From: Joe.Bethancourt@f72.n114.z1.fidonet.org
Newsgroups: alt.music.filk
Subject: I couldn't resist:
X-Sender: newtout 0.02 Nov 17 1992
Date: 16 Dec 92  23:56:00

From the "Arkham Inquirer" of September 21, 1897

                    IS THERE A BOOGY MAN?
                              -Francis Howard Wiccraft

Dear Editor,
I am eight years old.  Some of my little friends say there is no Boogy Man.
Papa says "If you see it in The Inquirer, it's so."  Please tell me the
truth; is there a Boogy Man? -- Virginia

Dear Virginia,
Virginia, your little friends are wrong.  They have been affected by the
skepticism of a skeptical age.   They do not believe except they see.  They
think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds.
All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little.  In
this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect,
as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the awful
intelligence dreaming in His hidden City who alone is capable of grasping in
His Tentacles the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Boogy Man.  He exists as certainly as loathsome
crawly things exist, and you know that they abound and give to our life in
Arkham its beauty and joy.  Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were
no Boogy Man.  It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias.  There
would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no things that go bump! in the
night to make tolerable this existence.  We should have no enjoyment, except
in sense and sight.  The monsters under the bed with which childhood fills
the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in the Boogy Man!  You might as well not believe in Cthulhu! You
might get your papa to hire men to watch all around your house every dark and
clammy night to catch the Boogy Man, but even if they did not see the Boogy
Man creeping into your room , what would that prove?  Nobody sees the Boogy
Man, but that is no sign that there is no Boogy Man.  The most real things in
the world are those that neither children nor men can see.  Did you ever see
fairies dancing on the lawn?  Of course not, especially not in Arkham, but
that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all
the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world....or beyond it.

You may tear apart the baby and see what makes the noise inside, but there is
a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the
united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart.
Only faith, fancy, poetry, the Necronomicon and virgin's blood can push aside
that curtain and view and picture the supernally hideous beauty and glory
beyond.  Is it all real?  Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing
else more real and abiding, except maybe He Who Is Not To Be Named......

No Boogy Man!  Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever.  A thousand years
from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will
continue to make sad the heart of childhood.

          -parodied, with no regrets whatsoever, by Joe Bethancourt

     --------------------------end---------------------------


... Are you going to NecronomiCon this year?
--- Blue Wave/QWK v2.10


--- WM v2.04/92-0475
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