What Is A Boggart?

A boggart is a shapeshifting creature that if you stumble upon it, takes the form of whatever you fear greatest. Boggarts prefer to hide in confined spaces. No one has ever seen what a boggart looks like when not showing what you fear most. Boggarts usually give away their hiding spot by shaking or rattling the thing that they are hiding in. Boggarts can be seen by both Wizards and Muggles.

Boggarts, like Dementors and Poltergeists, are “generated and sustained by human emotions.”

The spell to defeat a boggart is “Riddikulus” Once the caster has said “Riddikulus” the boggart turns the caster’s greatest fear into something of comical form. If the caster can laugh out loud at the boggart, it will disappear at once. 

Some famous Boggarts include the Old Boggle of Canterbury (One of the boggarts seen by Muggles), The Bludgeoning Boggart of Old London Town (a Boggart that took upon the form of a “murderous thug” back in nineteenth-century London but could be reduced to a small hampster with the spell “Riddickulus”), and the Screaming Bogey of Strathtully (A Scottish Boggart that fed on the fears of local Muggles).