps and heating etc...
But we were not prepared for the devastating feeling that creeped up on us. The room was completely empty... no children, no desks, no posters no nothing. It was barren, like a wasteland. Or a Blockbuster.
When we walked around some more, we found even more horrifying things. The worst of which being a blackboard with one sentence on it: “I miss you already.” (Possibly a clue? Does the BUGS Boogeyman know me personally? I must search my contacts.)
Who could have written it? A creature? It quite possibly could have been the BUGS Boogyman himself.
Things we know about the BUGS Boogeyman Himself:
-He has fingers
-He is sentient
-He knows how to write and has good penmanship
-He went to school... or did he?
-He has feathers
-He is spooky
Alas, we did not find the BUGS Boogyman here. He must have been in hiding, just like the brown bears that hibernate in the winter period (see: Hibernation Article for more information). This, of course, means the search will continue...
BUGS BOOGEYMAN (PART 3):
WHO IS JANET?
By Evelyn B. & Seraphina D.
A spook and a scare… What do we see over there? Why does a box grace our eyes, filled with a christmas tree and lots of lies! But a notebook scrawled with words, and spoiler alert: it’s not a list of birds.
“I must leave he is coming”
Repeated over again, and a drawing of the boogeyman (he looks so inhumane!)
The box seemed… quite out of place. There was no semblance of an eye or a face. It gave us the shivers, gave us the creeps. The uneasiness reminded me of when I would weep.
We ran down the hallway, at the sound of a scream.
A dead body, the first we’d ever seen.
A flash of light, then vanished from our sight. Leaving only a corpse, so we went to look of course!
She looked very pale, and ghostly indeed. So that flash of light must be our biggest lead. The Bugs Boogeyman? Who else could it be? But when we put our hands on her shoulder, it passed right through. A ghost. Quite mysterious indeed. We took a photo, pictured below. In her hand was something strange.
A student ID. “Janet Adkins” it read. 8th grade. But how does the strange box connect to Janet? And why is her spirit here in [classified]?
We went back to the cardboard box and checked all over it. Suddenly, we felt a chill in our bones. Written in sharpie on the bottom of the box were four words: Belongs to Janet Adkins. We were dumbfounded, shocked even. It was appalling, astounding, disturbing. One might even say… a little weird. And other words for surprising. How cool. A name. The same name on the student ID held by the ghost. She must have been packing up. But why? As we walked back to our office. We noticed something on the blackboard. The one that said “We miss you already”. There was something else written on the board that we had missed the last time. “Janet.” What could it mean? The mystery expands...
The day was warm
The night was cold
The empty school had an empty dorm
Janet smiled
No. She’s dead.
Her ghost grinned.
The boogeyman had sinned
#JusticeForJanet
--. --- / - --- / - .... . / -... --- - - --- -- / --- ..-. / - .... . / -. . .-- / -.-- . .- .-. ... / .- .-. - .. -.-. .-.. .
BUGS BOOGEYMAN (PART 4):
chosen
By Evelyn B. & Seraphina D.
It was a dark and stormy middle school afternoon ;) . We knew that this normality of the stormality wasn’t going to last into the night ;) .
You’re probably wondering how I ended up in this situation. Well, although we knew that we had lost the trail and the world was falling and everything we knew had begun to tremble like a lost ghost… BAM. Earthquake. Scene.
Just kidding, we had a secret code. Time. We all know it. Clocks, Dr. Who (Time Travel), and the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Time Travel). They recognize time as non-linear, but for the purpose of this article, we will temporarily recognize time as a linear structure full of numbers.
We had a strange feeling about the Time Warp (Get it? From the movie?) inside BUGS (Brooklyn Urban Garden Charter School). All the clocks were off, they ticked, they changed, and most of all… every one of them had a meaning. At times of the day we glanced at the clocks, different rooms echoing our very thoughts. We recorded the times.
Because obviously.
09:35 - The morning of breakfast
11:45 - The brunch of champions
12:00 - The midday meal from Mississippi
14:45 - ABANDONMENT OF THE SCHOOL!
15:25 - Homework. Work. Armageddon. Nuclear Fallout.
16:25 - Contemplation of Plaster Wall. It screams to me. Haha JK That doesn’t happen lol why would you think that omg so weird ;)
WE ENTERED THE CODE. Sorry, caps lock was on and an everlasting rage entered my body. LOL. We took the times we had and entered them into a Number-Letter decoder. We then fed the letters into an anagram solver.
We felt that the BUGS Boogeyman (See previous articles for context) was sending us signals through the school. These signals could be life changing. World shattering. Smile breaking. And what we saw broke us. It was a name. Quite possibly the name we had been searching for. Eddie Yokley. The name of the Bugs Boogeyman.
Dun Dun DUNNNNNN.
We ran back to our office, practically SLAMMING the door when we entered. Then we heard something behind the clock. When we turned around, we saw it. A piece of folded paper that was once hidden was now visible to our retinas. A scientific wonder.
WOWAH! A lined paper? What could be on it? Nothing spooky, I hope.
SO we opened it. And on it we saw a familiar name…
JANET! From reading this paper we learned more about her when she was alive. For one: she was a gamer. She was also a girl. A gamer girl, one might say. And less importantly, she was bullied and locked in a closet. And… she saw a face… quite possibly the face of Eddie Yokley, the face of the Bugs Boogeyman.
We both grabbed a sprite from our minifridge, and pretzels from our coworker Simon. We knew this was going to be a long night. The first thing we did was search up “Eddie Yokley”. Nothing. We searched up “Boogeyman”. Nothing. We checked our internet; we were on ‘BOOGEYMAN WIFI 4G’. We now had another clue about what the bugs boogeyman is, we knew he had feathers, knew he was spooky, but apparently his heart was a wifi router. And he had connected to our chromebooks. This allowed him complete control of what we searched, and what we could and could not see. So when your wifi doesn’t work… remember he is there. As soon as we felt we were safe, the bugs boogeyman had tracked us down. Something came over us, a shiver, a shake, and we were now... his prey.
Dun DUn DUNNNNNN
CHeck back in next month for a NEW SPECIAL MARCH-APRIL EDITION~!
As always, the BUGS boogeyman is watching. He is in your wifi. And his name is Eddie Yokley. Goodnight. Goodnight to all.
BUGS BOOGEYMAN (PART 5):
the summoning
By Evelyn Boghdan & Seraphina Duclayan
We sat in our office, eating homemade rock candy and sipping our cherry flavored tonic water with a slice of lime in it and garnished with an olive. Clyde the plant glanced at us and winked, suddenly lightning flashed in the room.
“Fellow Journalist,” Seraphina said as they swirled their drink in the martini glass, “I think we have a haunting, and you know what this means.”
“We have to break out the wine glasses,” Evelyn said. We took out wine glasses and poured out tonic water from our martini glasses into the wine glasses.
“And,” Seraphina sighed, a single tear dripping from her face, “a summoning must occur.” She adjusted her tie and took out a candy cigarette, passing it to Evelyn.
“Thanks,” Evelyn said as she takes a bite of the candy cigarette. Seraphina took out one for herself and took a bite.
“So, summoning at my place. Code name, Nevermore 05,” Evelyn said, slamming down her wine glass. The plastic cracked when it hit the table, tonic water the color of blood seeping to the ground.
Well that was surprising. Evelyn survived the brutal attack, but was left with scars. Both mental, spiritual, and metaphysical, and physical physical. They should heal in about a month.
Seraphina was left with severe emotional trauma. It should heal in about a month.
BUGS BOOGEYMAN (PART 6):
WOAH! who is this strange girl...
By Evelyn Boghdan & Seraphina Duclayan
What do you call a Giver of Souls? A fiend, a criminal, or… the greatest gift that has been given to humanity? The answer is none of the above. A giver of souls is in fact called a Soulsmith: a handyman or crafter that creates the souls that occupy a human/mammal (not reptile or amphibian) body. Birds are a separate subject (depends on context and motivation). So strange that we would mention this at the beginning of the article even though it has nothing to do with what we’re talking about later haha wink wink.
Anyway, the old abandoned [redacted] is being sold to 442 (our RIVALS). We are deeply upset, and we were even more upset when we first found out. So we went to say our goodbyes to the ghosts that roamed there, as you do. Common etiquette. But when we go there, there lay a surprise… and it wasn’t a birthday party. In fact, it was the exact opposite of a birthday party. A reincarnation. A reincarnation of our worst enemy (or best friend?) Janet. With glasses the color of blue pearls and eyes the color of brown cattle. We ran as far and fast as we could- a… a… a reincarnation?! We had never seen the likes of it before this fateful evening.
We slammed the door behind us, Journalist Seraphina took out her camera. There were photos of Janet in it.
The next day we were confused, but not as confused as we were about to be. We were talking in Advisory, of which we are in the same one, when suddenly someone new walked though the door. A girl, the same age as us. JANET! Our advisor silenced the class, and told Janet to introduce herself…
“Hi,” She said, “My name is Brie, I’m a new student here.”
We gasped, shocked to our core. Janet, now called Brie, went to the middle of the class and took a seat next to ours. We were scared, really scared. Suddenly, she looked at us and said, “I know who you two are, and I need to talk to you”
All three ran out of advisory. The teacher waved goodbye. Then everyone clapped and cheered at our bravery. Suddenly Brie spoke.
“Before I got in this classroom, the only thing I remembered was being in a weird room that looked like a dentist’s office, and a man with a glowing pod. Then I woke up in that eccentric school!”
“Huh,” Journalist Evelyn said, “That’s Bonkers,”
Suddenly Brie began to float into the air like in the hit show STRANGER THINGS, but she wasn't about to die, instead she told us this riddle:
My brother haunts your nest
He seeks to kill the very best
I try with all might to stop him
But he wants his yacht too much to stop him
Your body is like an empty bag of crisps
I am the smith that repairs it
You’ll find my brother soon enough
Search for my whereabouts
In the game “Dungeons and Dragons”
Dungeons and Dragons… what is that? Neither of us had ever heard of this dungeon and dragon game. But we did know someone who had. Finnagan Bach. Or Finn, for short. He also was British, so the line “empty bag of crisps” made sense. We rushed to Ms. Julia’s advisory, where he resides. Before we even knocked on the door, he opened it, aware that we were looking for him.
“Hello” He said, high fiving us. “I see you have found my creation.”
His creation? What could it mean? Was Finn the one behind all of this?
“I am the Soulsmith, and the one who gave Janet a new soul… Brie’s soul. This is not confusing at all, right?”
Neither of us were confused, it was very clear that Finn was not really Finn but infact the Soulsmith (the one who creates souls for all new bodies) After the death of Janet, he gave her body a new soul, the soul of a girl named Brie, whose purpose was to speak with us and guide us to Finn (the Soulsmith).
“Also,” the Soulsmith Finn, said, “Eddie is my brother.”
GASP! The BUGS Boogeyman had a brother? How could it be?
Evelyn straightened her tie. “Well … that just happened.”
BUGS BOOGEYMAN: THE FINAL CHAPTER
By Evelyn Boghdan & Seraphina Duclayan