Baubas- Baltic DemonDemon · Monster"The Lithuanian Bogeyman"
Also known as: Bauba and Bobas
Titles & Epithets
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Description
A dark, hairy creature with glowing eyes and long arms that could reach into beds and squeeze through keyholes, the Baubas was the monster Lithuanian parents warned their children about. He lurked in closets and under beds, always watching, ready to snatch any child who misbehaved or refused to sleep.
Mythology & Lore
The Thing in the Dark
The Baubas was dark, black or shadowy, with long arms that could reach through windows and squeeze through keyholes. His eyes glowed in unlit rooms, sometimes red, sometimes yellow. In Lithuanian folk accounts collected by Jonas Basanavičius, some families described a hairy body like a beast's; others knew him as something worse, a living shadow that poured itself through cracks in the wall to get at the children sleeping on the other side.
He lived where children feared to look. Under the bed. Inside the closet. A child lying awake at night, staring at the dark corner of the room, was staring at the place the Baubas already occupied.
The Warning
Lithuanian parents put him to work. A child who would not sleep heard that the Baubas was coming. A child who cried too long heard the same. The threat was not distant or abstract: the Baubas might be in this room, tonight, with those long arms already under the bed frame.
Where other Baltic monsters roamed forests and wild places, the Baubas lived in the house itself. The bedroom was safe only as long as a child stayed under the covers and behaved. Morning was the only sure remedy.