creepypasta origin

The Gasman

I first heard about the Bogeyman when I was five. My parents used to treat him like a ghost story.

“If you don’t be good and finish all your supper, the Bogeyman is going to come and take you away from us.”

In retrospect, that was probably one of the most frightening things you could’ve ever told a five-year-old. That a strange man will kidnap you away from your friends and family and everyone you love just because you weren’t behaving. Parents can be cruel, but now that I think about it, it worked. So, what can I say? They must’ve known what they were doing.

Now I tell my children the same thing. “The Bogeyman is coming if you don’t eat your peas!” My daughter hates it. My son, on the other hand, wants to meet the Bogeyman.

“Daddy, daddy! What does he look like?” he asks. That’s the funny thing about it all – my parents never told me. They didn’t have to. I was too afraid at the simple mention of his name that I didn’t even want to know what he looked like. So, I made it up.

“Well,” I said. “He’s… tall. Really tall. And he wears a big, black gas mask that covers his whole face. And it has big, round eyes – like a bug. He wears a shiny black uniform – as black as you can imagine. And a long, black cape.”

“Like a superhero?” my son asks.

“No. Like a super-villain. Underneath that mask and all that armor, the Bogeyman is full of burns and scars. They say he can simply walk through fire and feel no pain, but that his body can still be burned.”

“Where did he come from?”

“Nobody knows. All we know is, he only shows up to little boys and girls who don’t listen to their mommies and daddies and takes them away.”

“Did he ever take you?” my son asked.

“Almost,” I said. I had to spice up the conversation somehow.

“I was a very naughty boy, so one night when I was sleeping the Bogeyman showed up and tried to take me away. But grandma and grandpa rushed into my room and begged the Bogeyman not to take me from them.”

“What did he do?”

“What he always does. He told them, 'I have come for your child, he who has disobeyed you. He will be mine for eternity.' And grandma cried and begged and told the Bogeyman to give me one more chance. And the Bogeyman looked at her and said, 'He has but one chance left, and then he is mine.' And the next thing I know, I wake up the next morning, and ever since then I’ve tried to be the best that I can be.”

“I don’t want the Bogeyman to take me, Daddy!” he said to me.

In fairness, I shouldn't joke. What I, and many others, use to keep our children obedient isn't a joke or some kind of scary bedtime story. It's real, and when I got older, I realized this. But I would also realize that this "Bogeyman" would come to be known by many names; moreover, that my plucked-out-of-thin-air description of him was eerily accurate. Or at least, I thought I had made it up. It wasn't until sometime later when I realized that I had actually seen the "Bogeyman" before. Only at that time, I knew him by another name.

I was ten, maybe twelve. To be honest I try not to think about that time any more than I have to. The Vietnam War had just ended, and my father had come back home. When I say he told some of the most horrific stories I have ever heard, you have to believe me. But there was one he told me that I’ll never forget. There’s no way I ever could. He saw the Gasman - that's what he called it. Right there on the battlefield, just a week before. I remember my father as he was telling it: the look in his eyes and the sound of his voice. I’d never seen him so terrified.