Check the Cliff

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

My dreams are safe once more.

For the past couple days, I have been tormented by a memory that I could not fully remember. You know that feeling when you catch a glimpse of an old childhood book or ritual, but you can not remember what it was called, or exactly what it was about? Well one day at work a picture from a childhood book flashed in my mind, yet I could not remember what it was called. All I could remember was it was some lion-like creature, and it was a stuffed animal of a young boy. When something threatened the young boy, the animal would become a ferocious beast and defend the boy. With that being all I could remember, I set off to find this missing piece of childhood.
First, let me explain that I love doing this. Searching through the internet on a quest to find some missing information is a hobby of mine, so I set off on this particular journey with enthusiasm. After two hours of searching, however, I still had nothing. So I turned to my mom, who surprised me to no end when she remembered the name of the character I sought out: Bah Koo. Of course at that time we had no idea how to spell it, and it took me another half hour to find the proper spelling.
What I found was amazing, since it appeared there are only two pictures of this book on the internet (according to Google). With my desire to be one of the few reignited, I ran to my basement, and after digging through countless stuffed toys I found the holy grail of the week: my very own Bah Koo stuffed animal. See, with the book came the stuffed animal from the book. Unfortunately, I have yet to locate the book, "Bah Koo - Chaser of Bad Dreams: The Bedtime Story", which I believe is at my grandparents house, if anywhere. But for now I am content with knowing the plot, which went something like this. Bah Koo belonged to a little boy, and would protect his dreams. One night, when the boy had an unusually powerful nightmare, Bah Koo jumped to his rescue, transforming into a ferocious creature, and ate the bad dream. Now that I have found my Bah Koo doll, I can rest easy, knowing my dreams are safe once more.

Bah Koo is based off of the Japanese folklore of the Baku, the dream eaters.

3 comments:

Elisa said...

I swear I could have written this! My older siblings and friends are beginning to have kids and I've been trying to remember this crazy dream monster book for the last year. I'd figured out the name through random buzzwords in search engines and even found someones drawing of the Baku plush but no pictures of the actual doll or book. I can still remember the feel of the hair, course and texturally "sticky" almost. Now that I can send my mom a picture to try to jog her memory I can start the physical search for mine. Thanks for having the same mad memory hunt!

iheartkatamari said...

Oh say, I managed to locate a couple of copies of the book on Amazon; the title is Bah Koo: A Bedtime Story by Robert V. Rhodes.

Unknown said...

Is there any chance you could send photos of different angles of your treasure? I have a request for a replica of Bah Koo and haven't found many photos of it. Thanks
Susan@SusansSewNique.com