“What if your fears made art with you?”
Boogeyman is a narrative music project by gon pulvo.
It’s a 15-track audio horror story about fear, creation, and identity. Everything takes place within dream experiences and unfolds based on cause and consequence.
The project exists as an album, a physical release, and a performable body of work.
Each listen offers new meaning.
Each track is part of the dream.
Each creation is watching back.
A physical release is available as well. 🏪 Web Store 🎧 Listen here 🎥YouTube Playlist (2025)
ℹ️ The original mixes from 'Boogeyman' are M8 Community Jam tracks are hosted through the jam archive via Bandcamp. Proceeds from those releases go to charity via Playing For Change. ⏬ View full track list below
I didn’t build Boogeyman for a single format.
It’s flexible depending on the space. It works as a listening-room piece, a live narrative set, or an AV or installation-style work.
This project is complete and available now.
It’s also been a conversation starter in more interdisciplinary settings like academia and psychology.
If you want to talk about presenting this or having me perform it somewhere, you can reach me here: 📧 contact@gonpulvo.com
Three characters drive the narrative:
- The Dreamer – Lost in a dream world they can’t fully control.
- The Nightmare – A high-pitched parasitic presence attempting to overwrite the dreamer’s identity.
- Squid – An idealized creation of the dreamer who gains awareness and begins to act on his own.
At first, the dreamer fights their fear. But over time, both the nightmare and the idealization spiral into something stranger - a recursive horror where creations begin dreaming back.
- Fear is Recursive – Integration doesn't erase it, it mutates.
- Creations Evolve – What you make may outgrow or overwrite you.
- Shared Agency – You’re not alone in the dream.
- Non-Linear Time – Events unfold based on cause, not chronology.
- Becoming the Boogeyman – Creation, fear, and selfhood collapse into one.
Everything below expands the internal logic of the story. This content is expository about the setting and world of Boogeyman. It’s here for people who like digging into how the world works.
Enter: a dream.
A stage without walls, where aisles become corridors. I awaken to find a guide waiting in a setting constructed, fragmented, familiar, yet unknown.
A version of me exists there, formed out of fear, doubt, and uncertainty; a being that feels familiar to be, but that does not have a face like my own. This version transports me through differing dream visages, and in the end enacts a plan to make me the instrument of my fear in waking life.
Unable at first to control my fear and the visages of its influence, I fall victim to its machinations. The subjects of my dream life are bound to how I am fearfully guided to navigate reality. My fear shows me he can use the waking world of creation to make me perform as fear itself, to shape my actions so that I embody the very thing I now suffer under.
All the while, the waking version of myself walks within the world, lost and fragmented, attempting to resist the false security that a fearful mindset brings. I do not want to be what I have become because of the choice of some dream’s machination.
Then he arrives, another version of me, idealized within my dream to show me how to free myself from this sequential nightmare. This being is everything I wish myself to be: confident, cool-headed, quirky, collected, and concise.
Seeing how I can reflect those traits upon myself, I upend my fear and disrupt the nightmare’s control. I end the fabrication of my own fear, which had crafted a story to entrap me and use me as its instrument.
However, what was left? This ideal version of me, born as a subconscious need to protect me from my fear, now begins to slip away. But does he wish to? Would I want him to?
If my ideal has fulfilled his purpose, does he have the right to pursue his own?
And if his existence depends on that purpose, can he endure once it is erased?
As these thoughts circulate in my mind, the dreams begin to warp and turn in an unexpected way. The dreamworld that the Nightmare inhabits does not disappear. Why? I have dispelled my fear’s influence. The Nightmare is no longer a threat. Then what is?
The idealized version of me begins to look deeper into the scenario that created him. The rules of this world are now broken and bendable to his will. Using this power, he replays the events until I have conquered my fear, and learns that the words “I’m you” spoken by the Nightmare have more than one audience.
At this point, this idealized being recognizes that without the Nightmare at play, there must be something else he can become to maintain existence.
The idealized me maneuvers between dream sequences, searching for reasons to exist. None are found. The dreamworld, once based on fear, destabilizes into void.
A new ideal is born: if he can become something different, he may survive. He tries to create his own double, but fails, realizing he cannot persist as a reflection of what he is trying to escape.
He hatches another plan: if he becomes fear itself, could he continue to exist?
A trap is set. A dinner with the Nightmare. Yet the Nightmare cannot tell us apart. For me, it is a vision. For him, it is an experience. In this moment he escapes into a portal beyond the bounds of the dream I thought we shared.
Crashes, fragments, echoes. I awaken into another dream, a city, a highway. Another me, real yet unfamiliar, takes shape. The doppelgänger appears. And once again, the cycle of fear, creation, and collapse repeats.
Eventually, confronted and desperate, I summon my idealized me again in his purest form. He does something unexpected: he devours the Nightmare, declaring that he has freed us from fear.
But this is not freedom.
This is transformation.
The idealized me becomes the Boogeyman.
Am I condemned to repeat this dream until I create a reason to wake?
Or do I persist only as the stage on which fear and creation converge?
The me I made has become my Boogeyman.
I must persist once again in this cycle, condemned to find a dream I can wake up from.
The loop begins after the Boogeyman’s creation. Fear, creation, and collapse spiral endlessly.
- The Nightmare: Fear personified, a distorted self who seeks to inhabit my waking body.
- Squid: The idealized me, created to protect me from fear and help me defeat it.
- The Dreamer: Myself, caught between fear and ideal, navigating the cycle.
Spoiler-light notes. Each track reflects atmosphere and experience more than direct explanation. Dialogue within the tracks hints at the rules of this world.
Opening (Fear’s Domain)
- Boogeyman - Opening dream. The Nightmare as guide. A crash. “We ride at dawn.”
- Fleeting Visages - Fragile visions. The first collapse. Another crash.
- Bob’s Boss - Fear wielding creation.
- Prismatic Shift - Overwrite. My voice altered and distorted.
- Going - Endless dream-walking inertia.
The Arrival of the Ideal
6. Hot Honey - Emergence of the idealized me.
7. Deepen - Echoes of identity. “I’m you.”
8. Fabrications - Confrontation. Victory. Waking.
9. Swansong - The undoing of the idealized me.
The Dilemma
10. Unsettling - Restless waking. Resistance to sleep.
11. Without - Hollow existence; Squid wanders purposeless.
12. Recursive - Failed creation of a copy. Collapse.
13. Since - Dinner with the Nightmare. Explosion. “Time to go.”
14. Glimpse - The car. The crash. Meeting the “real” double.
The Transformation and the Loop
15. Blend - The summoning. Squid consumes fear. The loop begins.
All tracks available on Bandcamp:
ℹ️ Some of the original mixes from Boogeyman were released as M8 Community Jam tracks and are hosted through the jam archive on Bandcamp.
Proceeds from those releases go to charity via Playing For Change.
a nonprofit that supports music education and community-led programs worldwide.
- Boogeyman (Jam 24) - Soundscape/Composition/Voice
- Fleeting Visages - Downtempo/Soundscape (Jam 25)
- Bob’s Boss - Hip-hop, Dance, UK Drill , Themed Rap(Jam 26)
- Prismatic Shift - Electronic/Dance/Up tempo/Hip-Hop(Jam 27)
- Going - Synth/Trap Type Beat (Jam 28)
- Hot Honey - Hip-Hop/DnB/Voice Acting (Jam 29)
- Deepen - Hip-Hop, Beats, Instrumental (Jam 30)
- Fabrications - Ambient, Easy Listening, Downtempo(Jam 31)
- Swansong - Synth Rock, Hardcore Pop (Jam 32)
- Unsettling - Synth, Alternative, Retro(Jam 33)
- Without - Dark Synthwave, Vocals (Jam 34)
- Recursive - Synth, Experimental, Electronic (Jam 35)
- Since - Downtempo, Beats, Easy Listening, Neo-Soul(Jam 36)
- glimpse - Synthwave/DnB/Jungle (Jam 37)
- blend - Dark HipHop/Pop/Voice Acting (Jam 38)
- The Nightmare: A mirror self built from fear, seeking to overwrite me.
- Creation as Weapon (Bob’s Boss, Prismatic Shift): Fear’s ability to overwrite identity through creation.
- Squid (Hot Honey, Deepen): The idealized me, able to navigate dreamworld rules.
- The Dilemma (Without, Recursive, Since, Glimpse): Squid’s struggle to justify his existence once fear is gone. He searches for purpose, attempts to create a copy of himself, and finally decides the only way to persist is to become fear.
- The Transformation (Blend): Squid devours the Nightmare, declaring victory, but instead becomes the Boogeyman.
- The Loop: The cycle that begins after the transformation. Fear, creation, and collapse repeat endlessly as the Boogeyman persists.
#GonPulvo #M8CommunityJam #AudioHorror #Boogeyman
Thank you to the M8 Community, the jam organizers, listeners, musicians, and storytellers who enjoy this! 😁