Scaring children in America V. Scaring children in Pakistan

Let’s face it kids love getting scared. No matter where they’re from a good ghost story always delights. Society eggs on this kind of entertainment with a plethora of stories to choose from. I guess this is due to parents wanting to keep their kids in line. How many times have we told them to eat their peas or else the boogey man is going to get them? This shortcut saves the parents a lot of grief. Similarly parents in Pakistan tell their kids that baba is going to get them if they don’t do their chores. Baba can best be described as a scary old man that does terrible things to bad little children.

More significantly scary stories in Pakistani literature focus around black magic and the fiery entity known as the Jinn. This term has been derived from Islamic scripture that tells about a fire based creation. The most widely known representative of this species is none other than Iblis (Satan). That’s why these creatures get a bad reputation even though all of them aren’t bad.

Scary stories in western literature focus on witches and warlocks. This too has religious connotations to it. During colonial times English settlers in the New World hung women they deemed to be morally corrupt. To justify their actions they called these women witches and thus gave birth to the infamous Salem witch hunts.